Thorlabs Acquires Covega

Photonics equipment maker Thorlabs Inc. has acquired Covega Corp., a provider of optoelectronic components and modules, for an undisclosed amount. The announcement was made jointly by Newton, N.J.-based Thorlabs and integrated photonics company Gemfire Corp. of Fremont, Calif., former owner of Covega.

Covega has a 40,000-sq-ft facility in Jessup, Md., which includes 18,000 sq ft of class 100 and 10,000 cleanroom facilities. The company has full indium phosphide (InP) and lithium niobate (LiNbO₃) foundry capabilities, and it designs and packages its components and modules for the telecommunications, medical, industrial, defense, and test and measurement markets. Covega’s products include superluminescent LEDs (SLEDs), Fabry-Perot lasers, tunable laser gain chips, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA), and lithium niobate modulators.

“Covega comes to the Thorlabs family with a new suite of optical technologies that Thorlabs looks forward to offering to its diverse customer base. We are committed to ensuring continued access to the broad array of products that Covega currently manufacturers,” said Alex Cable, president and founder of Thorlabs.

Gemfire said its divestiture of Covega will allow it to focus more on its planar lightwave circuits and integrated subsystems, such as its new ultralow loss AWG (arrayed waveguide grating), compact Athermal AWG, and VMUX, a high-performance DWDM variable multiplexer module.

For more information, visit: www.thorlabs.com or www.covega.com