Nokia to acquire Elenion to improve economics of advanced optical connectivity solutions

• Planned acquisition of key technology and commercial assets broadens addressable market
• Elenion’s state-of-the-art silicon photonics design platform improves product costs by bringing simplification and scale to the optical supply chain
• Combined solution lowers cost per bit for network operators       

Nokia today announced plans to acquire Elenion Technologies, a U.S.-based company focusing on silicon photonics technology. 

Elenion’s technology expertise and unique design platform and services enable Nokia to expand its market footprint by addressing the critical and rapidly evolving optical connectivity requirements of 5G, cloud and enterprise networking. Ownership of these key assets brings time-to-market and cost advantages to Nokia’s broad portfolio of networking solutions by applying the massive scale and economies of silicon design and manufacturing to the optical supply chain.

Sam Bucci, Head of Optical Networking at Nokia, said: “As a world-class provider of silicon photonics solutions, advanced packaging and custom design services, Elenion provides a strong strategic fit for Nokia. Its solutions can be readily integrated into Nokia’s product offerings and address multiple high growth segments including 5G, cloud and data center networking. When combined with Nokia, Elenion technologies will accelerate the growth and scale of Nokia’s optical networking business, while enabling us to cost-effectively address new markets.”

Larry Schwerin, CEO of Elenion Technologies, said: “Nokia is an industry leader in networking systems, including advanced coherent optical interfaces and hyperscale datacenter solutions. Elenion benefits by having its technology incorporated into an industry-leading portfolio and with a company offering solutions across a wide array of networking applications. Nokia’s strong optical industry leadership, size, scale, global reach, and ongoing commitment to investment in key technologies vastly accelerates the adoption of Elenion silicon photonics technology.”

Elenion develops highly integrated, low-cost silicon photonics technologies for short-reach and high-performance optical interfaces and has pioneered a design toolset which enables a greatly simplified, low cost, scalable manufacturing process. The Elenion platform simplifies integration with optical chipsets, lowers power consumption, improves port density and helps to lower the overall cost per bit for network operators.

Elenion was founded in 2014 and is privately held and headquartered in New York, NY. The planned transaction is expected to close in Q1 2020, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Source: Nokia media announcement