Scintil Photonics, a start-up based in Grenoble, France, announced EUR 4 million in first-round funding for its work in silicon photonic fully integrated circuits.
The company said the funding will be used to develop prototypes (800 Gbps transceiver photonic circuits) in commercial semiconductor foundries in order to sample strategic customers in the data center market. The team and development partnerships, including those with CEA-Leti in France and the University of Toronto in Canada, will be strengthened.
Scintil’s technology enables higher-speed optical communication through the integration of multi-wavelength lasers with silicon photonics standard technology. It also reduces implementation costs by avoiding several packaging steps. Besides developing solutions for high-speed data transmission, Scintil Photonics also targets sensing applications, such as Lidar, an enabling technology for autonomous detection and mobility.
The success of this first tranche of funding reflects investor interest and confidence in the technology and the company founded less than a year ago. Prior to its establishment, in November 2018, by CEO Sylvie Menezo, previously with CEA-Leti, and chairman Pascal Langlois, former CEO of Tronics Microsystems, the start-up project, incubated at CEA-Leti, received initial start-up funding as a winner of i-Lab 2018, a French government-sponsored innovation competition hosted by Bpifrance.
“We are very pleased to have the support of leading French investors to further develop to an industrial level our innovative silicon photonic integrated circuits,” said Sylvie Menezo,CEO of Scintil Photonics. “Integrating lasers onto silicon photonic circuits, mass-produced in commercial silicon photonics foundries using standard manufacturing processes, is a key technology asset of Scintil. ”
