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Target Partners invests €3.5 million in Sicoya

Silicon photonics based integrated microchips enable data centers to manage the explosive growth of Internet traffic

Munich/Berlin, November 9, 2015: Munich-based venture capital firm Target Partners (www.targetpartners.de) today announced a €3.5 million Series A investment in Sicoya GmbH (www.sicoya.de) based in Berlin. Sicoya develops integrated silicon photonics based microchips for optical interconnects. Mobile devices, social networking, cloud computing and other applications like virtual reality technologies all require scalable data centers to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand for fast, reliable and cost-effective data interconnects. Sicoya’s unique product solutions comprise novel patented modulator concepts and co-integration of ultra-small optical and electrical circuits into one single chip. This next generation technology is ideally suited to allow scalable, reliable and power efficient data interconnects outperforming legacy copper based solutions and first generation optical transceivers.

Sicoya is planning to increase the financing round together with further investors and public funding sources to at least €5 million in equity and R&D financing on top. This infusion of capital will go towards product development and the expansion of global sales activities.

Technological lead in silicon photonics – a novel disruptive technology for communication markets

Sicoya is a TU Berlin spin-off based on seven years of continuous R&D in siliconphotonics. The core team of five founders has extensive knowledge in optical technologies, marketing and business management. The Sicoya executive management team consists of CEO Dr. Sven Otte and CTO Dr. Stefan Meister. “We want to take the technology that was developed at the TU Berlin to the next level and want to become a leading company in the silicon photonics space,” explains Meister. Otte sees a major opportunity for Sicoya: “Our technology enables the production of highly integrated optical transceivers at very low manufacturing costs. Extremely small integrated form factors lead to practical and cost efficient scaling roadmaps for Terabit per second data rates”

To accelerate its growth, the start-up will increase its engineering headcount and employ sales staff as well as customer support representatives.

“Sicoya represents an outstanding opportunity to invest in one of the worldwide leading activities in integrated photonics. We are very proud to be able to support the company in what will be a major step towards the next generation of high-performance integrated photonics,” says Waldemar Jantz, partner at Target Partners and board member at Sicoya.

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High-resolution images are available at http://www.sprachperlen.de/target-partners-sicoya

About Sicoya:

Sicoya, which is based in Berlin, develops silicon photonics based Application Specific Photonic Integrated Circuits (ASPICs) for optical data center interconnects. Sicoya is managed by Dr. Sven Otte (CEO) and Dr. Stefan Meister (CTO). To find out more, visit: www.sicoya.de

Press contact Sicoya:

Sicoya GmbH Torsten Fiegler Email: torsten.fiegler@sicoya.de

About Target Partners

With €300 million under management, Target Partners is one of the leading early-stage venture capital firms in Germany. Target Partners invests in new start-up and early-stage companies and supports them with venture capital during their build-out and expansion phases. With many years of experience as managers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, the team at Target Partners supports entrepreneurs in developing and marketing products and services, building organizations, raising money and taking companies public in Europe and the United States.

For more details: www.targetpartners.de, follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/targetpartners or Facebook: facebook.com/targetpartners.

Press contact Target Partners:

Sprachperlen GmbH Agency for enterprise communication Helena Pröpster Ehrengutstraße 5 80469 Munich, Germany Tel.: +49 89 411 53 199 Email: targetpartners@sprachperlen.de

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