Apple is a highly secretive company that applies stringent high cost penelty clauses to its NDA contracts. It is also a company dependent for its successs on inovative technology.  It scans all sources to identify potential inovation.   It then takes great care in its follow up investigations to authenticate the value of the gems that are discovered.  

Post the Empire Club event it could be said that PTI had effectively left it's POET calling card on the industry. If this led to Apple interest then the event was a far greater success than is generally perceived here.  Rest assured that any relationship with Apple will not be visible publically.  It's all smoke and mirrors but then:

Rest assured also that if Apple appoints one of its VP procurement to a company Technical Roadmap Advisory Board. That is in fact the one and only piece of information we are allowed to know or need to know to be assured that a relationship exists. The TRAB concept has never been recinded by management, we have simply been advised to hold our lip as regards making any enquiries which is perhaps a pointer in itself.

Go back and place the moment in time when it was most probable that this relationship began Feb-Aug 2016 and it should indicate what technology IP of POET was involved initially that had the immediate potential for further development in a joint development, that I envisage this as the 40 engineers deal so beloved by PC.  

Whilst the ongoing nature of the TRAB concept does not eliminate the potential for further joint interests, conceptually whatever was the IP that was trasfered at that time by PDK into such a venture has now had eighteen months to mature and logically would have some form by now 

Not all joint ventures are a success and no one here should consider an Apple deal as is in the bag,  but I refuse to believe that the work of 18 months final efforts by Geoffrey Taylor simply fissiled out in Aug 2015. It would not at all surprise me that GT and LS are consultants to that venture right now.  Try to ping TS whereabouts and you end up with a blank, strange for a free Lance IC consultant.  Oh and what a great retirement project for Geoff by the way.

 I also refuse to believe that the revelation that Apple is to make autonomous cars cannot be decoupled from the TRAB process where Tony Blevin would have at least alerted his company to the sucess of the POET detector, VCSEL progress and military POET LIDAR, all of which he would have observed as a TRAB member.

Because of NDA no one here can authenticate or interpret  this further than the reality that Apple has an eye focussed on PTI but that there is a relationship of that I would say there is no doubt.

Would it not be true to say that PTI under AM and SV have been at full capacity with the VCSEL integrated photonics solution.  To the extent that onward development of what GT was focused on in Aug 15  could only possibly continue if there was indeed a 40 engineer deal.  PTI was neither organised nor resorced sufficiently to cope with two major projects in fact it could have been disastrous.

One could argue that PET was set aside completely.  But my gut tells me Apple were pretty impressed with the results of the optical clock performance indicators, a target they probably set for PTI, to take the project on, along with proof of mass manufactureabily.

Those who argue that there is no Apple relationshipl because of  the parless SP have tunnel vision preventing them from seeing any merit in POET whatsoever.  AM and SV had a downline view of PTI performance that factors in many more benefits in the cost benefit analysis of the PO to make such an apparent disaster acceptable in the long term.  Better they make that judgement with 20:20 vision than us armchair analysts.

Sula