Business

Free-space optics provider LightPointe receives $33 million in second round funding

July 19, 2001

July 19, 2001--LightPointe, a manufacturer and designer of carrier-class optical transmission equipment using Free-Space Optical (FSO) technology, announced it has secured $33 million in second-round funding, including investments from Cisco Systems Inc. and Corning Innovation Ventures.

LightPointe, a manufacturer and designer of carrier-class optical transmission equipment using Free-Space Optical (FSO) technology, announced it has secured $33 million in second-round funding, including investments from Cisco Systems Inc. and Corning Innovation Ventures, a division of Corning Incorporated.

First-round investors Sevin Rosen Funds, Ampersand Ventures and Telecom Partners also participated in the second round. LightPointe raised a total of $12 million last September in its first round of funding and secured an additional $6.5 million in working capital earlier this year from Silicon Valley Bank and GATX Ventures. With the latest round of funding, LightPointe has raised $51 million in fewer than 10 months.

LightPointe has more than 600 systems installed in 23 countries. The company is in field and lab trials with more than a dozen global telecommunications carriers and has successfully emerged from a field trial with a major U.S. carrier. LightPointe FSO products are designed to enable carrier and enterprise customers to accelerate their metro optical deployments with minimal capital risk.

Free-Space Optics complements fiber in a variety of telecommunications applications, including Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) services, metro network extension, SONET ring closures, wireless backhaul and LAN-to-LAN connectivity, as well as "last mile" access. LightPointe was recently granted a U.S. patent on technology that eliminates the need for electro-optical (E-O) conversion between fiber and free-space optical links, allowing for the seamless all-optical integration of FSO with existing optical network infrastructure.

LightPointe's carrier-class FSO products are also protocol and topology agnostic, allowing carrier customers and enterprise customers the freedom to easily integrate systems within their existing network infrastructure.

LightPointe's FSO product line includes systems with bandwidth of 10 megabits per second (Mbps), 155 Mbps, 622 Mbps and 1.25 gigabits per second (Gbps). This fall, the company will make commercially available a 2.5 Gbps product, and during the fourth quarter, LightPointe is scheduled to release a Free-Space Optics DWDM product with 10 Gbps throughput.

About LightPointe:

Founded in 1998, LightPointe designs and manufactures carrier-class optical transmission equipment using free-space optical technology that delivers high-speed communications solutions to service providers. For more information, visit www.lightpointe.com.