Pluggable PON Solution Provider Tibit Communications Announces $20 Million in Funding

PETALUMA, CA — Tibit Communications, a Petaluma, CA based start-up developing next-generation access devices for passive optical networking [PON], announced a Series B investment of $20 million led by Intel Capital. The financing will be used to fund Tibit’s market expansion as the company prepares to commercially deploy its flagship product, the Tibit MicroPlug OLT (optical line terminal), and to accelerate R&D work on additional pluggable PON innovations planned for release later this year. Tibit’s MicroPlug OLT is a complete network access device for 10-Gigabit optical networking that reduces the amount of application-specific hardware needed for network deployments.

“The reception from our switch vendor partners and global carriers to our 2018 launch of the MicroPlug OLT has been tremendous,” said Richard Stanfield, Tibit CEO and president. “The interest in deploying the Tibit solution across a variety of switch environments is a strong validation of the flexibility we’ve engineered into our solution.”

“At Intel Capital, we look to invest in disruptors – and delivering broadband access via a standard Ethernet switch is highly disruptive,” said Dave Flanagan, vice president of Intel Corp. and senior managing director of Intel Capital. “Instead of expensive dedicated hardware boxes with proprietary software tied to a single vendor, users can access a broadband onramp managed virtually from the cloud to the home or office. This enables significant savings of cost and power and opens market opportunities to innovation.”