Optoscribe based in Livingston, Scotland, a global supplier of glass-based integrated photonics components, announced that it has closed a series B investment round of $2.3 million (GBP 1.8 million) that will support its expansion and product supply plans.
The second round of funding was led by Scottish business angel investment syndicate, Archangels, and supported by other existing investors Par Equity, Scottish Investment Bank and the Optoscribe management team.
Optoscribe previously announced it had raised GBP 1.2 million of funding in April 2016 in a round led by Archangels, which provided GBP 825,000 of funding, supported by Par Equity, the Edinburgh venture capital fund, with GBP 325,000 of investment, and Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) which invested GBP 50,000. The company said that the new funding would be invested in its manufacturing facilities, with a focus on its FCX product line for the data comms market.
At that time Optoscribe stated that it had been awarded development contracts by a number of technology companies and that it was supplying products worldwide to these companies for R&D purposes.
Recently, in March of this year Optoscribe announced the opening of a new facility to accommodate growth and meet future expansion plans. The new 7,400 sq foot building includes a Class 1,000 laser processing clean room and Class 10,000 assembly, characterisation, test and assembly clean room. The new facility also offers room for future expansion to accommodate the company’s growth plans.
Optoscribe has developed advanced technology that enables the production of optical components at a wafer level, primarily targeted at high-volume optical transceiver manufacturers supplying the growing data centre equipment market.
The company’s technology is designed to enable simple, precise coupling of optical fibres to arrays of laser emitters and/or photodetectors within optical transceivers. This allows transceiver manufacturers to automate the assembly process leveraging Optoscribe’s monolithic single optical interconnect component, while also significantly reducing the costs associated with assembly and testing.
Founded in 2010, Optoscribe applies its laser direct write technology to manufacture glass-based integrated photonic components for the telecoms and data comms markets. Optoscribe is a spin out business from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.
