Palo Alto, CA – May 31, 2013 – GC Holdings Inc. has announced the completion of its acquisition by Kaiam Corp., including its subsidiaries Gemfire Corporation and Gemfire Europe Ltd. Gemfire specializes in applying planar semiconductor-type processing technology to make integrated photonic chips used in multi-wavelength fiber optic networks. Their acquisition by Kaiam, a leader in high-bandwidth optical transceivers used for data networking that incorporate the integrated photonic circuits, will allow Kaiam to expand its manufacturing and further develop innovative products for the data center market.
“Uniting Gemfire with Kaiam results in a new company with a broad range of technology and capability well-suited to the demands of customers in our markets. The low-loss temperature-insensitive PLCs from the UK factory, together with the advanced packaging technology at Kaiam, enables high bandwidth, low cost, and energy efficient interconnects, critical for the rapidly expanding data networking and data center markets.” – Marc van den Berg, Technology Partners
“The bottleneck in the data center has moved to the interconnects between the servers and the switches. Customers require high density, low cost, and low power consumption and our hybrid integration technology, together with the integrated silicon photonic ICs from our Europe factory, provide the most efficient solution. This vertical integration not only drops the cost of our present product, but allows us to innovate deeper into the product to further advance our lead in the market.” – Bardia Pezeshki, CEO, Kaiam Corporation
Woodside Capital Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to Gemfire in this transaction.
About Gemfire (GC Holdings Inc.)
Created in 2002, GC Holdings, Inc. is the parent company of Gemfire Corporation and Gemfire Europe, Limited. Since 1995 Gemfire has built on extensive research and development efforts to specialize in applying planar semiconductor-type processing technology to make integrated photonic chips. These are primarily used in multi-wavelength fiber optic networks to combine or separate channels within the fiber. The company is a market leader and provides a variety of high performance integrated components carrying much of today’s communications. With primary operations in Livingston, Scotland (near Edinburgh), the company operates a large fabrication facility with 8-inch silicon wafer processing.
About Kaiam Corporation
Headquartered in Newark, California, Kaiam Corporation is a private company commercializing photonic integrated circuits. Founded by leading technologists from the optical networking industry, the team has a record of delivering breakthrough products that change the rules of the marketplace. Kaiam is working with several partners to deliver products for high-bandwidth applications. For more information, visit www.kaiamcorp.com.
About Woodside Capital Partners
Woodside Capital Partners is a global, independent investment bank that delivers world-class strategic and financial advice to emerging growth companies in the technology and life sciences sectors. With a strong track record in M&A, strategic partnerships and private placements, Woodside Capital Partners has been providing worldwide investment banking services since 2001, with leading domain experience in software, Internet services, electronic communications and materials, and healthcare. Woodside Capital Partners is headquartered in Silicon Valley, with an office in London. Securities offered through Woodside Capital Securities LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. For more information, please visit www.woodsidecap.com.