Molex Buys Luxtera’s Active Optical Cable Business

Luxtera spun off and sold its AOC business to Molex. Luxtera will continue as a stand-alone company developing silicon photonics technologies. In an exclusive agreement, Luxtera will develop and supply advanced chip-sets for future Molex products that are based on Luxtera's silicon photonics technology. This includes the next generation 14Gbps (FDR) and four channel 25Gbps products for the 100Gbps Ethernet and InfiniBand markets.

As with every startup that creates new technology, ultimately it’s the scale and cost of international distribution that is the most expensive, most time consuming to create and the weakest part. The acquisition enables Luxtera to supply key silicon photonics components to Molex and leverage Molex’s international distribution. Additionally, it allows Luxtera to commercial its silicon photonics technologies for other markets as well. Molex is a leading connector supplier and has been trying to diversify its business beyond this into cabling. Molex had been toying with the AOC business with a product from Furukawa/Fitel based on a 1060nm InGaAs VCSEL first demonstrated since the supercomputing show at SC’09.

The acquisition of Zarlink’s AOC business by Tyco and MergeOptics’s AOC and transceiver business by FCI positioned these companies as full line suppliers of copper, Direct Attach, optical transceivers and AOCs. Hitachi Cable also has AOC and copper Direct Attach product lines. Luxtera AOC resellers Amphenol and Siemon will now have to OEM cables from one of their competitors – Molex! This acquisition will give Luxtera some much needed cash as the business of raising venture capital is difficult. As they say, VC have deep pockets but short arms! This frees up Luxtera to focus on developing and commercializing its silicon photonics technologies for other markets.

July 29, 2011

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