News

5 August 2008

 

Innolume raises €8.6m in Series C funding

Innolume of Dortmund, Germany and Santa Clara, CA, USA, which manufactures quantum-dot (QD) laser diodes and modules operating at 1.05–1.32µm, has raised €8.6m in a Series C round of financing led by S-Group Capital Management Ltd (SGCM), joined by Applied Ventures LLC as a new investor, as well as existing investors NRW.BANK (the development bank of North Rhine-Westphalia), PEPPERMINT Financial Partners, S-VentureCapital Dortmund, Robert A. Young, and Juergen Kurb.

Innolume aims to use the funding to enhance its production capabilities and marketing activities (to sustain revenue growth from quantum dot laser products for telecom, industrial and medical applications) as well as for further development of its comb-laser and related photonic integrated circuits, in cooperation with top-tier semiconductor firms. Innolume’s comb source is a single laser diode that can provide hundreds of stable lasing lines for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical interconnects in computer applications.

“The race is on to reduce the cost of optical solutions for short-reach interconnects to the level needed by high-volume, mainstream computing applications,” says CEO Juergen Kurb. “Our vision is to enable high-density, low-cost WDM transmission by using a single light source for all wavelengths,” he adds. “This funding will also enable Innolume to rapidly introduce to the market novel quantum dot based devices aimed at specific high-value medical applications.”

SGCM partner Ilia Dubinsky emphasizes that, since the computer industry has recently committed to merging silicon computing technology with laser-powered optical interconnects, Innolume is applying the silicon integration paradigm (i.e. increased functionality and higher performance at lower cost) to quantum dot lasers for the first time. “This investment fits our model of identifying true innovators that have the potential to materially impact existing or emerging markets,” Dubinsky says.

Peter Guellmann, head of NRW.BANK’s venture investment department, adds: “Over the last years Innolume has clearly shown their capability to enable new, fast-growing applications with its unique technology.”

The Series C round follows 2003’s €4.4m Series A round in (led by PolyTechnos Venture Partners) and 2006’s €6.5m Series B round (led by NRW.BANK), before Innolume changed its name from NL Nanosemiconductor GmbH in January 2007.

See related items:

FAST-DOT ultrafast laser project kicks off

Innolume launches comb laser diode for O-band WDM

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Visit: www.innolume.com