OpenLight offers an open silicon photonics platform and design kits for Tower's InP-on-silicon process, with integrated lasers, modulators, amplifiers and detectors.
OpenLight runs the ARM model pointed at light: it licenses a photonics platform, validates it on a real foundry (Tower's PH18DA InP-on-silicon), and lets the industry build the chips rather than manufacturing itself. The asset is heterogeneous integration of III-V devices into silicon: a process design kit covered by more than 360 patents integrating lasers, electro-absorption modulators, semiconductor optical amplifiers and detectors with passives into a single monolithic PASIC, production-ready from day one. Over 20 companies use the PDK. Lineage: the core work traces to Aurrion, a UC Santa Barbara spin-out Juniper acquired in 2016 and spun back out as OpenLight in 2022 after a Synopsys collaboration (Aurrion is already a historical fold under Juniper here). The 2026 record is a clean platform-to-production progression: first volume production orders on PH18DA announced 2026-03-05 for NewPhotonics 800G and 1.6T laser-integrated PICs, initial 3.2T DR8 PIC samples using 448G EAMs in March 2026 with qualification-sample orders for 1.6T, and the PDK extended from Synopsys into Cadence on 2026-08-11. Its 1.6 Tbps DR8 PIC integrates four DFB lasers, eight 224G InP electro-absorption modulators and eight SOAs on one chip. Deployment 3 and production and commercial 1 because it does not manufacture or sell chips itself; the key unknown is whether OpenLight earns per-wafer royalties from Tower.
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OpenLight offers an open silicon photonics platform and design kits for Tower's InP-on-silicon process, with integrated lasers, modulators, amplifiers and detectors. OpenLight runs the ARM model pointed at light: it licenses a photonics platform, validates it on a real foundry (Tower's PH18DA InP-on-silicon), and lets the industry build the chips rather than manufacturing itself. The asset is heterogeneous integration of III-V devices into silicon: a process design kit covered by more than 360 patents integrating lasers, electro-absorption modulators, semicond
OpenLight is on the AI Core watchlist list of Frontier Tech Intelligence with a score of 72 out of 100, below the Top 100.
OpenLight is based in Goleta, California, United States.
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