Lightera Networks Inc. was a Cupertino, California optical networking equipment startup backed by Kleiner Perkins. It built optical core switching systems for carrier transport networks during the late-1990s buildout of long-haul optical infrastructure. Ciena Corporation acquired Lightera Networks together with Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Omnia Communications Inc. for $980 million in stock in 1999, and the Lightera technology and team were absorbed into Ciena's optical core switching line. The company no longer operates as an independent entity and never published a public API, developer portal, or machine-readable interface; this profile is retained as a historical record of the Kleiner Perkins portfolio and is not an active API provider. NOTE: unrelated to the present-day lightera.com, a rebrand of Furukawa Electric / OFS optical fiber manufacturing (see x-disambiguation).
Lightera Networks is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Hardtech, Optical Networking, Telecommunications, and Networking Equipment.
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the
Telecommunications regime, so
Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite.
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applicability map is public and we will correct it.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for
this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero:
never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and
several others — scorable at all.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal
weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
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aid: lightera
deliveryModel:
model: unknown
open_source: false
commercial: false
callable_host: false
label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
confidence: low
source:
- none
generated: '2026-08-28'
method: derived
accessModel:
pricing: unknown
onboarding: unknown
trial: false
try_now: false
public: false
label: Unknown
confidence: low
source: []
generated: '2026-07-22'
method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/lightera.png
name: Lightera Networks
description: 'Lightera Networks Inc. was a Cupertino, California optical networking equipment startup backed by Kleiner Perkins.
It built optical core switching systems for carrier transport networks during the late-1990s buildout of long-haul optical
infrastructure. Ciena Corporation acquired Lightera Networks together with Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Omnia Communications
Inc. for $980 million in stock in 1999, and the Lightera technology and team were absorbed into Ciena''s optical core switching
line. The company no longer operates as an independent entity and never published a public API, developer portal, or machine-readable
interface; this profile is retained as a historical record of the Kleiner Perkins portfolio and is not an active API provider.
NOTE: unrelated to the present-day lightera.com, a rebrand of Furukawa Electric / OFS optical fiber manufacturing (see x-disambiguation).'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lightera/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-api-posture: no-product-api
x-api-posture-basis: observed
x-api-posture-note: The company no longer operates as an independent entity and never published a public API, developer portal,
or machine-readable interface; this profile is retained as a historical record of the Kleine
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- kleiner-perkins
x-tier: historical
x-tier-reason: acquired-1999-no-api-surface
x-status: acquired
x-acquired-by: Ciena Corporation
x-acquired-year: 1999
x-acquisition-value: $980 million in stock (joint acquisition with Omnia Communications Inc.)
x-acquisition-source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciena
x-headquarters: Cupertino, California, United States
x-enrichment:
last_run: '2026-07-19'
result: no-api-surface
artifacts: none
rationale: Entity is defunct (acquired by Ciena in 1999) and published no API, developer portal, SDK, or specification.
No artifacts were generated; fabricating any would be unfaithful.
x-disambiguation:
- name: Lightera (Furukawa Electric / OFS)
url: https://lightera.com/
relationship: unrelated-name-collision
note: 'Optical fiber and connectivity manufacturer headquartered in Norcross, Georgia; a unification and rebrand of Furukawa
Electric, OFS, and Furukawa Electric LatAm. Not venture-backed, not the Kleiner Perkins portfolio company, and publishes
no developer or API surface (probed 2026-07-19: /developers, /developer, /api, /docs, /llms.txt, /.well-known/security.txt
and /.well-known/api-catalog all returned HTTP 404).'
- name: lightera.ai
url: https://lightera.ai/
relationship: unknown-name-collision
note: Placeholder Squarespace site reading "We are under construction" as of 2026-07-19; no identifying company information
published.
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- Hardtech
- Optical Networking
- Telecommunications
- Networking Equipment
- Acquired
- Historical
apis: []
common:
- type: Acquirer
name: Ciena Corporation
url: https://www.ciena.com/
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
email: info@apis.io
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