New Zealand-based photonic test and measurement company Quantifi Photonics has announced the receipt of $15 million in a fully subscribed Series C capital round. Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel Corp., led the round alongside the rest of Quantifi Photonics’ existing investors.
The company says it plans to spend the money to expand its R&D and manufacturing teams and its sales and customer support capabilities in the U.S. and Europe. Quantifi Photonics says it is seeing significant interest in high-density test instruments, such as the 288-channel optical power meter released at OFC 2022. The company aims to develop fully integrated test systems for optical transceivers, silicon photonics, and co-packaged optics applications.
Intel’s interest in Quantifi Photonics centers around these plans. “Silicon photonics is a key technique in the future of the semiconductor and telecommunications industries, especially with the increasing bandwidth requirements for data center and 5G/6G applications,” said Sean Doyle, managing director at Intel Capital. “The Quantifi Photonics team has the potential to supply critical test and measurement solutions to the market at large.”
“Intel Capital’s investment will help us carry out our strategy and seize the market for the high-value test instruments required to support the rapidly growing transceiver market, which is projected to exceed $14 billion by the year 2026,” said Dr. Andy Stevens, CEO and co-founder of Quantifi Photonics.
The new funding round comes approximately a year after Quantifi Photonics closed a $10 million Series B round (see “Quantifi Photonics targets U.S. market after $10 million Series B funding round”). Quantifi was founded in 2012 as Southern Photonics and changed its name a year later to Coherent Solutions; it assumed its current name in 2020 (see “Coherent Solutions rebrands as Quantifi Photonics as it expands into new markets”). Its initial focus was on coherent transmission testing, so the move towards transceiver testing represents an evolution in its product strategy.
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