Effect Photonics has raised $37m in Series C funding, co-led by Smile Invest and existing investor, Innovation Industries Fund.
The funding will help the company to develop single-chip coherent optics and scale production, and comes a year after announcing the tape-out of its Manta full photonic integration coherent PIC.
Other existing investors include: Photon Delta, btov Partners, Brabant Development Agency (BOM) and individual investors.
James Regan, CEO at Effect Photonics stated: ‘With our disruptive technology, we have already enabled DWDM in high-capacity 5G Radio Access Networks through our low-cost autotuning SFP+ modules, which are deployed around the world. This funding and our partnership with our investors will allow us to take the next leap forward, bringing even higher capacity “coherent” products to the network edges, as well as scaling existing production.’
Tim Koene, CTO at the company added: ‘Conventional coherent approaches require external narrow-linewidth tunable lasers and amplification, wasting light and adding cost, space and power consumption. Already demonstrated to key customers, the non-hermetic Manta prototypes integrate all of these functions on a single chip, bringing a revolution in low electrical power consumption together with high optical output power: high transmission performance in a small form factor that will enable the next generation of edge network capacity.’
Bart Cauberghe, managing partner at Smile Invest commented: ‘We see in EffectPhotonics a company with unique technology, with a team that has shown that they can also convert this into innovative products for a fast-growing market. In that respect, the company fits perfectly in the activities of Smile Invest, given our focus on innovative, ambitious companies that have the potential to become the market leader in their segment.’