Nokia plans to acquire US-based company

Elenion was founded in 2014 and is a privately held company and headquartered in New York, NY. The company develops highly integrated, low-cost silicon photonics technologies for short-reach and high-performance optical interfaces and has also developed a design toolset which enables a greatly simplified, low cost, scalable manufacturing process. The company's platform simplifies integration with optical chipsets, lowers power consumption, improves port density and helps to lower the overall cost per bit for network operators. Nokia says that Elenion’s technology expertise and design platform and services will enable the Finnish company to expand its market footprint by addressing the critical and rapidly evolving optical connectivity requirements of 5G, cloud and enterprise networking. Ownership of these key assets brings time-to-market and cost advantages to Nokia’s portfolio of networking solutions by applying the massive scale and economies of silicon design and manufacturing to the optical supply chain. “As a world-class provider of silicon photonics solutions, advanced packaging and custom design services, Elenion provides a strong strategic fit for Nokia. Its solutions can be readily integrated into Nokia’s product offerings and address multiple high growth segments including 5G, cloud and data center networking. When combined with Nokia, Elenion technologies will accelerate the growth and scale of Nokia’s optical networking business, while enabling us to cost-effectively address new markets,” says Sam Bucci, Head of Optical Networking at Nokia, in a press release. The planned transaction is expected to close in Q1 2020, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.