Santur Corporation

Santur Corporation, established in November 2000 in Fremont, California, specialized in the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of advanced photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for the telecommunications sector. The company was founded by Ed Vail. It focused on producing tunable lasers, parallel array devices, and other opto-electronic components crucial for generating, routing, and amplifying signals within high-speed optical networks.

The company's core technology centered on a patented Distributed Feedback Laser (DFB)-array, which enabled the creation of widely tunable laser sources. This was particularly timely as the industry was shifting towards dense wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) systems, which increase data capacity by using multiple colors of light on a single fiber. Santur's tunable lasers offered a significant advantage by being able to operate at any wavelength, thereby eliminating the need for telecommunication companies to manufacture and manage up to 80 different fixed-wavelength parts, leading to more flexible and cost-effective network operations. By 2008, the company had successfully shipped 200,000 of these devices.

Santur's business model was focused on supplying these critical components to developers of 10G, 40G, and 100G networking applications. The company raised significant venture capital, securing approximately $88.6 million over several funding rounds from prominent investors including Sequoia Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Thomas Weisel Venture Partners. A key milestone in the company's history was its acquisition by NeoPhotonics Corporation in October 2011 for an estimated $39.2 million. This acquisition was a strategic move for NeoPhotonics to integrate Santur's Indium Phosphide (InP) based PIC technology and enhance its portfolio for the growing 100G coherent systems market.

Keywords: Santur Corporation, tunable lasers, photonic integrated circuits, PIC, telecommunications, optical networks, wavelength-division multiplexing, WDM, Distributed Feedback Laser, DFB array, fiber optic components, opto-electronics, NeoPhotonics, Ed Vail, high-speed communications, Indium Phosphide, InP, coherent transport, laser array, network hardware