M&A

CACI to acquire laser communication tech maker for $275M

• By Ross Wilkers
• Nov 03, 2021

Within a week of revealing just glimpses in two acquisitions, CACI International has already moved onto another purchase as it pushes to expand the company’s offerings of mission technology.

CACI has agreed to pay $275 million for SA Photonics, a maker of laser communications technology for use in space and other airborne and terrestrial applications. All parties expect the transaction to close by the end of this calendar year, CACI said Wednesday.

SA Photonics is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area — Los Gatos to be exact – designs its products to be used in low-Earth-orbit for free space optical communications, which CACI sees as complementary to how its FSO technology is built to work in medium-Earth and geosynchronous-equatorial orbits.

The overall goal is to further enable terrestrial communications at higher bandwidths, but with a lower probability of detection. SA Photonics in particular touts its offerings as using payloads that are half the size of many current radio frequency systems.

Reston, Virginia-headquartered CACI also further expands its production facility footprint through the acquisition that adds new sites in California, Florida and New Jersey.

CACI created a photonics business unit after it acquired LGS Innovations in March 2019. This year, CACI was named an Industry Innovator by Washington Technology for work it is doing with NASA and the development of laser communication transmitters and modems.