Optical transceiver vendor DustPhotonics beefs up management team

Optical transceiver company DustPhotonics has added three people to its leadership roster. Anthony Musto has joined as vice president of sales and marketing; Brian Mulroe has come aboard as senior director of strategic business development; and Yaron Refaely has become as vice president of R&D. All three now report to DustPhotonics CEO Ben Rubovitch.

Musto comes to DustPhotonics with 20 years of experience in optical communications and telecommunications. He perhaps best known as the founder and vice president of sales and marketing at startup module vendor Optium Corp., which Finisar acquired in 2008 (see “Optium touts mixed channel plan WSS-based ROADM,” “Optium offers tunable 300-pin SFF transponder,” and "Finisar and Optium agree to all-stock merger”). Musto also has held leadership positions at JDS Uniphase and Sarnoff Corp.

“Our customer relationships are key to building a strong company position in the market for high value and lower risk industry developments that offer rapid return on investment,” said Rubovitch. “I am very pleased to welcome Mr. Musto to his new role. He will expand our market penetration and introduce us to new and future market demands. Mr. Musto has deep experience with our valued customers and a keen understanding of what it will take to play an even larger role in their success.”

Mulroe, meanwhile, has 30 years of experience in telecom sales, most recently as a senior regional sales manager at Finisar. There he performed account management for key customers and specialized in transceiver and sensor products for LiDAR and sensing. Mulroe also worked at Optium; prior to that he owned and operated a manufacturers’ representative firm specializing in optical, RF, and microwave components and systems.

Refaely joins DustPhotonics from Ceragon Networks, where he also was vice president of R&D. There he managed more than 200 engineers tasked with developing technology for wireless backhaul systems.

Founded in 2017 with offices in Modi'in, Israel, and Cupertino, CA, DustPhotonics initially has focused on developing low-cost data center optical transceivers that leverage its AuraDP fiber coupling and passive alignment technology. The approach works particularly well with multimode fiber, and the company’s first products have targeted such applications (see, for example, “Production ramps for DustPhotonics’ 100-Gbps QSFP28-SR4 optical transceivers”). DustPhotonics announced the addition of $25 million in Series B funding last September, led by Intel Capital and joined by WRVI Capital.

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