Oxford, UK, 02 July 2019 – Rockley Photonics, a leading silicon photonics solutions provider, announces the successful first closure in its Series E funding round. Investors in the additional $52 million funding include a key strategic partner, Morningside Technology Ventures and numerous private investors. This latest funding round takes the total raised by Rockley to date to $165m.
Mahesh Karanth, chief financial officer at Rockley explained: “With this latest round of investment, Rockley is strengthening its position as a leading integrated silicon photonics solutions provider. It will support the full execution of our business plan and continued growth as we make significant strides in co-packaging for optoASICs and data center connectivity, LiDAR and consumer electronic applications.”
Silicon photonics involves the micro-integration of optical functions on silicon chips and is the optical counterpart of micro-electronic integrated circuits. The innovative technology transforms applications that were once the domain of traditional, pure electronic chip technologies. It is evolving into a core enabling technology for numerous burgeoning markets including Web 2.0 data centers, 5G, AI, autonomy, machine vision and healthcare. Yole Développement estimated the global market for silicon photonics to be worth US$500 million in 2018 with growth predicted to exceed US$3.5 billion by 2025.
Andrew Rickman, chief executive officer at Rockley added: “Rockley is uniquely positioned having developed a proprietary photonics platform and manufacturing technologies, underpinned by a depth of expertise that goes back some 30 years. We are currently using our platform to address applications in the data center and high-performance computing, medical and life sciences, and 3D imaging/sensing verticals with the potential for additional verticals in the future.”
About Rockley Photonics
Rockley Photonics was formed in 2013 by an experienced management team, previously successful with two silicon photonics companies. Rockley Photonics has developed a highly versatile, third-generation silicon photonics platform specifically designed for the optical I/O challenges facing next generation sensor systems and communications networks. Rockley’s photonic technology platform was developed with a total focus on high volume manufacture of highly integrated optical/electronic devices for high performance applications. The technology platform, exploiting optimized waveguide dimensions, offers significant benefits over conventional solutions, including: the production of higher density optical circuits; the ability to create more complex integration; better manufacturing tolerances; superior power handling; lower loss and higher efficiency photonic IC interfaces. In summary, Rockley Photonics’ technology can be adapted to be application specific, whilst simplifying manufacturing, assembly, test and validation, and optimizing power, size and cost of complex optical systems. Rockley’s founder, Andrew Rickman, is recognized across the industry for his technical and commercial success in silicon photonics. Andrew founded the first company to commercialize silicon photonics, Bookham Technology. Bookham had a successful IPO in 2000, became Oclaro in 2009 and is now a part of Lumentum. He later became the chairman of Kotura which was successfully sold to Mellanox in 2013. www.rockleyphotonics.com