- 20 July 2006 -

AXT promotes Bob Ochrym to Vice President of Business Development

Fremont, CA, USA, based AXT, Inc. has promoted industry veteran Robert Ochrym to Vice President of Business Development. He will focus on enhancing AXT's joint venture operations and world wide sales efforts while continuing to maintain selected high level substrate customers in North America and Europe.

In addition, Mr Ochrym will explore possible investment opportunities into complementary businesses where there are product synergies with AXT's current compound substrate and raw materials product offering.

He will report directly to Phil Yin, CEO with dotted line reporting responsibility to Davis Zhang, president of joint venture operations and John Cerilli, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing.

Mr Ochrym joined AXT in June 2005 as senior director of international sales and joint venture operations. Prior to AXT, he was national sales manager at AIXTRON, Inc., where he was responsible for North American sales and marketing functions. Prior to that, he held various positions in sales and marketing, business development and product management at Uniroyal Optoelectronics, Northrop Grumman and Rhone-Poulenc. Ochrym received his undergraduate degree from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. He is currently on the standards committee of SEMI for Electronic Materials (gallium arsenide).

"I am very pleased to welcome Bob to AXT's executive management team," said Yin. "Over the past year, we have focused tremendous energy into restoring and growing our customer base. The positive results are beginning to show in our continued revenue growth. Bob has played a key role in this success through his extensive knowledge of both compound semiconductor substrates and raw materials and through his longstanding positive relationships in marketplace.

"As we move forward, we believe that there are several areas that can yield considerable growth opportunities. First, we believe that our core business can grow substantially through continued focus on quality and customer service. Second, we believe that our raw materials business is increasingly becoming a key strategic differentiator and thus, we will expand our raw materials sales efforts and explore new investment opportunities.
"Finally, we will continue to explore complementary businesses to our core product line that we believe would allow us to serve the increasing demand for compound semiconductor substrates. I am very pleased to be able to leverage Bob's expertise, and the considerable talent and experience of our entire team, towards turning these opportunities into tangible results for our company, our customers and our shareholders."
AXT, Inc., also said it would announce its financial results for the second quarter 2006 in a press release immediately following the close of market on August 2, 2006.

Web: www.axt.com