Lightmatter’s Passage L20 CPX points to a deeper shift in AI infrastructure. As compute scales, photonics is moving beyond performance breakthroughs toward standardized interfaces, interoperable components and the industrial architecture required to connect ever-larger AI systems.
Artificial intelligence may appear weightless and digital, but robotics ultimately depends on energy, materials and physics. This article explores how batteries, compute efficiency, photonics and infrastructure could determine the future limits of autonomous machines.
Nvidia is pouring billions into photonics as the future of artificial intelligence shifts beyond the GPU. Yet a growing debate suggests the next bottleneck may not lie in silicon photonics itself, but in the packaging, assembly and integration systems needed to connect AI infrastructure at unprecedented scale.
Europe’s semiconductor strategy is increasingly shifting from manufacturing scale toward strategic infrastructure. This illustration highlights the interconnected ecosystems — from lithography and materials to photonics, automotive systems and research — that together form Europe’s emerging technology stack.
A new generation of chips is emerging—one that relies on light instead of electrons. As photonics moves from experiment to platform, technology shifts from processing information toward sensing and interacting with the physical world.
Semiconductors have become the backbone of modern power, shaping geopolitics, AI and global supply chains. From ASML’s unique position to Taiwan’s strategic role, this deep dive explores how chips evolved into the most critical resource of the digital age.
As AI systems scale, the real constraint is no longer compute but connectivity. At OFC 2026, photonics—and specifically chip packaging—emerges as the critical layer enabling performance, efficiency and scalability, positioning the Netherlands as a strategic player in global AI infrastructure.
The Age of Light explores artificial intelligence beyond algorithms. By examining meaning, machines and the physics of computation, the book explains how chips, photonics, energy systems and infrastructure are shaping the future of intelligence in an increasingly physical digital world.
Artificial intelligence is often described as a software revolution, but beneath the algorithms lies a deeper transformation. From chips and photonics to energy systems and infrastructure, the future of intelligence is increasingly shaped by physics and the physical architecture of computing.
We believed artificial intelligence would be a contest of code — faster models, larger datasets, smarter architectures. But the decisive battles of the coming decade are unlikely to be fought inside neural networks. They will unfold in substations, cooling plants, transmission corridors and the mud of construction sites. The constraint is no longer how much intelligence we can design, but how much physical reality we can sustain.
