Dust Photonics wins $25M in Series B funding

25 Sep 2019

Israel-based provider of optical modules for data center connectivity benefits from investment led by Intel Capital.

Dust Photonics, a developer of optical modules for enabling data center and high-performance computing connectivity, has announced a Series B investment of $25M, led by Intel Capital and joined by WRVI Capital. This latest funding round, which also includes a continued investment from veteran entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz, is expected to help fund the expansion of Dust’s operations and global market presence.

Ben Rubovitch, CEO and co-founder commented, “We are honored to have Intel Capital lead this round, which will help accelerate our vision of next generation optical connectivity. Our optical transceiver products address the key and challenging requirements for hyperscale applications, and we will also leverage our electro-optic technology in high-density, future architectures.”

The company noted, “as data rates double with every successive generation, so does the complexity for meeting the demand of lower cost, lower power and higher reliability. Technology innovations, like [Dust’s] AuraDP, provide a significant value differentiation enabling superior performance and sustainable 100, 400 and 800 Gb/s products."

High-speed connectivity 'essential'

“High speed optical connectivity is essential to enabling the performance and scale of today’s data centers,” said Hong Hou, VP of the Data Center Group and General Manager of the Silicon Photonics division at Intel. “The DustPhotonics products complement our leading optical transceiver portfolio through short-reach, standards-based interconnects based on VCSEL technology.”

“DustPhotonics is uniquely positioned to address the ever-growing need for high performance connectivity. We are highly impressed by the innovative solutions the company has developed,” said Lip Bu Tan, Founding Managing Partner of WRVI Capital.

Assessing the marketplace for such connectivity technologies, Dale Murray, Principal Analyst of LightCounting Market Research commented, “The cloud is leading the entire communications industry, and as a result the optical industry continues to grow as data centers, enterprises and 5G network operators invest to expand their fiber infrastructure.”

DustPhotonics develops and manufactures pluggable optical modules and solutions for data center, enterprise and HPC applications. Its innovative products and technology, such as AuraDP, are targeted at enabling the next generation of optical modules and connectivity. The company was founded in 2017 with offices in Modi’in Israel and Cupertino, California.