NP Photonics Nets $5 Million

TUCSON, Ariz., July 26 -- NP Photonics Inc. (NP), a supplier of single-frequency fiber lasers for optical sensing applications in the oil and gas, security-military, medical imaging and research markets, announced it has closed a Series A2 funding round totaling $5 million. Participants were Enterprise Partners, of La Jolla, Calif.; Sierra Ventures, of Menlo Park, Calif.; and BB&T Capital Markets, Windsor Group, of Reston, Va. Carl Eibl from Enterprise and Jeff Drazan from Sierra will serve on NP's board.

NP recently launched a line of single-frequency lasers that deliver up to 5 watts of power and a single-frequency laser that it says has the narrowest linewidth (<200 Hz) available.

Patrick Edsell, NP Photonics president and CEO, said, "We believe that our technology will enable a number of optical sensing applications that have been in demand for some time but that haven't had a light source that enabled the systems to meet the customers' requirements. This will result in the development of very sizable markets for our products."

NP Photonics began in 1998 as a spinoff of the University of Arizona's Optical Sciences Center. It uses glass and fiber technology to produce advanced light sources for sensing, medical and research markets and offers products including narrow-linewidth fiber lasers, ASE (amplified spontaneous emission) sources, fiber amplifiers and high-power light sources.

For more information, visit: www.npphotonics.com