I’m excited to announce that Cisco has completed its acquisition of Acacia Communications, Inc., a company that designs and manufactures high-speed optical interconnect products and technologies.
Acacia’s technology is very complementary to Cisco’s optical systems and optics strategy and reinforces its investment in the Internet for the Future with world-class coherent optical solutions for our customers.
Acacia offers a complete portfolio of long-distance data transmission solutions that address the full range of applications in the Data Center Interconnect and Wide Area Network segments for Metro, Regional, Long Haul and Subsea links.
The Acacia acquisition also addresses another trend we’re seeing – the move from chassis-based optical line systems to pluggable technology – for customers who want to simplify operations and reduce the complexity of managing multiple layers in the network. These pluggable modules would be plugged directly into a router or switch.
Cisco with Acacia is positioned to lead the 400G+ market insertion and transition with a disruptive technology that collapses the IP and optical layers in the form of pluggable coherent technology.
And, finally, we want to increase our relevance for customers purchasing pluggables today – even for non-Cisco hosts. We are confident that we bring unique value to our customers who want to procure optics and can provide them with confidence that Cisco optics will work in any third-party host.
As Cisco and Acacia come together, Cisco is committed to supporting Acacia’s existing customers and new customers that want industry-leading coherent optics, digital signal processing / photonic integrated circuit modules, and transceivers for use in networking products and data centers.
With leadership in key assets in silicon and optics, Cisco is poised like no other company in the industry to offer our customers solutions in the form they want to consume – whether that means discrete components or fully integrated solutions – for the new Internet.
I’m happy to welcome the Acacia team to Cisco. Acacia employees join Cisco’s Optics business within the Mass-Scale Infrastructure Group.
What happens to ACIA stock options after the acquisition?
Per the terms of the Merger Agreement, Acacia stock options converted to a right to receive cash. You may find more details in the 8K filed by Acacia on March 1, 2021.