Semiconductor manufacturer Ranovus plans $100 million expansion of Ottawa facility

By August 21, 2025
Ontario supports investment with $2 million grant following industry calls to support homegrown innovation.

Ottawa-based Ranovus is spending $100 million to expand its optical semiconductor manufacturing facility in the nation’s capital. 

According to the Ontario government, the investment will create 125 new jobs as the company commits to “reshoring their outsourced manufacturing capacity back to Ontario.” The province is supporting the investment with a $2 million grant through the Invest Ontario Fund.

Founded in 2012 by CEO and Nortel veteran Hamid Arabzadeh, Ranovus develops optical interconnects, a type of semiconductor used to improve data transfer speed and power consumption in data centres. It counts semiconductor giants like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and MediaTek among its customers. 

Arabzadeh told BetaKit in an email statement that the $100 million investment is part of an ongoing scaling of the 140-person company. He added that the investment is bringing all of Ranovus’ supply chain, except for foundry wafer production, back to Canada, where its product is made. 

“By reshoring production and scaling AI-enabling technologies right here in Ottawa, Ranovus is helping to secure Ontario’s place at the forefront of global innovation,” Ontario Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford said in a statement. 

Ranovus previously secured federal funding in 2023 for another $100 million project to develop better-performing and power-efficient technologies for interconnect computer chips for use with artificial intelligence (AI). 

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Earlier this year, Ranovus and Silicon Valley chip company Cerebras Systems secured a $45-million USD contract with the United States military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The contract focused on connecting Cerebras’ chips with Ranovus’ networking technology. 

Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) Ontario affairs director Skaidra PuodĆŸiĆ«nas said in a statement that it was “encouraging” to see Ontario’s support of the expansion. Earlier this year, 75 Ontario CEOs signed an open letter put forward by the CCI calling on Premier Doug Ford to prioritize homegrown innovation. The letter argued that provincial economic policy has focused on short-term foreign direct investment over long-term domestic wealth creation.

When the province went ahead with subsidizing a new research and development center from German multinational technology conglomerate Siemens in April, PuodĆŸiĆ«nas said that “every dollar funnelled to foreign entities is a missed opportunity” to advance Ontario’s prosperity. 

Now, she said that supporting Ranovus “is a step in the right direction.” 

Feature image courtesy Ranovus via LinkedIn.

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