NeoPhotonics was incorporated as NanoGram Corporation in October 1996 in the State of Delaware.   The company initially developed nanomaterials for a variety of applications, before turning to commercializing telecommunications products and changing its name to NeoPhotonics in 2002.  Also during 2002 and 2003, NeoPhotonics spun out two new companies to pursue non-telecom applications, NanoGram Devices Corporation, a medical device battery company, and Nanogram Corporation, a nanomaterials applications company.  NanoGram Devices was subsequently acquired by Greatbatch Inc., and NanoGram Corporation was acquired by Teijin Limited.
 
NeoPhotonics has grown rapidly and added customers, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45% from 2005 through 2009.  In addition to developing its own technology and products, NeoPhotonics has added key technologies and products through a series of acquisitions:

March 2003:  
Lightwave Microsystems Corporation, a developer and fabricator of photonic integrated circuits

March 2006:  
Photon Technology Co., Ltd. (now named NeoPhotonics (China) Co., Ltd.), a manufacturer of active optoelectronics, transceivers and modules

June 2006:  
Lightconnect, Inc., which expanded our product portfolio by adding a line of micro-electromechanical systems based optical components and modules

June 2006:  
OpTun, Inc., a developer of ROADM technology
 
August 2006:  
BeamExpress, Inc., an integrator of active indium phosphide telecommunications devices in parallel optics high-speed transceivers

November 2006: 
Paxera Corporation, a developer of tunable technology for dynamically reconfigurable networks

February 2008: 
Certain assets and intellectual property from Mitsubishi Electric Corporation relating to the manufacture of high-speed transceivers