News: Optoelectronics
6 September 2022
Scintil completes second funding round with investment from Applied Ventures ITIC
Scintil Photonics of Grenoble, France and Toronto, Canada, a fabless developer of silicon photonic integrated circuits (integrated laser arrays, 800Gb/s transmitters and receivers, tunable transmitters and receivers, as well as optical I/O for near chip and chip-chip communication), has completed its second round of funding by securing additional investment from Applied Ventures ITIC Innovation Fund L.P., a fund jointly created by Applied Ventures LLC (venture capital arm of Applied Materials) and ITIC-Taiwan (Industrial Technology Investment Corporation, the venture capital arm of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Robert Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC) led the original round in June, with support from historic investors Innovacom, Supernova Invest and Bpifrance (through its Digital Venture fund). With this new investment, the firm’s total funding has reached €19m.
Scintil Photonics’ IC solutions aim to significantly enhance traditional high-speed optical communications from rack-to-rack to chip interconnections. The firm’s proprietary III-V Augmented Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuit (ASPIC) is a single-chip solution that uses standard silicon photonics processes (available at CMOS commercial foundries) with III-V optical amplifiers and lasers integrated on the backside of the silicon photonic circuits. This unique all-in-one integration enables ultra-high-speed communications, due to high parallelization and higher bit rates, e.g. from 800Gb/s to 3200Gb/s, helping the multi-billion-dollar electronics industry overcome the slowing of Moore’s Law with the integration of very high-speed optical communications.
The company will use the additional funds to improve its global industrialization footprint and speed up the commercialization of its products in the Americas and Asia-Pacific.
“Scintil Photonics is very happy to welcome Applied Ventures and ITIC. By teaming with such strong semiconductor industry players we can access the very robust industrial ecosystem in the Americas and Asia-Pacific,” says president & CEO Sylvie Menezo. “Their support will also bring great opportunities to deploy products to customers in those regions,” she adds.
“Silicon photonics-based optical chips with integrated lasers represent a major new opportunity in the data-center, high-performance computing (HPC), cloud systems and telecom markets,” believes Anand Kamannavar, VP & global head of Applied Ventures. “Scintil is a great example of our strategy to invest in the Materials to Systems stack. We are excited to be working with its team in advancing the technology with key market leaders in the HPC space,” he adds.
Investment in Scintil Photonics presents “a huge opportunity for next phase integration of very high-performance systems in data-center and cloud computing,” comments ITIC president & CEO Michel Chu. “This investment illustrates our commitment to supporting the most promising technologies worldwide.”
Scintil raises €13.5m in second-round financing led by Robert Bosch
Scintil unveils III-V-augmented silicon photonic IC
