Cenix Inc., an Allentown, Pa.-based maker of optical networking components, has received $25.5 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Cisco Systems Inc. and plans to put nearly half of the money into its Irvine development facility in the next year.
The start-up plans to spend about $5 million on product development and another $4 million on equipment for its Irvine operation, according to Ed Coringrato, Cenix’s senior vice president of business development and operations.
Cenix also plans to lease 15,000 square feet of space in University Research Park in December and relocate its OC operations from the Irvine Spectrum. The company counts 12 people in Irvine working on optical transmitters, receivers, multiplexers and other electronics used in high-speed communications networks.
“It’s a global economy and you go where your customers are,” said Mel Dixon, Cenix’s chief executive. “You put your design centers where your customers are.”
Cenix, which launched in July, doesn’t have customers yet. Potential customers could include Cisco, Nortel Networks Corp. and Juniper Networks Inc. Dixon and other Cenix executives previously worked for Lucent Technologies Inc. Cenix expects to unveil products in March at the 2001Optical Fiber Conference in Anaheim.
Along with Cisco and Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins, South Korean telecommunications gear maker Dongah Elecomm Co. and unnamed individual investors also took part in the financing.
The company said it plans to keep its headquarters in Pennsylvania, while product development and research is set to take place in Irvine under Senior Vice President Sun Joon Kim.
With cloudy, cool weather in Allentown last week, Dixon joked, “We’ll tell you (whether we plan to move to Irvine) after this winter.”
Optical networking research and development is big in Pennsylvania, Dixon said, with universities such as Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania State University, Lehigh University and schools around Philadelphia taking part.
Cenix hopes to work with University of California, Irvine by tapping student interns and electrical engineering professors, according to Kim.
“Irvine has become an epicenter of technology,” he said. “I see tremendous growth here and the leveraging of resources in Irvine. That’s why we decided to locate our design center there.”
Cenix employs 50 people in all, with three-fourths in Pennsylvania. The company’s head count could hit 80 by the middle of next year and 200 by early- to mid-2002, Coringrato said, with the number of people in Irvine growing to about 50.
“The area around Irvine appears to be becoming an epicenter for many of the broadband companies,” Dixon said.
In Allentown, Cenix workers are focusing on production automation technology that the company hopes to use itself and make available to other manufacturers.
“We’re unique as a start-up,” Dixon said. “We’re not just developing a product or technology, but also leading-edge manufacturing technology.” n
