Dublin laser optics firm receives €1.1m capital from Delta Partners

Dublin laser optics company Tsunami Photonics has received $1 million (€1.1 million) in seed capital from Delta Partners.

Tsunami, a spin-off from University College Dublin that employs 12 people, will also have Mr Maurice Roche of Delta Partners on its board of directors. Mr Eoin O'Driscoll, managing director at technology consulting firm Aderra and a former senior executive with Lucent Technologies, will also join the board.

Tsunami develops technology that boosts the efficiency and capabilities of fibre-optic cable in telecommunications networks. It has produced a method of tuning the lasers that send multi-hued light waves down fibre cables using a transmission technology called dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM). The company says this method offers large cost savings to telecoms equipment manufacturers and network operators.

"We will have our first product available this year and others on stream for 2004," said chief executive Mr Ultan O Rathallaigh.

The company was founded in 2001 by UCD Prof Ronan O'Dowd, co-founder and director of the university's Optoelectronic Research Centre. Prof O'Dowd is a board member, and UCD, through its University Industry Centre, is an investor in Tsunami.

In addition to Delta and UCD, the other major Tsunami shareholder and investor is its board chairman, Mr Jim Mountjoy. Mr Mountjoy is a co-founder and former managing director of Baltimore Technologies and the co-founder and chief executive of Euristix.

In a statement, Mr Roche said Tsunami was "at the forefront of the next generation of lasers for telecommunications networks and we believe this will be an area of extremely high growth". Mr O Rathallaigh said the firm was still primarily research-oriented and was hiring additional researchers. Tsunami will seek a second funding round towards the end of the year and he hopes to have 100 employees in three to four years.

"However, it's difficult to predict the rate of growth because of the state of the telecommunications industry," he said. "They're not spending money at the moment and it's hard to tell when they will restart."

Tsunami's products target the single biggest cost for equipment manufacturers - tuning lasers. Tsunami would be able to bring this process down from several hours to two minutes, he said, removing the need to switch between an electronic and optic signal.