Luna Innovations has acquired OptaSense Holdings, a QinetiQ company, for £29 million in cash.
OptaSense specializes in fiber optic distributed monitoring solutions for pipelines, oilfield services, security, highways and railways, as well as power and utilities monitoring systems. The combination is expected to create the world’s largest fiber optic sensing company.
Luna said the acquisition brings important distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) intellectual property and products, which strongly complement its existing portfolio, and provides algorithm-development expertise, critical for AI and machine learning. OptaSense’s research and development talent and highly skilled salesforce, combined with more than 150 active and pending patents, will also enhance Luna’s existing experienced team and broaden its intellectual property portfolio.
"The acquisition of OptaSense marks an incredibly important milestone in Luna’s history and will further support our growth trajectory," said Scott Graeff, President and Chief Executive Officer of Luna. "With the combination of Luna and OptaSense, we are bringing together businesses with strong adjacencies and a large, combined opportunity. This transaction allows Luna to acquire a leader in fiber optic sensing solutions and distributed acoustic sensing systems of a global size and scale that will truly be transformative to our company. In addition, OptaSense’s success has been driven by a world class, industry-leading technology base and a very talented team of employees. We are very excited about welcoming them to the Luna team.”
