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Photonics

Early commercialmomentum 34482 papers in 3 months (-48% yearly)$1.5B raised in 12 months30 companies

Using light instead of electrons to move, switch and process data, and to sense the world with lasers.

Why early commercial: NVIDIA announced Spectrum-X and Quantum-X silicon photonics switches with co-packaged optics built with TSMC and optics suppliers. Mar 18, 2025

Papers per monthOpenAlex journal and conference papers; January includes papers dated by year only; the last two months are still filling in
06211.2kSep 24Mar 25Sep 25Mar 26

Dots under a month: dated events tracked here that month.

26 events

DateEvent
Sep 2026
Sep 23Q.ANT releases an open-source SDK for photonic computingqant.com· Product
Sep 21Marvell shows first 2nm optical DSP demos at ECOC 2026investor.marvell.com· Product
Aug 2026
Aug 31Podcast: Lasers and materials of the futureNSF news· AnnouncementUnverified
Aug 13Open Silicon Photonics for AI Systems becomes an Open Compute Project workstreamlightmatter.co· Announcement
Aug 5Aeva launches an optical connectivity business with a hyperscaler agreementaeva.com· Announcement
Jun 2026
Jun 3Lightmatter joins NVIDIA NVLink Fusionlightmatter.co· Announcement
Jun 2Ayar Labs joins the NVIDIA NVLink Fusion ecosystemayarlabs.com· Announcement
Apr 2026
Apr 15Molex agrees to acquire Teramount, a fiber-to-chip CPO connector startupteramount.com· Deal
Mar 2026
Mar 11Lightmatter samples Passage CPO chiplet at 1.6 Tbps per fiberlightmatter.co· Milestone
Feb 2026
Feb 2Marvell completes its acquisition of Celestial AIinvestor.marvell.com· Deal
Jan 2026
Jan 27MicroVision wins Luminar's lidar assets for $33 million in a bankruptcy auctionir.microvision.com· Deal
Jan 26Lightmatter and GUC partner to produce co-packaged optics for hyperscalerslightmatter.co· Deal
Dec 2025
Dec 2Marvell agrees to buy Celestial AI for about $3.25 billion upfrontinvestor.marvell.com· Deal
Nov 2025
Nov 18Q.ANT unveils its second-generation photonic processorqant.com· Product
Nov 10MicroVision agrees to buy Scantinel Photonics' FMCW lidar businessir.microvision.com· Deal
Sep 2025
Sep 26Alchip and Ayar Labs unveil co-packaged optics for AI scale-up beyond the rackayarlabs.com· Product
Jul 2025
Jul 22Q.ANT photonic processor goes into operation at Leibniz Supercomputing Centreqant.com· Milestone
Apr 2025
Apr 9Lightelligence publishes PACE, a large-scale photonic accelerator, in Naturenature.com· Breakthrough
Apr 9Lightmatter reports a photonic processor running real AI models in Naturenature.com· Breakthrough
Mar 2025
Mar 31Lightmatter announces Passage L200 3D co-packaged opticslightmatter.co· Product
Mar 31Ayar Labs unveils a UCIe optical interconnect chipletayarlabs.com· Product
Mar 31Lightmatter unveils Passage M1000 3D photonic interposerlightmatter.co· Product
Mar 18NVIDIA unveils Spectrum-X and Quantum-X silicon photonics switchesnvidianews.nvidia.com· Product
Mar 12OpenLight and Tower Semiconductor demonstrate 400G per lane silicon photonics modulatorsopenlightphotonics.com· Milestone
Dec 2024
Dec 2MIT photonic chip runs all key deep neural network steps opticallynews.mit.edu· Breakthrough
Nov 2024
Nov 19Q.ANT launches its first commercial photonic Native Processing Unitqant.com· Product
About photonics here
Sub-areas
Silicon photonics, Co-packaged optics, Optical interconnects and circuit switching, Optical computing, Lasers and light sources, Lidar, Thin-film lithium niobate
Stage evidence
Early commercial, Mar 18, 2025: NVIDIA announced Spectrum-X and Quantum-X silicon photonics switches with co-packaged optics built with TSMC and optics suppliers. nvidianews.nvidia.com
Momentum
34 of 100: the mean of its ranks among the tracked fields for paper growth (0), funding in 12 months (50) and events in 90 days (53). Method
Papers
3,777 in the 12 months ending two months ago, -48% against the 12 before (OpenAlex topics, journal and conference papers).
Tracked here since
Sep 25, 2026

Changes to this field

DateChange
Sep 25, 2026PhotonicsTechnology: Added

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