A New Golden Age for Photonics

At the 2025 SPRC Symposium on Photonics at Stanford University, Walden Catalyst Partner Francis Ho joined leading researchers and industry experts to discuss the future of photonics across AI, quantum, and life sciences. His key message: we are entering a new golden age for photonics in datacenters, driven by the explosive growth of AI.

Three Waves of Photonics Innovation

Francis outlined how photonics innovation has evolved over the past decades:

• The early days of fiber optics: Most high-value products were customized optics inside large systems.

• The datacenter boom (2000s onward): As datacenters scaled, a massive new market emerged for pluggable transceivers. Today, this remains the largest photonics segment serving datacenters.

• The AI-driven era (today): With AI and data workloads exploding, energy and cooling have become the #1 concern. A new type of startup has emerged: the full stack photonics company, co-designing hardware with datacenter systems and software, from copackaged optics to compiler-level optimizations, to unlock performance while reducing energy.

Why It Matters for Startups and Investors

While all of these areas are called “photonics,” Francis stressed that they are in fact radically different markets with distinct volumes, economics, exit opportunities, and capital requirements. For founders and VCs, understanding these differences is critical to building scalable, sustainable businesses.

At Walden Catalyst, we believe this new chapter in photonics innovation will be foundational to enabling the future of AI infrastructure.