Tibit raises $25M for 10G PON Microplug

Tibit Communications, a start-up based in Petaluma, California, announced the completion of the Series B funding led by Intel Capital and including two new investors – Swisscom Ventures and AJU IB Investment.

Tibit's MicroPlug OLT is a network access device for 10-Gigabit optical networking that reduces the amount of application-specific hardware needed for network deployments.The company says its standard-based SFP+ form factor allows the device to plug into almost any 10G switch port, greatly expanding architecture options for carriers. All this is enabled by the Tibit bridge ASIC, which supports a rich feature set across both ITU-T and IEEE 10G PON standards.

"Tibit's MicroPlug OLT and cloud-based management solutions disrupt the PON market in specifically the areas that carriers are looking to unlock on their networks – interoperability, solution disaggregation, and network virtualization. We see their solution as uniquely positioned to help carriers enable next-generation architectures for access and management solutions," according to Pär Lange of Swisscom Ventures.

"We are pleased with the caliber of investors we have attracted to invest in our revolutionary pluggable PON technology," said Richard Stanfield, President and CEO of Tibit. "This includes the Series B participation of Tibit's existing investors, Intel Capital's lead role in this round, and now the entry of the investment arm of global telecommunications leader Swisscom Ventures and Korea's leading venture capital investor AJU IB Investment."

Dave Flanagan, vice president of Intel Corp. and senior managing director of Intel Capital, states that "the Tibit MicroPlug technology is a great example of the power of virtualization. It provides more flexibility, higher density and lower cost by deploying PON in general-purpose Ethernet switching equipment and management solutions, which can be entirely virtualized on Intel® processor-based servers."

The funding round was led by Intel Capital. TiBit was founded in 2014.

http://tibitcom.com/