Valentin P. Gapontsev leaves an impressive technological legacy in industrial fiber lasers and the multibillion-dollar company he built around that technology. He founded what became IPG Photonics in Moscow in 1990 and remained its CEO until April 2021 and its chairman until his death on October 22, 2021, at age 82.
While the first fiber laser was demonstrated in 1961, practical fiber lasers awaited the invention of practical diode pumping decades later. Gapontsev proposed that light from arrays of high-power diode lasers pumping along the length of a doped fiber laser could generate tens of watts from the fiber laser with 20% to 30% efficiency in the same year he founded the company.1
That foresight was remarkable. Even more remarkable was Gapontsev’s ability to realize that vision by building that technology in a company he founded in a small basement laboratory at the Institute of Radio Engineering near Moscow with just a few thousand dollars in savings and a handful of former students as the Soviet Union collapsed around them. He had no business experience, but had spent more than a quarter-century at the prestigious Soviet Academy of Sciences, earning a doctorate for research in solid-state laser materials. He became an expert in energy transfer between rare earths and transition metal sites in glass and crystals, publishing over 200 papers.
Gapontsev’s little company started producing custom glass and crystal lasers and laser components, but it was a struggle. Their first commercial success was selling $750,000 in high-power fiber amplifiers to an Italian telecommunications carrier. OEM sales followed, as did manufacturing in Germany and the United States. In 2000, IPG turned a profit with sales of $52 million. However, by the end of the year, the telecommunications market was collapsing. Gapontsev decided on a daring shift in strategy.
IPG had increased fiber laser output in its first decade, reading about 10 W single-mode around 1997 and passing 50 W in 2000. They weren’t making much money on high-power fiber lasers, but they had a lead in the technology. Gapontsev decided the best course for IPG would be to leave the crowded and shrinking market for fiber amplifiers in telecommunications to instead develop high-power fiber lasers and market them for industrial materials-working. There, he hoped that steadily improving fiber laser technology could out-compete carbon-dioxide and bulk solid-state lasers.
A key element of the strategy was investing most of IPG’s cash in building a U.S. plant to manufacture high-power pump diodes in high volume at low cost. The company had been paying premium prices for pump diodes from outside suppliers that had been in high demand during the boom. Making their own would give IPG control over their costs, and benefit from their own technology. They also invested in fiber laser technology, using their pump lasers to increase output power. By 2003, IPG introduced the first fiber laser with multikilowatt output, which they reached by shifting to multimode operation. Sales, which had hit a low point of $22 million in 2002, began growing. IPG sales reached $143 million in 2006; in 2020, they touted $1.2 billion.
Gapontsev was the driving force behind the technology advances as well as the business growth. He took a lot of pride in developing the technology. He once said, in a plenary talk at the 2016 OSA Laser Congress in Boston, “We can supply you 1 MW of power through one fiber, if somebody wants it.” He reported IPG’s pump diodes could convert 67% of input electrical energy into light. Using those diodes to pump single-mode fiber lasers, in turn, could convert half of the original electric power into light output from the fiber laser. Remembering the days of flashlamp pumping when 2% wall-plug efficiency was considered good for solid-state lasers, this was impressive. It was no wonder Gapontsev could also report—with evident pride—that fiber lasers had reached 35% of all laser sales.
Gapontsev was born on February 23, 1939, in Moscow, just six months before his father marched off to fight in World War II as an artillery captain, returning only after a year and a half in a concentration camp. He later recalled learning from his father “the importance of being strong in the face of adversity. I can think of no more important lesson for someone starting a business today.”2 Forbes rated him a self-made billionaire. Gapontsev leaves his wife; his son, Denis; a grandson, a company with capitalization of some $8.5 billion, and an impressive technical legacy.
REFERENCES
1. V. P. Gapontsev et al., Proc. SPIE, 1353 (Sep. 1, 1990); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.23755.
2. See https://bit.ly/3jNeByv.
