Cisco to Buy Semiconductor Company Luxtera

Cisco announced that it plans to buy semiconductor company Luxtera, Inc. This is the sixth acquisition by Cisco in the year 2018. Recently Cisco acquired DUO security for its multi-cloud efforts.

Carlsbad, California based Luxtera is a privately held semiconductor company that specializes in silicon photonics technology to build integrated optics capabilities for webscale and enterprise data centers, service provider market segments, and other customers. Luxtera’s technology, design, and manufacturing innovation significantly improve performance and scale while lowering costs.


According to Cisco’s recent VNI Forecast, internet traffic has been growing exponentially and more traffic will be created in 2022 than in the 32 years since the internet started.  By 2022, around 28 billion devices and connections will be online. The 60 percent of the global population will be connected to the internet. Thus such an exponential growth and demand for bandwidth is due to a recent paradigm shift in technology such as the emerging class of distributed cloud, mobility, and IoT applications.

With this acquisition, Cisco plans to Future-Proof Networks for Emerging Applications, Expand Cisco’s 100GbE and 400GbE Portfolio. Cisco's and Luxtera's capabilities in 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE)/400GbE optics, silicon, and process technology will allow customers to build future-proof networks optimized for performance, reliability, and cost.

Executive vice president and general manager, Networking and Security Business at Cisco, David Goeckeler, said, "With Cisco’s 2018 Visual Networking Index projecting that global Internet traffic will increase threefold over the next five years, our customers are facing an exponential demand for Internet bandwidth. Optics is a fundamental technology to enable this future. Coupled with our silicon and optics innovation, Luxtera will allow our customers to build the biggest, fastest and most efficient networks in the world.”

The announcement further noted that Luxtera’s technology will be integrated into Cisco's intent-based networking portfolio, spanning enterprise, data center and service provider markets.

Luxtera's acquisition will cost CISCO $660 million in cash and assumed equity awards. The deal is expected to close in Q3 2019.