Two years after New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham boasted how a new $942 million Ebon solar manufacturing plant would turn her state into a global center for advanced energy manufacturing, the boast is gone.
There’s a strong suggestion the company’s ties to Red China might have resulted in the U.S. stopping the project.
Ebon Solar has cancelled plans to build a factory in Albuquerque’s Mesa del Sol and will not create the 900 jobs it promised in the summer of 2024. At the time, the company intended to fabricate solar cells or semiconductors on the faces of solar panels to convert sunrays into electricity.
Different tax and economic development incentives were offered by Bernalillo County and the city of Albuquerque. But in recent days, Albuquerque’s Economic Development Department confirmed the project would not be moving forward.
“Ultimately, federal policy constraints and CFIUS-related considerations prevented the company from establishing U.S. operations,” a city spokeswoman told the Albuquerque Journal. “No public funds were expended.”
The spokeswoman also referred the issue to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment. The Journal suggested the failure to build might be associated with Ebon Solar’s ties to the People’s Republic of China.
The Treasury Department didn’t offer an answer but its Committee on Foreign Investment has a responsibility of reviewing certain transactions involving foreign investment in the U.S. and also determining whether those foreign investments might place national security at risk.
Ebon’s parent company is Ebang International which lists an address in Irvine, Texas, based on Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed in April. Two years ago, Ebon told Albuquerque officials its parent company was headquartered in Singapore. In other SEC filings, Ebang International stated it was incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
“As we have PRC operating subsidiaries,” the company disclosed in an SEC filing, referring to the People’s Republic of China, “we face various legal and operational risks and uncertainties related to doing business in China.”
In the form, an annual report for 2025, Ebang International disclosed that its securities may be prohibited from trade on a national exchange under the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act.
Dong Hu is listed in Securities and Exchange Commission documents as the chairman, CEO and chief financial officer of Ebang International. He and other officers on the board are from China and either taught at universities in China or are graduates from them. They include: Chunjuan Peng, Director and Deputy General Manager; Tingjie Lyu, Independent Director; Yanqing Gao, Independent Director; and Mingming Su, Independent Director.
The Journal reported Ebon and Ebang have not responded to numerous requests for comment on the project made over the course of several weeks to numbers and email addresses in New Mexico, Hong Kong, New Jersey and Texas. On Friday, a man who answered the company’s Irvine, Texas, phone number — as listed on SEC records — said Hu could not talk because he was in a meeting.