News Article
Avalon wins further backing, Essient shuts down
Optical components manufacturers continue to experience mixed fortunes, as Avalon Photonics secures further backing, while Essient Photonics does exactly the opposite.
VCSEL manufacturer Avalon Photonics of Zurich, Switzerland, has successfully completed its second round of financing raising a total of $5.5 million dollars of venture capital funding. Vision Capital led the investment round which also included existing investors Viventures and the CSEM, and two new investors, Venture Incubator from Switzerland and Innotech from Germany.
Avalon Photonics which spun-off from the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microelectronics, will use the funds to continue developing and manufacturing single- and multimode VCSELs for the datacom and sensing markets for.
Meanwhile, Essient Photonics of Bellshill Scotland, a startup making 10 and 40 Gbit/s ultra-low-power optical modulators, has gone out of business. The company is now trying to sell its assets, including two key patents upon which its product is based. The company closed its first and only round of funding last March for $7 million, but it had only received $4 million of the staged payment.