VCSEL specialist adds $4.4 million to venture fund
Germany-based VCSEL developer Vertilas has completed a third round of venture finance, after gathering another €3.6 million ($4.4 million) from investors.
Included in the latest round was new investor KfW Mittelstandbank, while High Tech Private Equity GmbH also added to its previous investment in the company.
Vertilas, which spun out of the Walter Schottky Institute at the Technical University of Munich back in 2001, says that it will use the funds to "advance the commercialization" of its InP-based products.
The company's current product range includes singlemode uncooled VCSELs operating at wavelengths of up to 2.3 µm.
"We have a promising technology with a great growth potential," said Vertilas managing director Gerald Vollnhals, explaining that the financing would enable mass production of products based around the advanced lasers.
The Vertilas VCSELs are generally used in spectroscopic applications such as gas sensing, but also have applications in optical telecoms.
Common industrial gases, like ammonia, methane and hydrogen chloride, have molecular absorption peaks in the infrared region covered by the Vertilas VCSELs.