22 December 2021
Sivers Semiconductors recap of 2021 – a year that will shape the future
2021 has probably turned out a bit differently than many of us thought a year ago – the pandemic has hit us in more waves than anticipated but luckily vaccines have been quicker to market than most thought possible. Vaccines are one example on how far cutting-edge technology has come.
Sivers also works on the cutting edge of technology, and it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to be part of two of the hottest technology trends right now high-frequency products for 5G/Satellite communication and Silicon Photonics that will change the way we live. For example, in 2035, 5G will enable $13.2 trillion of global economic output according to World Economic Forum’s latest report (The Impact of 5G: Creating New Value across Industries and Society, page 5). That is an amount almost impossible to grasp.
Facebook recently changed name to Meta to better fit with the future Metaverse vison. Whether you like it or not, the Metaverse will be an important part of our lives in the future. So, what is Metaverse? It is a combination of multiple technologies including virtual reality, augmented reality and video where users “live” within a digital universe. Even if Neal Stephenson already in the 1992 science fiction novel ‘Snow Crash’ invented the term, I would be lying if I said that we understood 5-6 years ago that this would be something that Sivers Semiconductors’ technology would be very suitable for.
Even so, we are now addressing two mega trends with our advanced 5G mmWave and Photonics product development, and during 2021 we have been able to solidify the foundation of the company by the listing on Stockholm Nasdaq main market, the acquisition of MixComm, and winning new customers to whom we will be delivering the current and future communication links and sensors needed for a super high-speed connected world as well as many of the important building blocks of the future Metaverse.
Building eco-systems and partnerships is one of the fundamental aspects of generating the technology adoption needed when working at the cutting edge. As a promotor member of the CW-WDM MSA standardization eco-system with Intel, Sumitomo, II-VI, Macom, imec, Ayar Labs, Lumentum and others, Sivers Photonics is developing the next generation of Indium Phosphide (InP) DFB laser arrays that are needed for emerging advanced Silicon Photonics (SiPh) based sensors and datacom optics in application areas such as artificial intelligence, high performance computing, and cloud data services.
This work has led to deep partnerships with for example imec to be able to offer the building blocks for Silicon Photonics, as well as a new customers like Ayar Labs which is changing the way data will be sent in High Performance Computers (HPC) via light instead of electricity. The latter will be a revolutionary but fundamental technology evolution to enable high-speed data transmission for AI and Metaverse applications in the Terabit era, while consuming less power. Sivers Semiconductors has a great passion for technology and takes pride in its engineering excellence. We are therefore thrilled to be part of this kind of technology development. In addition, we are working with Fortune 100 customers that are using our technology for interesting applications that we hope to see in the future both in the Metaverse and in IRL.
In our 5G business we have continued building on the ecosystem partnerships we have with IDT and NXP and others, and we are pleased to see that many of our customers and partners now have products on the market with our chipsets inside, including Adtran, Fujikura, CCS, Cambium Networks, 8devices, Airvine and Blu Wireless to mention a few. You can see some of them presented in our At the heart of innovation showcase gallery.
The pandemic introduced a number of challenges over the past two years. Despite global semiconductor component shortages, many of our customers now have hardware to sell. Seeing #SiversInside makes us very proud. We have been winning more customers during 2021 as well and are now at a total of 26 design-wins (44 including MixComm). Our main focus is of course to help all of them to also get their hardware ready to sell.
We are happy with the progress we have made despite pandemic challenges and raise our ambitions further. The acquisition of MixComm announced in October 2021 is expected to be completed in Q1 2022, pending regulatory approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). This strategic move creates an even stronger company within 5G as well as other new mmWave verticals like Satellite communication, Handsets, Metaverse applications and more. With this acquisition we create the number one challenger in the market with a comprehensive product portfolio, adding even more eco-system partners, getting a deeper partnership with the number one Foundry in the eco-system (Global Foundries), and expanding our footprint in the USA where we expect to see a lot of interesting applications developed for 5G as well as for the future Metaverse.
We are strategically building a company that is delivering tomorrow’s technology here and now as well as being part of the future trends that will change the world. It is a very exciting time to live in and 2021 has been a different year than most years. Even so, I would say we have had a very exciting year.
I would like to take this moment to thank our customers, partners and investors for their unwavering support in 2021. I also like to thank our employees for their hard work and continued innovation propelling us onwards on our journey.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Anders Storm
Group CEO Sivers Semiconductors