PIC Summit 2025: Global photonic industry to scale for the AI era

More than 700 leaders from business, academia, and government, including representatives from ASML, NVIDIA, imec, and the European Commission, have gathered for PIC Summit Europe 2025, the continent’s largest event dedicated to integrated photonics. The central theme, “Scaling together in a dynamic world,” captures both the ambition and urgency driving the industry today.

“Just three years ago, integrated photonics was still something of a promise,” opened Irene Rompa the summit’s main stage. “Today, it’s mainstream. There isn’t a data center being built without integrated photonics.”

From promise to pressure

What began as a conversation about community-building and positioning Europe in 2022 has evolved into a global race to meet demand for faster, more energy-efficient hardware, driven by AI, quantum computing, and data-intensive applications.

“2024 was the turning point,” Rompa recalled. “AI became the killer application for integrated photonics. The question was no longer if photonics would take off, but how fast we could deliver.”

That urgency permeates the halls of Eindhoven’s Evoluon, where two packed days of panels and keynotes are unfolding. Day one focused on AI and datacom; day two turns to the next frontier: sensing technologies for healthcare, agrifood, and mobility. “As soon as every car, wearable, and medical device includes a PIC-based sensor,” the audience heard, “the demand will dwarf anything seen in datacenters today.”

“We can only do it together”

For Eelko Brinkhoff, CEO of PhotonDelta - the Dutch organization driving Europe’s photonic chip ecosystem and organizer of the summit - the event is as much about cooperation as technology. “The theme of this year’s summit reflects our core message,” Brinkhoff said in an interview before the opening session. “The industry needs to unite to drive new applications, manufacturing capacity, and standardizations in response to generational changes impacting all of us.”

He sees the AI revolution as both a challenge and an opportunity:

“One of the most pressing issues is the environmental impact and sustainability of AI. Photonic chips can help tackle this by offering substantially more efficient hardware that could power AI into the future.”

But scaling up requires more than innovation; it needs capital, regulatory agility, and global cooperation. “Funding is one of the biggest challenges,” Brinkhoff noted. “In Europe, we have to shift from looking at risks to looking at opportunities: to act with a bit more of an American or Asian mentality: just doing things.”

A global stage

That international mindset is visible everywhere at the summit. Delegations from Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore are attending to deepen partnerships and explore joint ventures with the Dutch ecosystem. Organizations, including Foxconn’s Hon Hai Research Institute, ASE Global, ITRI, Win Semiconductors, Fujitsu, and NEDO, are represented.

“These delegations are the result of years of relationship-building,” said Brinkhoff. “They’ve already led to concrete collaborations, for example, between PHIX and ITRI in Taiwan, and between SCIL Nano and Singapore’s NSTIC. We hope to continue expanding this network, because we can only do it together.”

Setting the agenda for a dynamic world

Beyond the keynote lineup, the summit serves as a stage for new partnership announcements and investment deals that could define the industry’s next phase.

Central to all discussions is a shared question: how can photonic chips and CMOS technologies be integrated efficiently to support exponential AI growth while reducing energy consumption?

As Brinkhoff put it, “It’s about working together: faster, smarter, and across borders.”