Communications technology producer Nokia has agreed to acquire Elenion Technologies, a US-based silicon photonics chip developer backed by manufacturing, chemicals and energy conglomerate Koch Industries, for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 2014, Elenion designs, develops and packages silicon-based semiconductors that operate using light to facilitate faster bandwidth for telecommunications and networking applications: an approach known as silicon photonics.
Nokia expects the deal to help it build market share in 5G, cloud and enterprise communications by reducing the lead times and costs of delivering new fibre optic-powered networks.
Molex Ventures, a corporate venturing subsidiary of Koch Industries, supplied Elenion with an undisclosed amount of funding in early 2018 as part of a strategic pact aimed at building network interconnectors with a bandwidth capacity of at least 400 gigabytes per second.
Sam Bucci, head of optical networking at Nokia, said: “[Elenion’s] solutions can be readily integrated into Nokia’s product offerings and address multiple high growth segments including 5G, cloud and data centre networking.”