Acacia Communications secures $20 million in funding

Acacia Communications, an emerging 100G optical transceiver vendor, closed $20 million in its latest round of funding that was led by Summit Partners.

Joining Summit were all of Acacia's existing investors: Matrix Partners, Commonwealth Capital Ventures and Egan Managed Capital. Also, Peter Chung, Summit Partners' managing director, will join Acacia's board of directors.

Acacia said it will use the new funding to execute its long-term growth strategy and deliver its OIF-compliant AC100 modules to data center operators, cable operators and service provider customers. The new funding comes on the heels of the expansion of its headquarters in Maynard, Mass., where it has "tripled its lab facilities to accommodate robust growth in its customers and employees."

Acacia will utilize the new round of funding to execute its long-term growth strategy and deliver new coherent optical solutions as its expands into new markets.

From an overall optical trend perspective, the company's funding comes at a time when a growing number of service providers have opted to bypass 40G and go straight to 100G. Besides large telcos such as Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL), a growing list of independent telcos, particularly Lumos Networks and DukeNet Communications, are building 100G optical capabilities into their networks.

A recent Infonetics Research survey confirmed the 100G migration trend.

Respondents to its "40G/100G and ROADM Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey" said that by "2015 coherent wavelengths will account for 68 percent of deployments in the core and 29 percent in the metro." Further, 100G will rise from 5 percent of deployed wavelengths in 2012 to 37 percent in the same period.

For more:
- see the release

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