Founded in 2000, iXblue employs around 750 people, including 350 engineers and doctors, with a turnover of €150 million, 80% of which is generated internationally. It has nine industrial sites in France and its headquarters are in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The photonics branch within iXblue is designed to address the space, sensors and metrology, geosciences, fiber lasers and intense lasers, communications and quantum technologies markets.
Within iXblue, Kylia and Muquans join iXblue’s historical activities in photonics: Modulation Solutions at the Besançon site, Specialty Optical Fibers at the Lannion site and inertial space systems at the Saint-Germain-en-Laye site. The new entity will further strengthen the photonics strategic axis with more than 160 people spread over four industrial sites in France, generating a turnover of more than €35 million in instruments, lasers and advanced photonics components.
“This merger is a concrete expression of iXblue’s strategy to position itself even more strongly in the photonics market and to become a major player. The combination of iXblue with Kylia and Muquans will enable new synergies to arise from the extraordinary variety of technologies that will be at the core of our offering in this field. It also allows iXblue to be active in the New Aquitaine region, at the heart of a rich ecosystem around lasers and optics,” said Fabien Napolitano, CEO of iXblue.
Ludovic Fulop, CEO of Kylia, said, “This merger is a unique opportunity for Kylia to accelerate its international development. It is the result of a common history and a journey during which the teams have crossed paths to develop complementary, active and fruitful collaborations, particularly in the space market.”
“We have discovered that there are countless bridges between the world of photonics, iXblue’s fiber-optic inertial systems and Muquans’ gravimeters, laser sources and atomic clocks. This union is one of the results of iXblue’s presence at the Institut d’Optique d’Aquitaine. This proximity on this site for more than five years has been, in a logical way, the opportunity to share a common vision of the potential of cold atom quantum sensors for ultimate metrology,” Bruno Desruelle, CEO of Muquans said.
