C.AI: "but we know nothing about Cisco's?"

Well, we do know Cisco bought Acacia for their coherent product line, and previous to that purchased Luxtera for their SiPh product line.  As you point out C.AI, according to Needham slide 12, Luxtera hardly measures up to POET's capabilities.

So the real question is, would Cisco forego their own investments in SiPh technology (ie Luxtera) for something else?  According to Bill Gartner, SVP/GM Optical Systems at Cisco, the answer is an unequivocal YES.

Raymond James and Cisco optical Tech Talk

March 13, 2020

Discussion on Cisco’s plans on the optical front, talk focuses on much of what we know they are working on, coherent photonics with Acacia and silicon with Luxtera.  Obviously they have a lot invested in this so will continue to develop these areas.  A couple of comments I thought were interesting and perhaps offers a glimmer of hope they aren’t necessarily locked into one technology solution.

Talking about their current efforts on silicon photonics

“But if somebody came along tomorrow and say look we’ve got an InP solution that’s half the cost of silicon photonics we would jump on that immediately, we’re not religious about (our?) silicon photonics technology”

“Want to minimize number of parts...longer term, were looking at integrating more and more of the function into the ASICs....longer term this has the opportunity to get to lower cost point and lower power.”

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