Gigabit-Speed Journeys and the Tech Behind Sivers Semiconductors Vision

Discover how Sivers  is leading the charge toward a hyper-connected future as we chat with their visionary CEO Anders Storm, live from the energetic floor of Mobile World Congress. Get ready to be amazed by the resurgence of this global event and the seismic shifts in mobile technology, from the SATCOM boom to the steady march of 5G. 

In this episode, we give you an all-access pass to Sivers  wireless business unit, where Storm reveals the company's innovative RFICs and antenna arrays that are finding their way into everything from ground terminals to satellite services. Not just a glimpse into today's tech—you'll also be privy to exciting developments like gigabit-speed connections for Californian trains. And it's not all silicon and signals; we also get an insider's look at the brilliant minds across Sweden, New York, and Glasgow who are the driving force behind Sivers  groundbreaking achievements in satcom, photonics, and beyond. Join us to understand how this tech powerhouse is redefining performance at the edge of innovation.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

And we are here at Mobile World Congress, day 3, with Storm from Seaverse. How are you? Very good, thanks. Well, this has been an extraordinary show. But what's your takeaway after three days at MWC?

Speaker 2 0:14

I would say number one, it's a lot of people again. You know it's back to how it was before the Covid scare, I would say. And then of course everything is happening now. I mean SATCOM is really booming everywhere, we see AI everywhere and of course 5G sort of has been a little bit slow, but we can see more of that now.

Speaker 1 0:35

I think again, and tell us, tell the audience, rather, about the value proposition from Seaverse and the range of different solutions and technologies that you guys offer.

Speaker 2 0:45

Yeah, so on Mobile World Congress, we are sort of here for the wireless business unit and that is focused on 5G, 6g and SATCOM and we do RFICs, antenna arrays and all of that kind of stuff and that is used by system vendors, mostly Everything from ground terminals to, as you can see, here on top of me, we have sort of a SATCOM satellite services as well and then we have, you know, the system vendors who makes the fixed wireless access for 5G, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 1:19

Tell us about your tech stack. How far up the stack do you go and what are some of the key applications that you're seeing driving the business?

Speaker 2 1:26

We're very far down in the stack. We're a semiconductor company so we do you know the RFICs coming from. You know zero IF baseband all the way up to the RF and we do RF from 20 GHz all the way up to 71 GHz today, and so very little software, very little stack. But we're working with partners on that side, as you can see in the booth. We're working with the NXP, we're working with other guys who does the level one stacks and other things, for example O-RON and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 1:57

And what's been the driver for the business, which has been pretty good. I've been following your results. Are there some use cases or niches or verticals that have been really good for you the last year or two?

Speaker 2 2:10

Yeah, so over the last two years I mean, we've grown very heavily. Two years ago we grew about 46 percent, last year 80 percent growth on the top line, and it's been very much in the wireless business. It's been about satcom a lot, a lot of development projects with partners In our photonics business. It's been very much around, you know, the optical IO things that's going to happen around AI and how you connect the GPUs for NVIDIA in the future, and then also some sensors around LiDAR and sensor for consumer electronics. So all of that together have really spurred the business in the right direction.

Speaker 1 2:47

That's exciting. You've built quite an innovation engine amazing teams. Describe the team and its distribution and the kind of R&D folks that you have on board.

Speaker 2 2:57

So we are about 125 people today. Half and half is in each business unit. The wireless business unit is based in Sweden and in New York City in the US mostly, and then we have our photonics business in Glasgow where we have our own fab, and the businesses are actually a bit different. One is Fabless, where we do a lot with global foundries on the wireless side, and then we have our own Indian phosphide fab up in Glasgow where we do all the lasers.

Speaker 1 3:26

Very cool. We'll have to take a tour one day. So of course you work with OEMs, but tell us about, maybe, some of the end customers that you can, or how they're using the chips.

Speaker 2 3:35

Yeah, for the US audience. I think it's soon to be, you know, when you go between San Francisco and San Diego and in the new electric cow trains they will actually be connected with our stuff. There will be gigabit speeds into the trains, you know, with our 60 gigahertz 5G solutions, together with Nomad who sort of installs that, together with our port and blue wireless. So that's really exciting. We're going to see, you know, that happening within the coming six months, I think.

Speaker 1 4:05

And your technology is really about performance at the edge and beyond. How are you differentiated from some of the other modules or off the shelf technologies out there?

Speaker 2 4:16

So we're trying to sort of. We have a very broad portfolio now, of course, but we're also trying to leverage all the development that we have within the company. So, for example, we acquired a company called Mixcom out of Columbia Tech and Professor Arish who's our MD there, and they had sort of developed some really cool beam former technology with double foundry with a very high efficiency, while the old Severs wireless in the same type of things they were really high, highly integrated circuits. So we can combine all of those into products that can range all the way from the base station sign all the way down to the CPS. So that's sort of where we can leverage that. And of course the customers want to see a broad portfolio where they can use our solutions.

Speaker 1 5:05

So it looks like the future is all about very high speed, high performance, big data at the edge. Yes, so you're ahead of the game.

Speaker 2 5:13

Yeah, I think we're in the game and I mean it's been a bit challenging on the 5G side of things. But I think after the C-band now is sort of stabilized in the US and millimeter waves coming, we also see things in Asia now, particularly like in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, but also India is one of the bigger market. That goes what we call the F-R2 band, which is the millimeter wave band.

Speaker 1 5:36

Well, very exciting. It's a great booth. I'll take some pictures. What's next beyond Mobile World Congress? You have a real job, I have a real job.

Speaker 2 5:45

No, I mean, of course I work a lot, you know, and even here we have a lot of, you know, investors and bankers. But the big next show is actually OFC in San Diego in a month, and that's, I think, is going to be even bigger in some sense, because we expect to see what the big guys are doing Nvidia, amd, microsoft, all of those guys what's happening next in the optical interconnect within the data centers. We have a very good position there, so we're extremely excited to be on that show as well soon.

Speaker 1 6:20

That's amazing. Well, from the fire to the frying pan or face to face. Congratulations on all of success. Thank you Upwards and onwards, as I say.