Phoelex
Taking optical I/O directly onto the chip, with the capability to handle extreme data rates in harsh environments with incredible reliability and energy efficiency.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor investor investor | €0.0 | round |
N/A | Seed | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
| GBP | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenues | 0000 | 0000 | 0000 |
| EBITDA | 0000 | 0000 | 0000 |
| Profit | 0000 | 0000 | 0000 |
| EV | 0000 | 0000 | 0000 |
| EV / revenue | 00.0x | 00.0x | 00.0x |
| EV / EBITDA | 00.0x | 00.0x | 00.0x |
| R&D budget | 0000 | 0000 | 0000 |
Source: Company filings or news article
Phoelex Ltd was a semiconductor company established in Cambridge, United Kingdom, on October 12, 2015. The firm was founded by Dr. Amir Hossein Nejadmalayeri, a specialist in laser optics and electronic engineering who gained experience in Canada, Germany, the USA, and South Korea before participating in London's Entrepreneur First program. The company operated in the data center and high-speed communications market, focusing on the development of intellectual property for optical transceivers.
The core of Phoelex's business was designing optical transceivers intended to convert and transfer large amounts of information, such as big data, analytics, and video, between computers. The company's proprietary technology centered on a low-power modulator that could be driven directly from a standard CMOS chip, aiming to produce a device that was ten times smaller, five times cheaper, and three times more energy-efficient than conventional optical transceivers. This technology was applicable to both pluggable optical transceivers and co-packaged optics solutions, targeting the bottlenecks in data centers by using light for data transmission.
Phoelex was a venture-backed company, having secured $16.9M in funding from institutional investors like Octopus Ventures and Indaco. Despite its developments, the company entered into voluntary liquidation in May 2025. Subsequently, in March 2025, Cambridge-based startup Wave Photonics acquired Phoelex's intangible assets. The acquisition included key intellectual property related to energy-efficient modulator designs, driving and control circuits, and equalizer circuit designs, which Wave Photonics plans to utilize for customers in the optical interconnect market.
Keywords: optical transceivers, silicon photonics, data center hardware, semiconductor IP, co-packaged optics, photonic integrated circuits, high-speed communication, low-power modulator, data transfer technology, CMOS chip integration, venture-backed, electronics, data analytics hardware, optical interconnects, deep tech, chiplet technology, equaliser IP, die-to-die interface, photonics, electronic engineering