Kamelian attracts $6.7 million in second round funding, and launches second generation products

9 April 2003 Oxford, UK Lightwave--Component supplier Kamelian today announced the closing of a funding round involving its existing investors 3i, Goldman Sachs, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as a new strategic investor Hoya. The $6.7 million in financing will provide Kamelian with sufficient capital until 2005, when it expects to break-even, according to the company.

"I am obviously delighted to have closed a funding round in such a difficult environment," says Paul May, chief executive officer, Kamelian. "This demonstrates the strong belief that both our existing and new investors have in our staff and products."

"This investment in an Indium Phosphide-based device company is of great importance to Hoya, " says Dr. Tanji, who is responsible for new business development at Hoya. "We believe that Kamelian's SOA [semioconductor optical amplifier] products and hybrid integration platform will allow them to address a very broad range of optoelectronic products."

Kamelian launched its first hybrid integrated planar product--an all optical wavelength converter--at OFC. An input signal on a particular wavelength can be converted to any other wavelength within the C-band without the need for electrical conversion. Such a functionality is key to preventing wavelength blocking at optical crossconnects and the AOWC provides a compact, economical solution, which is bit-rate independent.

The product integrates an Indium Phosphide (InP) SOA chip with two silicon (Si) based planar waveguide chips on a Si microbench using mode-matching technology. This hybrid platform technology allows automated passive alignment and will be extended to a range of other mixed InP/Si optoelectronic products. The advantage of the hybrid integration approach is that it uses the best material system for each function, and then passively aligns the devices in 'chip' form. The passive alignment technology is also being applied to a second generation of SOA products, which is expected to lower prices for these devices even further.