RAY OF LIGHT
PairGain Alums Form Secretive Networking Startup Aktino
By ANDREW SIMONS
Some alums of PairGain Technologies Inc. have formed a new telecommunications gear company, Irvine-based Aktino Inc.
The startup just closed a small first funding round,$5 million to $10 million, according to venture capital sources.
Menlo Park’s Foundation Capital LLC, the Irvine office of Woodside’s Crosspoint Venture Partners LLC and Corona del Mar’s Miramar Venture Partners LLC are Atkino’s investors.
Precise figures on the funding weren’t available, and Aktino officials aren’t talking.
“They’re keeping quiet,” said one OC venture capital source.
What’s known about Aktino is that one of its founder is Ray Nagele, a former product manager at Tustin-based PairGain Tech-nologies Inc., now part of Minneapolis-based ADC Telecommunications Inc.
Irvine-based Broadcom Corp.’s Henry Samueli helped start PairGain before moving on to form Broadcom with Henry Nicholas, who also worked at PairGain.
Aktino is working on a design for a component within a telecommunications network, sources said. Aktino,Greek for “ray”,only has a few people and likely will use its funding for hiring and research.
Sound familiar?
In the past two years, a couple of other networking startups have forgone fanfare for secrecy.
It took one company, Lake Forest-based VSK Photonics Inc., nearly two years to open up about its plans,a 2,800-square-foot specialty fabrication facility to make telecom gear that transfers data at 40 gigabits per second, faster than the industry standard 10.
VSK recently started shipping products.
Investors have noticed. Earlier this year, VSK closed on another $8.3 million in funding, bringing its total raised to $26.3 million.
VSK’s investors include Intel Capital, the chipmaker’s venture arm, Menlo Park-based Morgenthaler Ventures and Santa Monica-based Rustic Canyon Ventures.
VSK officials say their newer, cheaper modules will be able to copy existing photonic receivers, called photodiode receivers, made by companies such as Texas Instruments Inc. Eventually, they say they hope to replace the photodiode devices.
Still, times are tough for networking gear makers. With an excess of network capacity, they face a slow and fiercely competitive market.
Quiet Newport Beach-based startup Newport Opticom Inc. has all but gone silent since its single $7 million funding round in 2001.
Newport Opticom says its engineers have been working on a fiber-optic switch, a device that filters and forwards data along a network. The switch operates solely through the use of light wave signals, while most current switches require electrical conversions.
The company says its fiber-optic switch will be smaller, more flexible and more cost-efficient. Newport Opticom has yet to announce any customers.
Last year, the company sent prototypes to “all the big” networking gear makers,companies such as Cisco Systems Inc., Nortel Networks Corp. and 3Com Corp.
“We’re hanging in there,” said Paul Mukai, senior vice president of marketing for Newport Opticom.
The tough market has caused other companies to refocus,at least temporarily.
Irvine startup OpVista Inc. is focusing on cable customers instead of telecommunications for now. OpVista makes a box that sits on the edge of a metropolitan network and increases the amount of data that can be carried along an existing fiber line.
The company originally targeted phone companies for its device, as it could boost the data that could be carried over existing lines.
But with telecom carriers not investing in their networks, cable seemed a better avenue right now. Earlier this year, OpVista hired Gary Trimm, a cable industry veteran, to help pursue their new focus.
