IBK Capital has raised a total of $62 million for POET Technologies Inc. (formerly OPEL Technologies Inc.) to develop its opto-electronic technology.
POET (TSXV: PTK) is an innovator in chip-scale integration of photonics products for the sensing, data communications and telecommunications markets. The company’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio includes more than 74 patents and 12 patents pending. POET has developed the first-ever wafer-level integration of electronics and photonics into a single device – the POET Optical Interposer (OI). With all fabrication, assembly, alignment, testing, burn-in and packaging done at wafer-level, the OI achieves the lowest cost of integrating electronics and photonics.
The OI is a platform technology that provides ultimate flexibility and scalability. Substituting devices or changing form factors is done with minimal design changes to the platform allowing OI-based solutions to span multiple product generations and a wide variety of applications. The OI is fabricated in a wafer-level process that is completely compatible with standard CMOS semiconductor processing, making it the solution to a long-sought-after means to co-packaged optics – building photonics communications capability directly into a chip – for high speed data communication and computation.
POET has a strong competitive advantage due to: (i) simplified packaging, (ii) fewer components and hence a lower bill of materials cost, (iii) highly automated wafer-scale manufacturing, (iv) smallest form factor available with equivalent functionality, and (v) superior electrical and optical performance.
On August 20th, 2019, POET signed a deal to sell its wholly-owned subsidiary, DenseLight Semiconductors, to a private group based in Shanghai. DenseLight is a manufacturing and design plant for integrated photonics platforms. The sale of DenseLight represents an injection of up to US$30 million into POET and a significant reduction of POET’s operating costs which will transform POET’s balance sheet and enable the company to pursue a fab-light strategy.
On October 22nd, 2020, POET and Xiamen Sanan Integrated Circuit Co. Ltd. (“Sanan IC”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Sanan Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. announced that they signed a definitive joint venture contract and applied for the registration of Super Photonics Xiamen Co., Ltd. (“Super Photonics”) to offer a new generation of cost-effective, high-performance optical engines to transceiver module manufacturers, systems suppliers, data centre operators and network providers globally. Super Photonics will combine Sanan IC’s world-class manufacturing capabilities with POET’s advanced optical engine designs and IP.
POET is at an inflection point for rapid growth. As part of the fab-light strategy, POET will focus on growing the OI business in fast-growth, multi-billion dollar markets driven by internet traffic, datacenter development, 5G networks and the integration of photonics and network switching devices. The total available market POET is pursuing for integrated photonics is estimated to be US$20 billion by 2025. System integrators such as CISCO and Broadcom, and data center providers such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Amazon represent about 70% of this total market.