Day 2 of PIC Summit Europe 2025 moved from scaling and infrastructure to the next chapter: applications, materials, and market traction. The conversations focused on how integrated photonics is finally making the leap from research labs to the products, systems, and industries that shape everyday life.
Sessions are designed to specifically address both users' needs and diverse applications across four key areas:
Multifunctional applications
Sensing
Datacom trends
Reliability, service, complexity, and risk
Peter van Arkel, CTO at PhotonDelta, outlined his vision for a future where photonic chips are being deployed across multiple applications and many different sectors. He noted that a key concern is understanding ways to maintain their versatility, balance user needs, and optimise integrated photonics for profit, adding that it would take a balance of flexibility and cost.
Keynote: A New Initiative For Building Deeptech Startups
Then Laurens Weers, Executive Director and CFO at PhotonDelta, and Stephan Botz, co-founder at Gritd took the stage: the team behind a new initiative that's been launched to help integrated photonics professionals meet real world business problems: PhotonStudio.
"What we want to do is create these serendipitous situations," Laurens explained, before Stephan outlined the vital importance of actively seeking to solve industry problems using tech, rather than trying to retrofit an existing solution.
Noting that the solutions would be driven by market demand, Laurens and Stephan outlined how this unique collaboration with PhotonDelta would prioritise working directly with entrepreneurs, without taking any equity.
Keynote: Winning the PhotonDelta Global Photonic Engineering Contest
The winner of PhotonDelta's Global Photonics Engineering Contest, Amir Atabaki founder and CEO of Perceptra took centre stage next to share his work and continued success with Raman spectrometer technology.
Perceptra has created a compact Raman spectrometer that's both portable and easy for anyone to use. Combining a miniaturised tunable laser with a narrowband detector, the device can scan the entire Raman spectrum in a smaller format, without compromising performance.
"Our initial focus was to address the size and cost issue using photonics," Amir explained. "But after talking to customers about data and calibration, we took a detour to ensure greater market viability. In order to do that, we needed to remove the usability barrier, and as a result, we developed a new technology to do just that."
However, the team needed funding to build the prototype. Learning about the PhotonDelta Global Photonics Engineering Contest at the Photonics West convention earlier this year, Amir and his team saw an opportunity to showcase the progress they'd made so far, with the intent of using the prize fund to build their next iteration.
Keynote: Bringing the Lab Home
Diedrik Vermeulen (SiPhox Health) opened with a bold statement: "Medical can become the #1 application for silicon photonics."
He backed it up with numbers that caught everyone's attention: if half of all blood tests were performed on a home device with disposable chips, demand for medical applications would jump from 3% to 15%, and demand for silicon photonics could increase 10 to 20-fold.
The idea is simple: make chronic disease monitoring as easy as brewing a cup of coffee. Conditions like heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, and stroke account for most long-term healthcare costs, particularly in the US, where spending per capita is double that of most other countries.
Right now, home blood testing is mostly limited to glucose, since it's present in high concentrations and easy to measure. The challenge lies in detecting the over 400 other proteins that exist in much smaller quantities and require bulky, expensive lab machines to analyse. SiPhox's solution is to shrink the analyser onto a chip.
Regulatory approval is on the roadmap, and the system will launch with a doctor-in-the-loop model, meaning the proper tests will be ordered and interpreted. SiPhox plans to bring the device to market in 2027.
Keynote: Lely – A Vision for Smarter, Sustainable Farming
Martijn Boelens from Lely brought a refreshing change of pace, showing how advanced technology (and specifically integrated photonics) is helping make farming and agriculture smarter and more sustainable.
Farming has evolved, from precision farming, to circular farming, and now to regenerative farming, where the goal is to improve soil health rather than deplete it. "We need to stop killing the biolife in soil with fertilisers. And if we want this farming to become more sustainable, we need a lot of serious digital innovation."
That demand for digital innovation will depend on data, but the kind we don't measure yet. For example, we still lack reliable ways to monitor that aforementioned biolife in soil. Photonics, Boelens argued, can help bridge those gaps through more robust, sensitive, and affordable sensors.
Keynote: Market Opportunities for PICs: From Interconnects to Sensors
Vladimir Kozlov (LightCounting) opened with a wry line: "Market research is all about charts" before diving into what those charts actually show: the ethernet transceiver market approaching $40 billion USD, fueled largely by AI growth. He described the US AI scene as an "AI hurricane," driven by the capital flows between OpenAI, Microsoft, and Nvidia, and jokingly admitted, "I joined the industry during the telecom bubble, and I'm somewhat traumatised by that experience." Twenty-five years later, telecoms are still figuring out how to make money, and now the same question applies to AI.
Kozlov showed how the growth curve of AI hardware isn't linear. Unlike previous tech booms that rise and crash, AI demand grows fast, then plateaus unpredictably. He compared Google and Nvidia, mapping the evolution of Ethernet, Infiniband, and NVLink, and discussed how new materials like TFLN are entering the photonics market.
He also connected today's optical innovation to talks from earlier in the day, especially SiPhox's keynote on blood testing, predicting AI-trained optical sensors that evolve much like nature's own. For example, insects sensing leaf vibrations and fish detecting water shifts. In his view, AI will not only drive demand for photonics, but help design the next generation of sensors themselves.
Keynote: Lasers On-PIC or Off-PIC? The Billion-Dollar Question for CPO
Alexey Kovsh's keynote tackled one of the most debated questions in the field: should lasers be placed on-PIC or off-PIC in the context of Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) architectures?
