Finisar Corporation is a manufacturer of optical communication components and subsystems. The company was founded in April 1987 by

Frank Levinson Frank H. Levinson is an American entrepreneur and investor. Levinson is best known for being co-founder (with Jerry S. Rawls) of Finisar Corporation. Levinson holds a BS in physics from Butler University, and a PhD in astronomy from the Unive ...

and Jerry Rawls in

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south ...

. In November 1999, it went public via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

. In 2008 Finisar merged with Optium Corporation. In September 2019, Finisar was acquired by II-VI Incorporated for US$3.2 billion. Finisar's products include optical transceivers, optical engines, active optical cables, optical components, optical instrumentation, ROADM & wavelength management, optical amplifiers, and RF-over-Fiber. Their products enable high-speed voice, video, and data communications for networking, storage, wireless, and cable TV applications.

Partnerships

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

announced a new partnership with Finisar in December 2017. The planned investment of $390 million will support Finisar's increase production of its R&D spending and high-volume production of

vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser The vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser, or VCSEL , is a type of semiconductor laser diode with laser beam emission perpendicular from the top surface, contrary to conventional edge-emitting semiconductor lasers (also ''in-plane'' lasers) which ...

s that power some of Apple's features such as the

Face ID Face ID is a facial recognition system designed and developed by Apple Inc. for the iPhone and iPad Pro. The system allows biometric authentication for unlocking a device, making payments, accessing sensitive data, providing detailed facial ex ...

. The plant, supporting more than 500 jobs, is located in

Sherman, Texas Sherman is a U.S. city in and the county seat of Grayson County, Texas. The city's population in 2020 was 43,645. It is one of the two principal cities in the Sherman–Denison metropolitan statistical area, and it is part of the Texoma region ...

References

External links

* Companies based in Sunnyvale, California Networking hardware companies Optics manufacturing companies Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq 1987 establishments in California 1999 initial public offerings 2019 mergers and acquisitions {{US-manufacturing-company-stub