I feel that it is a reasonable assumption to say that in 2018 PTI is set to make its entry into the world of mass manufacture of IC components with its optical interposer.  By all accounts it has customers and partners lined up (see quote 1) with an expectation to receive revenues north of $75 million (see quote 2).

Quotes by Suresh Venkateson CEO from the PTI AGM 2018 .

1.  ‘We’ve been able to have three, what we consider, critical agreements in place over the course of the past couple of quarters with companies and partners that have the heft and the capability to take this into high-volume production for us.’

2.  ‘the strategy we put in place a year ago and that we’ve been executing on is in fact the right one. The market opportunities are very large: eight billion dollar plus growth opportunity over the next two to three years. A couple of these products with a couple of customers could drive a revenue opportunity for us north of seventy-five million dollars.’

Assuming that there will be more than ‘a couple of customers’ the opportunity for our venture capital investment to blossom financially seem so much more of a reality than the hype we believed during the Coppetti years, but we cannot deny PC made a significant contribution to our adventure by recruiting capable and visionary talent to take over from his technically inept attempts to sell POET Intellectual Property, albeit he was then under the guidance of the technical genius Geoffrey Taylor who had no capacity to implement his ideas commercially.

My mind then turns to the future where PTI has become commercially viable and looks at its next strategic steps.  Are we to be guided by the following visionary statement of Chairman Monacha made in the most recent SEMI publication.

‘A sentiment shared by many speakers at SEMICON West was – this is the most exciting time to be in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Many wished they were just now starting in the industry as this is the most interesting inflection and transformation ever. There is a flood of new architectures, new materials, new equipment, new processes – and a new system-based design approach to enable the Cognitive Era. We, in hardware manufacturing, are in the driver’s seat for this incredible ride’

Perhaps at last there may be an outlet for POET Intellectual Property into the burgeoning AI industry envisioned by our late Chairman.

Sula