Scintil Photonics, a supplier of silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) with monolithically integrated lasers and optical amplifiers, has secured €13.5m in second round funding, bringing the company’s total funding to €17.5m to date.
A fabless company, Scintil Photonics will use the funds to progress its industrialisation and speed up the global commercialisation of its products, which boost communications in data centers, high-performance computing (HPC) and 5G networks.
Robert Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC) led the round, with historic shareholders Supernova Invest, Innovacom and Bpifrance, through its Digital Venture fund, reinvesting.
Scintil Photonics’ optical communications aim to enhance traditional high-speed system and chip interconnections. The company’s Augmented Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuit (IC) product is a single-chip solution consisting of active and passive components, all made entirely from standard silicon photonics processes available at CMOS commercial foundries, and where III-V optical amplifiers and lasers are integrated on the backside of advanced silicon photonic circuits. This unique all-in-one integration of amplifiers and lasers enables ultrahigh-speed communications, thanks to extensive parallelisation and higher bit rates, for example from 800G to 3,200Gbit/sec with very compact chips.
Scintil Photonics’ products are unique in providing optical communication applications with higher bit rates, and scalable, cost-effective and mass-producible PIC (Photonic Integrated Circuits) solutions. This enables the multi-billion USD electronics industry to overcome the end of Moore’s Law with the integration of very high-speed optical communications.
Sylvie Menezo, president and CEO of Scintil Photonic, commented: 'Together, including the significant contributions in this round from our existing investors, this demonstrates the major progress we have made over the past three years in taking our disruptive photonic circuit technology to the fast-growing market segments of optical interconnects in 5G, Cloud HPC and datacom.'
Ingo Ramesohl, managing director at RBVC, said: 'Scintil Photonics’ monolithic integration of III-V Lasers into silicon photonic chips is a key enabler for next-generation telecom, datacom and sensing, said . 'The CMOS-compatible process allows for higher design freedom, lower losses and a smaller footprint at low cost.'
Marion Aubry, investment director of the Bpifrance Digital Venture team, added: 'We have supported Scintil since its inception and believe that the company’s capability to integrate lasers in advanced silicon photonics is second to none currently on offer for the industry.'
