Montreal’s AEPONYX announced today it has raised nearly $8 million in Series A financing, led by Pangaea Ventures. The round also includes current investors Fonds InnovExport and Ecofuel Fund, as well as private investors.

The money will be used to ramp up commercial production of its planar micro optical switch chips, which are based on a unique proprietary platform combining silicon photonics with Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS). This latest round brings the total investment the company has received to approximately $18 million.

“With the support of round leader Pangaea and previous investors, we can now accelerate the commercialization of technology driving energy efficient innovation and positive environmental impact”, says Philippe Babin, CEO of AEPONYX. “This funding, combined with the deep expertise of our partners, paves the way for us to redefine switching technology for next-generation fibre optic telecommunications access networks, datacenters, and 5G mobile networks which combined, represent a multibillion-dollar opportunity.”

With its patented and patent pending technologies, combining planar MEMS and Silicon Photonics, AEPONYX is building the fastest, most affordable and smallest micro optical switches for use in disaggregated switching systems and enabling tunability in both transmission and reception in pluggable transceivers.

“The world’s large-scale telecommunications networks need to substantially increase their capacity, while at the same time reducing energy consumption and cost”, said Purnesh Seegopaul, General Partner of Pangaea Ventures. “We expect AEPONYX’s MEMS and silicon photonics-based micro optical switches to revolutionize fiber optic communications and to accelerate the transition to the new, faster and more efficient global NG-PON2 standard.”