Wednesday,
October 11, 2000
Calif. startup buys Kionix
Majority of 37 jobs to stay at Lansing company's site
By DAVID HILL
Journal Staff
LANSING -- Kionix Inc., a maker of
microscopic-sized mechanical devices, is being purchased by a
Silicon Valley startup trying to crack the burgeoning market for
better switches in fiber-optic networks, the companies announced
Tuesday.
Calient Networks is acquiring Kionix
for an undisclosed sum. The unit will be known as Calient
Optical Components Inc. and remain in Lansing. Most of Kionix's
37 employees will remain at its headquarters on Thornwood Drive
in the Cornell Business and Technology Park near the Tompkins
County Airport. Two of Kionix's three main lines of business
aren't involved and will be spun-off separately.
Paul
Waldrop of Ithaca displays a wafer of microelectromechanical
devices at Kionix Inc. in the Cornell Business and Technology
Park. Kionix announced Tuesday it is being purchased by Calient
Networks, a California-based company. Kionix's 37 employees are
expected to remain at its Lansing facility.
The deal, for an undisclosed sum between the two privately
held companies, represents a success for Kionix investors, many
of them local, and for Cornell's efforts to spin research into
economic development.
Though Kionix is small, the deal gives Lansing a greater
connection to fiber optics, a flourishing industry that supplies
some of the basic equipment for telecommunications and the
Internet.
Both the Calient division and Kionix spin-offs in other areas
are likely to expand, Kionix chief executive officer and founder
Greg Galvin said.
Based in San Jose, Calif., Calient develops switches for
handling voice and data signals on fiber-optic networks, which
can carry far more information than the copper wires they're
replacing around the world.
The company believes the market for such switches will be
worth $5 billion by 2005, chief executive officer and founder
Charles Corbalis said.
Calient was among "10 optical network startups to
watch" in a September article in The Standard.com, a
computer industry trade magazine and Web site. Calient uses
technology similar to other startups,' but it has "proven
itself the leader," the article said.
Calient's system switches signals between incoming and
outgoing fibers completely with light instead of converting them
to electrical impulses, as is commonly done now, Corbalis said.
Kionix designs and makes the array of tiny mirrors, each
measured in millionths of a meter, that bounce the light signals
from incoming to outgoing fibers.
"Our view is that this ... to use a well-worn phrase in
our industry, is a paradigm shift," Corbalis said.
"It's so new and different that it creates a whole new
industry."
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