Microsoft acquires Lumenisity for hollow core fiber capabilities

Microsoft announced that it has acquired Lumenisity, a next-generation hollow core fiber (HCF) company. With the new technological capabilities, Microsoft hopes to improve its latency and security pitch to customers and optimize cloud infrastructure performance, as well as better support specific industries like healthcare, financial services, retail, government, and manufacturing.

Lumenisity launched in 2017 as a spin off of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at University of Southampton. Microsoft plans to optimize Lumenisity’s existing technology. Unlike traditional fiber optics that transmit light through a solid core of glass, Lumenisity’s HCF propagates light in an air filled core. This increases overall speed, boosts intrusion detection, and could allow for ultra-low signal loss, according to Microsoft.

“For the public sector, HCF could provide enhanced security and intrusion detection for federal and local governments across the globe. In healthcare, because HCF can accommodate the size and volume of large data sets, it could help accelerate medical image retrieval, facilitating providers’ ability to ingest, persist and share medical imaging data in the cloud. And with the rise of the digital economy, HCF could help international financial institutions seeking fast, secure transactions across a broad geographic region,” Microsoft indicated in a statement.