Palo Alto – November 9, 2026 – Sold out, switched on
Europe walked into the Evoluon in Eindhoven on 3 November like a team that had finally read its own scouting report. PIC Summit Europe 2026, the fifth edition, was sold out, and the corridors were packed with founders, foundry professionals, and funders, all repeating the same sentence in a dozen accents: Europe is now fully capable of leading in photonics.
Nobody said it as a wish. They presented it as a status update.
The venue, Evoluon, has symbolized technological progress since its opening in 1966. It has been transformed into the Next Nature Museum, with innovative exhibitions on the relationship between humanity and technology. While sober about risks to humanity, its optimism for the future is unmistakable. That made for a perfect backdrop to this event. The staff was upbeat and friendly, making for an almost party-like atmosphere.
The evidence was in the room: a deep bench of promising EU companies with real silicon, real tape-outs, and, for once, real money circling them. Running in parallel, TechTour’s Next Gen IC 2026 turned the same event into a two-front deal market, with pitches by day and one-on-ones in the margins. The mood was extraordinary: upbeat, hopeful, a little giddy. Photonics people are not usually giddy. That alone was news.
PIC Summit: the pep talk, and the footnote
The Summit’s theme was “scaling integrated photonics for global impact,” and the keynotes made it clear that scaling is no spectator sport. Peter Wennink, ASML’s former CEO, put it in four words: “It’s now or never.” NXP’s Lars Reger named his biggest fear: Europe getting stuck at the pilot-line level. MEP Bart Groothuis delivered the line of the week: “If you don’t sit at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”
Brussels brought homework. Chips Act 2.0 adds an instrument to bridge the gap between pilot lines and fabs, with photonics explicitly in scope. The Commission has proposed a 12-month permitting deadline for new fabs; Groothuis wants six. Wennink wanted more still: competition rules that let European champions combine, and pension funds and banks willing to take on more risk. Groothuis sees Brussels’ job shifting toward helping chipmakers find customers and qualify products. Only two of the twenty projects receiving state aid so far are in photonics, which is either an embarrassment or an invitation. This crowd chose invitation.
Then there was the conversation that stayed off the microphone. In the corridors, regulatory chatter ran on two tracks: fear of the unknown and a dry skepticism about the EU’s ability to organize itself in a business-friendly way. Few said it aloud, and even fewer argued. Hope was the headline; doubt was the footnote, and everyone had read the footnote.
Meanwhile, the product focus was universal. Nobody defended last year’s chip. Every conversation centered on one question: what’s next? The answers clustered around co-packaged optics, whether CPO can scale, lasers that can be manufactured in volume, and heterogeneous integration, the stage beyond single-material platforms.
TechTour: where the cheques are
If the Summit supplied the sermon, TechTour supplied the collection plate. The investor reverse pitches told the story. Claret Capital had just closed its €500 million Fund IV. Photon Ventures is raising a €200 million fund for integrated photonics and the semiconductor supply chain. Graduate Ventures has a fresh €125 million. Investanelle manages €3 billion, and Diamond Edge Ventures, Mitsubishi Chemical’s venture arm, writes €1–10 million checks into thermal management, data centers, and optical comms. The investment environment has improved considerably, and the room knew it.
The founders gave those investors plenty to read. Photon Bridge closed a €10 million seed round and began sampling laser sources for co-packaged optics customers in Q1. Brom Photonics, spun out of IMEC about a month ago, pitched wafer-scale laser integration because top-tier laser suppliers are sold out for three years. Pilot Photonics is raising €8.7 million, matched by an €8.7 million EIC grant. Sabrata was founded in November 2025 and pitched within the year.
Nobody pitched incrementalism. Alluvia Photonics showcased wafer-scale optical amplifiers with 30 dB net gain for AI-scale-across networks. Fanify claims four times the bandwidth per laser by using phase and polarization alongside intensity. Coolsem’s wafer-level thermal trick promises devices that run 20°C cooler, worth roughly a 4x lifetime gain. Spray Light, still pre-incorporation, is sketching an all-optical AI chip on indium phosphide, three years from market. Ambition is not Europe’s shortage.
Then came the panel, where the grown-ups did the lecturing. My message to founders: team first. Know your top five customers, their volumes, and next steps without being prompted. Be ready to produce millions of qualified devices for datacom within six to nine months. Sell, design, build, in that order. Telecom is lower volume with longer qualification cycles, making it more accessible to startups; datacom is brutal on cost and scale. Public funding helps early exploration but can sap urgency. Ligentech’s Anton was firm that skin in the game is what makes companies move. The consensus on validation was blunt: LOIs and pilot projects are not enough; purchase orders are the real signal. Moderator Andrei closed with the diagnosis: Europe has the technology, the ecosystem, and the funding. What’s missing is credible, detailed business cases.
The ECOC echo: light is easy, volume is hard
Strip off the confetti, and the same wall that stood in Málaga at ECOC 2026 reappears. As we put it then, speed is the scoreboard; supply is the game. Lumentum’s CEO told investors in May that the company was shipping 30% below customer demand. Telecom customers once ordered lasers by the hundreds; Nvidia and the hyperscalers now want hundreds of millions. And will the Marvell acquisition help or hinder?
Eindhoven’s founders are aiming to fill exactly that gap, and time is short. Most companies betting on heterogeneous integration are targeting market entry around mid-2028 or 2029. NXP’s internal benchmark indicates a chip design becomes worthwhile at about 500 million units. Sell, design, build is a fine slogan. Building at hyperscaler volume is the exam.
So, can Europe lead in photonics? The technology is real, the ecosystem is whole, and capital has arrived. What remains is unglamorous and brutal: purchase orders, yields, qualification cycles, and a Brussels quick enough to get out of the way. Eindhoven proved Europe has the swagger:
This year: Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Next year: Bring the shipment schedule.
For additional perspective on photonics, here are two recent articles from Woodside Capital:
ECOC 2026: Everyone Wants Light. Almost Nobody Can Make Enough
The Interconnect Imperative – Why AI is forcing the semiconductor industry to go optical
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