- Ciena will acquire startup Nubis to gain technology that would improve data center rack performance
- The move comes after Ciena said it will pull back on broadband spend to focus more on AI growth
- Nubis is a small company, but its execs come from vendors like Nokia and Broadcom
Ciena’s chase for more AI and data center growth won’t let up, as the company announced Monday it will acquire electronics startup Nubis Communications for $270 million.
The deal, expected to close during Ciena’s fiscal fourth quarter, gives Ciena access to technology that supports a wider range of data center use cases, according to Chief Strategy Officer David Rothenstein.
He said in a presentation Nubis has developed two products to increase bandwidth and reduce latency within and between data center racks. The first is XT Optical Engines, a series of optical modules that support up to 6.4 Tbps of full-duplex bandwidth while using light instead of traditional electrical signals.
The second technology Ciena is acquiring is Nubis’ Nitro Linear Redriver, which aims to improve the performance of all the copper cables that are wired into the data center. Bloomberg has predicted copper usage in North American data centers could increase by 1.1-2.4 million tons by 2030 as “AI demands mount.”
“Nitro also supports up to 4m of reach for 200G per lane active copper cables, far beyond the limits of passive copper and legacy analog solutions,” Rothenstein explained. “This is a game-changer for AI infrastructure, where short-reach, high-bandwidth copper is preferred for cost and latency reasons.”
Dell’Oro VP Jimmy Yu told Fierce Nubis is probably “one of [Ciena’s] most forward-looking” acquisitions, since the company is assembling the pieces it thinks are necessary to support future data center networking.
The move comes shortly after Ciena announced it will pull back on investment in residential broadband access to focus more on AI applications and its coherent optics biz.
“This acquisition aligns well with Ciena’s overall strategy to expand into the data center market, and it likely played a role in their decision to exit future investments in broadband PON,” Yu said.
Who is Nubis?
Founded in 2020, Nubis is a semiconductor startup based in New Jersey that has raised over $50 million in funding with the help of investors such as Ericsson and Marvell Technology co-founders Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja.
Nubis has just over 50 employees, but its executive team touts some names from established telecom equipment companies. Founder Peter Winzer previously led fiber optic transmission research at Nokia’s Bell Labs, while CEO Dan Harding spent over 15 years at Broadcom.
Rothenstein noted in his presentation that Nubis is currently in its pre-revenue phase, as its products are not yet on the market. Ciena expects Nubis products will become generally available in 2026 and “accretive to our business” sometime in 2028.
The slowdown in broadband spending will probably help Ciena reach that goal, Yu added.
“Since the first revenue from Nubis products is not expected until 2028, I will assume more R&D will be needed to complete the products,” he said.