Optoscribe funding to expand monolithic integrated device development for datacenter transceivers
Integrated photonics components company Optoscribe (Livingston, Scotland) closed an investment round of just more than $3.7 million dollars (2.8 million pounds). This funding will facilitate an expansion of current manufacturing capacity, the hiring of key engineering resources, and allow the business to meet the demands of a growing customer base. The funding round was led by Scottish business angel investment syndicate, Archangels, and supported by its other existing investors, Par Equity, Scottish Investment Bank, and the Optoscribe management team. Previous investors were joined in this round by Maven Capital Partners, one of the UK’s leading private equity managers.
Optoscribe's proprietary laser direct-write technology produces optical components at a wafer level, primarily for high-volume optical transceiver manufacturers supplying the rapidly growing datacenter market. The company says its solutions enable a simple and precise means of getting light to and from the components within optical transceivers and other photonic integrated circuits (PICs). This facilitates transceiver manufacturers to adopt more automated, high-volume assembly processes resulting in substantial reductions in overall costs.
Nick Psaila, CEO at Optoscribe, said, "We have delivered significant growth and shareholder value over the past 12 months. We have made good progress strengthening our strategic partnerships and broadening our customer base while concentrating on being designed-in to our customers' volume products and generating recurring revenue lines for the business. This investment round will enable the company to continue our focussed growth plans and further expand both our manufacturing capacity and engineering resource."
David Milroy, Investment Director at Maven Capital Partners, said, "We are delighted to have invested in Optoscribe, helping facilitate the expansion of its manufacturing capacity and hiring of new talent. It is an attractive investment proposition – the cloud data centre market is experiencing explosive growth in order to meet consumer expectations for on-demand, high quality and real-time access to content across a wide range of devices and our due diligence has confirmed that Optoscribe’s glass-based integrated photonic components offer a unique solution to the challenges faced by the transceiver vendors focussed on this market. We look forward to working with Nick Psaila and his leadership team as they take the business to the next level."
SOURCE: Optoscribe; http://www.optoscribe.com/news-events/press-releases/posts/2018/september/archangels-and-maven-co-lead-investment-in-optoscribe/
Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)
Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.