Gemfire, Covega Merge

Integrated photonics company Gemfire Corp. announced yesterday it has completed its merger with optical devices and opto-electronic components and subsystems provider Covega Corp. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Covega, which provides indium-phosphide and lithium-niobate components and modules to the telecommunication, industrial, medical, defense, and test and measurement industries, will become a wholly owned subsidiary and the active component division of Gemfire’s planar light circuit (PLC) product line. Products from the Covega facility, located in Jessup, Md., include superluminescent LEDs (SLEDs), Fabry-Perot lasers, tunable laser-gain chips, semiconductor optical amplifiers, and lithium-niobate modulators. Gemfire has its headquarters in Fremont and high-volume manufacturing facilities in Scotland and Baltimore.

"Through integration of more optical functions into PLCs, it is possible to provide better performance and cost-effective solutions to meet the needs of large system integrators under pressure to deliver solutions capable of supporting the rapid growth in demand for bandwidth. This world-class team has the best technology and shares our vision of photonic integration," said Gemfire President and CEO Richard Tompane about the benefit of integrating active and passive wafer-scale architectures.

Gemfire and Covega will exhibit together at OFC/NFOEC (Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference) in San Diego, Feb. 26-28, Booth 808.

For more information, visit: www.gemfire.com