Currently, Off-PIC configurations remain the preferred choice for large-scale deployment because they offer low cost, reliability, and simpler manufacturing. However, the industry is slowly moving towards On-PIC integration, hoping to achieve higher density, lower power consumption, and streamlined assembly.
Kovsh compared the two approaches through the lens of yield, power consumption, and, most critically, reliability. As he pointed out, any photonic solution must meet the same mean time between failure (MTBF) expectations as a high-quality switch motherboard, roughly 1 million hours.
He closed by highlighting the role of Quantum Dot (QD) lasers, which combine high reliability, manufacturability, and ease of integration. In his view, this could shift the paradigm toward fully integrated solutions for scalable datacom and AI systems.
Keynote: Integrated Optics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
In order to address the challenge of how integrated photonics play a central role in Artificial Intelligence applications, like ChatGPT, Yannick de Koninck, Senior Engineer, (NVIDIA) took a deep dive into the compute infrastructure needed for optimum processing power.
He then outlined how unprecedented scaling is at the core of AI, and spoke to the importance of PICs as one of the key technologies in enabling continued scaling, before looking at how optics are being used in today's AI factories and the rate at which they're becoming a crucial component in the overall networking fabric.
"A GPU is no longer one chip," said Yannick. "It's a full rack that looks like a GPU. That's only possible because we now have ways of combining integrated optics with other components, which we'll continue to do in order to optimise the technology."
Keynote: MantiSpectra – Spectral sensing for Health and Agrifood Insight
Kaylee Hakkel, COO, MantiSpectra took to the stage next, giving the audience a closer look at use cases for her company's spectral sensor; highlighting the advances being made in the health and wellness industry, including advanced biomarkers, accurate sensing, and multi modal measuring.
At the heart of MantiSpectra's work is ChipSense, their miniaturised near-infrared (NIR) spectral sensor which extends far beyond the visible range – between 1000 and 1700 nanometres. This allows it to detect biomarkers invisible to current wearable sensors. By being able to capture and analyse light at the molecular level, the chip can provide real-time insights into things like blood composition and metabolism, unlocking the next generation of wearable health tech.
Built using monolithic wafer-level integration, the 4×4 mm chip is small, cost-efficient, and ready for seamless integration into wearables and other IoT devices. But health isn't the only application Hakkel identified; in the agrifood and beverage industry, the same technology could be applied to monitor moisture in rice, fat content in milk, acidity in wine processing. This would make waves in enabling real-time quality control and reducing food waste. By making advanced spectroscopy both portable and affordable, they can transform how companies across industries will measure, monitor their products in the future.
Keynote: Integrated Photonics for Quantum Technology in Space
The next session took us beyond the stars as Matteo Rossetto, Space Systems Engineer, OHB System, educated delegates on how integrated photonics are fast becoming a key enabler in the future of Europe's satellite communication network.
OHB is working with the team behind EAGLE-1: a low-earth-orbit satellite providing valuable mission data for a European end-to-end solution for secure Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) services. The main challenge however, is that PIC technology doesn't yet adhere to the European Standard for Space Qualification. But as Matteo explained, OHB continues to use a variety of testing methods to ensure space readiness.
In terms of screening, OHB uses a military test method for microcircuits. To ensure success, visual inspection and burn-in testing are critical, and risk assessment is undertaken in collaboration with the company's fabrication partner. Qualifying components against radiation, mechanical stress, and temperature is also essential; alongside vibration and shock testing.
Keynote: LiDAR-on-a-Chip: The Path to Mass-Market 3D Sensing
"Automation is only going to increase," explained Chris Phare, CSO, Voyant Photonics in the next keynote session. "But currently all available applications still require human intervention. To achieve 100% autonomy, and reach full potential, we need better visibility and perception in everything from manufacturing to logistics to automotive sensing."
While cameras are a great option for now, they only see in 2D. They also fail in low light. Radar and ultrasonics are also key detection technologies but data quality isn't great and is not high resolution enough.
The solution, as he sees it, is to make a move to LiDAR, as it's very effective, high resolution, and offers 3D depth information as well as lateral resolution. However, unlike alternative sensing and visibility technologies, such as cameras and radar, LiDAR is currently expensive and difficult to scale; often costing thousands of dollars.
The main issue is that companies approach LiDAR development with a mechanical process: using many different components: lasers, diodes, slip rings, and PCBs, among others. Real convergence, Chris explained, will come from using PICs and Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave Radar (FMCW). "We don't need mechanical components; we can put everything we need all on an integrated photonic silicon chip."
Where Innovation Meets Implementation
Today's keynote sessions looked at real-world use cases across industries, showing how integrated photonics is quietly becoming an integral part of everything we use. Speakers agreed that the ecosystem has reached a pivotal point. Collaboration and standardisation still matter, but so does creativity, turning breakthroughs in design, packaging, and materials into something that has immediate, visible impact.
The day finished with Peter Van Arkel offering some final thoughts on the way forward; highlighting his commitment to ensuring photonics chips become a key innovation driver for both the Netherlands and Europe.
"We must stay competitive," he said. "We need to open the door to new applications and markets. We're really committed to this goal at PhotonDelta."
Roadmapping remains a key focus, and Peter outlined short, medium and long term ambitions; speculating 15 years ahead to consider the way forward on a national, European, and global scale.
By the event close, one theme was abundantly clear: integrated photonics has moved beyond promise. The focus now is scaling it sustainably, collaboratively, and with purpose.