openlightphotonics.com

About openlightphotonics.com

OpenLight Photonics operates as a designer and manufacturer of custom Photonic Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (PASICs), positioning itself at the forefront of the silicon photonics industry. The company was established in 2022, emerging from a collaboration between Synopsys and Juniper Networks. Its history, however, traces back to Aurrion, a University of California, Santa Barbara spin-out, which was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2016 and later became the foundation for OpenLight. The company recently transitioned from a Synopsys subsidiary to a venture-backed entity following a $34 million Series A funding round in August 2025. This funding was co-led by Xora Innovation and Capricorn Investment Group, with participation from other notable investors including Mayfield, Juniper Networks (now part of HPE), and Lam Capital.

The leadership team includes CEO Dr. Adam Carter, an industry veteran with over 35 years of experience at companies like Cisco and Oclaro, and VP of Engineering Dr. Volkan Kaman, who was previously with Aurrion and Juniper's silicon photonics group. The company's business model centers on providing an open platform for designing and manufacturing silicon photonics chips with integrated lasers. OpenLight does not manufacture products itself but rather licenses its Process Design Kit (PDK) and intellectual property, which is protected by over 360 patents, to customers and foundry partners like Tower Semiconductor. This allows customers—ranging from semiconductor companies to hyperscale data center operators—to design their own custom PASICs. Alternatively, OpenLight offers in-house design and manufacturing services through its partners.

OpenLight's core product is its PASIC technology, which monolithically integrates active components like lasers, amplifiers, and modulators with passive silicon photonics components onto a single chip. This integration is designed to reduce manufacturing costs, improve reliability, and enhance performance for high-bandwidth applications. The company's PDK provides a library of these pre-validated components, enabling customers to accelerate their design process. Key offerings include reference designs for 1.6 Tb/s and 3.2 Tb/s transceivers, catering to the growing demands of AI data centers, high-performance computing (HPC), and telecommunications. Beyond data centers, the technology has potential applications in automotive LiDAR, healthcare, and quantum computing.