Short Term Gains For Long Term Success

We caught up with PhotonDelta’s executive board member and CFO, Laurens Weers, who reflects on what Phase 1 demanded and what Phase 2 will require for the Netherlands government-funded National Growth Fund Programme.

Success, as he sees it, means continuing to encourage collaboration across the wider integrated photonics sector, while unlocking commercial opportunities by addressing the technology’s most urgent challenges.

The PhotonDelta National Growth fund programme comprises two 3-year phases. Can you shed some light on its progress and ambition? 

PhotonDelta and its ecosystem partners have worked hard for over a decade to build the knowledge base and infrastructure needed to advance integrated photonics. And we’ve done that right here in the Netherlands. 

Back in 2015, when PhotonDelta started, it was clear then that all of the unique knowledge in universities like the Eindhoven University of Technology and The University of Twente needed to spin out of academia and find pathways into commercial applications. The first phase of our National Growth Fund programme, between 2023 and 2025, has been focused on building further on the path “from lab to fab” in order to have supply chain infrastructure available at the right scale. 

The challenge now is to become more effective in creating commercial breakthroughs in terms of tangible revenues. Industrialisation is a means to an end.

Put bluntly: we need short term gains to assure long term success. 

If Phase 1 of the PhotonDelta project was about initialisation, will Phase 2 focus on commercialisation? 

In short, it has to be. As we move into the programme’s next phase, the emphasis must change. The sense of urgency underpinning this technology has recalibrated. We must now step boldly towards commercial demand.

Phase 1 posed a fundamental question: Can integrated photonics truly move from a promise to adoption in application markets, solving real-world challenges? 

The answer is ‘yes’: primarily, this is because we structured the ecosystem in a very deliberate way. Reliability came before ambition. We had to create the conditions for success first, and I’m proud thatthe ecosystem now has solid momentum: a ‘build, repeat, and improve’ approach. 

We recognised a strong need to professionalise and scale the supply chain side of this industry: design, fabrication, and packaging. We made sure that happened here in the Netherlands by investing in our ecosystem. Physical proximity has definitely made it easier to iterate, pivot, and collaborate collectively and to enable different application companies to grow.

As the second phase begins, it’s clear that we have the capacity and capabilities to advance industrialisation. We’ve cemented a lot of international partnerships in recent years. Our supply chain can serve our application companies and also the international datacom demand. All the right ingredients are there. 

There appears to be massive momentum here. Is it fair to say that Photonics is not next; it’s now?

Absolutely. We’re living in an era of rapid technological transformation, where AI’s energy demands clash with data movement and bandwidth limitations. And that’s before we consider potential game-changing applications across medical diagnostics, imaging, security, and sensing technologies. 

Photonic chips matter here and now. But chips alone don’t win markets; systems do. Photonic chips only make an impact when chips fit into system architectures and can be put to work to solve real-world challenges. And while we know they can, this needs to be demonstrably visible. We need to see commercially viable results. That’s the core ambition at the heart of the next three years of the National Growth Fund programme.

Take the example of LiDAR, which still has huge potential in the automotive industry. We know photonic chips play a key role in the future of LiDAR technology, but to be able to capitalise on their potential, we need to align with the needs of car manufacturers and their system providers, making sure we fit their system requirements. 

So how do we do this? How can we all benefit and drive the photonic chip sector forward? 

When you want to build a new industry, there is always a ‘chicken and egg’ problem. You need a supply chain to be able to grow application companies. But application companies can only grow when there is a supply chain. We’ve all worked together to bridge these gaps as part of wider efforts to put the Dutch government’s innovation plans in motion. 

The past three years were successful in fostering collaboration between ecosystem partners and the wider international photonic chip community, and the coming three years will be a continued evolution. It means our partners are building connections where they see the most immediate commercial potential. 

But this is more than just networking. Success is contingent on understanding these vertical sectors’ roadmaps and identifying where integrated photonics fits into their ambitions. This relies on understanding how their products are scaling, what end-user demand looks like, and creating partnerships to help them reach tangible innovation goals. 

Short term actions to ensure long term viability. That’s been baked into our DNA since the start. It’s the same two-pronged approach we’ve had from the outset. But now, in order to make good on our collective achievements so far, we need to provide solutions, which means finding the right problems to solve.

Scaling deep tech requires repetition, standardisation, and reliability. It’s not glamorous, and it’s pragmatic, but it worked in Phase 1. That same momentum will drive the next three years, but simply put, Phase 2 will reward delivery over potential.