Kaiam Corporation was an American manufacturer of optronics equipment for computer networking. Founded in 2009, it was headquartered in Newark, California, and until December 2018 had a manufacturing facility in Silicon Glen in Scotland. After cash-flow problems and a patent infringement lawsuit, the company collapsed in early 2019. The founder and CEO was Bardia Pezeshki.
Kaiam manufactured 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s optical transceivers that used MEMS alignment to link servers.[1] Its key technological innovation was to use silicon micromachining technology to perform the high-precision alignment necessary for single-mode fiber optics, rather than manual or robotic processes.[2] In March 2016 it demonstrated the CWDM4, a 100 Gigabit-per-second coarse wavelength-division multiplexing (CWDM) silicon photonics transceiver using silicon modules and receivers.[3] It was also one of the first companies to push for a copackaged approach of optical modules combined with electronics to bring high bandwidth links directly to ICs. A demonstration with Corning at the Optical Fiber Conference showed a 1.6Tb/s engine was possible.[4]
The company was founded in 2009[5] by Pezeshki, an Iranian native[1] with a PhD from Stanford University who had previously founded Santur Corporation.[6] It initially produced TOSA/ROSAs (transmitter optical subassemblies and receiver optical subassemblies).[7]
From 2011, Kaiam manufactured optoelectronic modules in Shenzhen, China, using Sanmina as a contract manufacturer,[8] In April 2013 it acquired Gemfire Corp.,[9] and in 2014, with a grant from Scottish Enterprise, it moved production from China to Gemfire's wafer fabrication plant in Livingston, West Lothian,[10][11][12] which had been built in the late 1990s by Kymata, a company spun off from research at Glasgow University and Southampton University, to produce photonic integrated circuits.[1] Pezeshki relocated to Edinburgh in 2015 to explore moving the company's research and development program to Scotland.[1] At the plant Kaiam produced integrated optical components on a 200mm-diameter wafer silica-on-silicon line, and also 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s optical packaging products.[13] The workforce at the Scottish plant expanded from approximately 65 to more than 350 by the end of 2015.[1][10]
In April 2017, Kaiam bought a wafer fabrication facility in Newton Aycliffe in England from Compound Photonics Group;[13] it resold the plant to II-VI Inc. in August that year.[14][15] and re-invested in the Livingston facility. In May 2018, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with Broadex Technologies Co. for co-manufacturing of transceivers based on its LightScale2 platform for the Chinese market.[16]
The company was unable to secure enough orders to sustain full production at its facility in Scotland, and in December 2018 was seeking a financial partner.[17] Shortly before Christmas, 310 workers at the plant were laid off with no notice and before receiving their end of year pay.[12][18] Companies House had issued a striking-off order on November 27.[19][20] Pezeshki visited the plant immediately before workers were informed that the factory would be closed until January 3;[11][15][19] the company's subsidiaries Kaiam Europe Limited and Kaiam UK Limited were placed in administration.[15][21] The redundancies were then made permanent on Christmas Eve; 28 employees were retained to assist with selling the plant.[22][23] Crowdfunding and in-kind donations were organized to assist those laid off.[15][19][20][24][25] In March 2019, the plant was sold to Broadex.[26]
Kaiam was sued for patent infringement by Finisar, following which the company collapsed in early 2019.[27] In January, Kaiam made a general assignment for the benefit of its creditors; in May, an agreement was reached under which Finisar accepted an unsecured claim on Kaiam's estate as satisfaction of a $10 million judgment.[28]