As of Sept 5 POET was working (active qualification) with 3 major’s under NDA and they were in discussions with a total of 13 other major companies as listed on slide 26 of the Sept 4-5 HC Wainwright presentation.

Suresh has talked in the past of NRE highlighting that they come with big strings attached. If someone is  going to pay to develop a product they want something in return which would  normally be exclusive rights for  a given period of time. So really he was talking more about a development cost plus a licensing fee and that is why we were hearing about some pretty lofty numbers.

The development costs associated with the optical interposer have been covered by POET with help from SilTerra under a co-development agreement (facility).

As we know POET has to work with the transceiver electronics manufactures as specified by certain customers. This means that the POET optical interposer has to be designed to meet the requirements of  the electronics side. Who pays for what may be a mixed bag for each company. Some may include NRE costs we don’t know. POET has not made any statement regarding the potential for NRE not unexpected) as they attempt to limit market expectations (given the mistakes of the past).

As I have suggested more recently any NRE would likely be pretty small numbers on the optical  interposer side but one could expect the costs to  add up  very quickly if the number of companies POET works with increases as a result of ongoing  discussion the majors  as per the presentation.