Good point Genew regarding the potential  need for cash to  back orders.

The potential need for further financing was not discussed at our meeting. However the subject of Rockley Photonics came up with regard to the very large funding that they received in the summer.

Rockley Photonics has closed a Series E funding round and drummed up an additional $52m in capital, bringing the total the start-up has raised to date to $165m.

Investors in this round include a key strategic partnership with Morningside Technology Ventures, a private equity and venture capitalism group founded in 1986 by the Chan family in Hong Kong.

I also note that Rockley’s annual income is given as $3 million.

It is interesting that the subject of Rockley’s platform came up in an earlier meeting when we were buying the debentures. With a comment that even Andrew would agree that POET’s approach was superior. And it was hinted in our meeting with Vivek that Rockley has changed focus away from data to sensing. The reason why was not elaborated upon but when I look at what it is that Rockley is doing it seems apparent that scaling is limited with the requirement of multiple optical engines to link to the ASIC for their OBO which appears to also  require wire bonding to integrate third party silicon.

And again if you look at Rockley’s whitepaper low loss fiber coupling is quoted as less than or equal to 1.5db. Good for silicon photonics but does not compare to POET.  

So consider this. Andrew Rickman appears to have no problem raising money but on the other hand he does not have a Tier 1 company paying for development costs and I don’t see any indication of Rockley building optical engines for the immediate needs of small form factor pluggables for 400G. I have not looked at them that closely but I think our management team has because there may well be some future synergies.

Enjoy the day.