Start-ups continue to attract funding

17 Jun 2002

Princeton Optronics has grabbed a hefty USD 25 million in funding to bring its high-power lasers to market.

The round was co-led by Investor Growth Capital and St. Paul Venture Capital. The cash will fund the final stage in the development of PowerSweep 2000, a high-power, broadly tunable laser, as well as enable Princeton Optronics to expand its manufacturing facilities in Princeton.

The laser, which is scheduled for production in the first quarter of 2001, is claimed to make existing networks more efficient by allowing service providers to switch additional channels of fiber capacity on and off at will, replacing the passive components now in use.

"The company's strategy is perfectly aligned with the needs of today's service providers, who are demanding a simpler, smarter network that is more flexible and cost effective," said St. Paul Venture Capital partner Bill Cadogan. The company says that market research carried out by the Yankee Group forecasts that tunable lasers will dominate the market within two years as their price achieves parity with current fixed-wavelength devices.

A separate pot of USD 25 million was snapped by photonics fiber maker IntelCore Technologies to build a new 40,000 sq. ft manufacturing facility in Grafton, Massachusetts. The company has already developed and delivered prototypes using optical fiber development and production equipment based at Boston University's Photonics Center.

The round, which brings the company's total financing to USD 30 million, was led by Tudor Ventures Group. "IntelCore's competitive advantage lies in its focus on rapid development of next-generation optical fibers, products which are critical to optical component and module manufacturers," said Tudor Ventures Group partner Rick Ganong.