For 25 years, High Tech Campus Eindhoven has been a center of technical innovation. In the past few years, it has also become an integrated photonics hub. Some in the industry go so far as to say HTCE is a European “hotspot” for integrated photonics, with its density of organizations starting, expanding or relocating here.
As a hub, HTCE hosts not just the startups and scale-ups in the increasingly crucial integrated photonics sector but also a cross-border ecosystem of photonic chip technology organizations.
Photo copyright EFFECT Photonics
You could call PhotonDelta an “ecosystem orchestrator” for integrated photonics in the Netherlands. It’s a non-profit organization supporting an end-to-end value chain for photonic chips.
Founded in 2014, PhotonDelta landed 1.1 billion euros in public and private investment capital to transform Europe into the leader of next-generation semiconductors. PhotonDelta’s headquarters is located at building HTC 31.
Photonic integrated circuits, or PICs, use photons (light) to transmit data. To apply a photonic chip in applications, you still need conventional chips. PICs can combine multiple photonic functions on a single chip, making photonic data transmission faster and more energy efficient.
Illustration copyright PhotonDelta
PICs are revolutionizing multiple industry sectors, including healthcare, communications, automotive, agrifood and aerospace.
To ensure Europe and the Netherlands strengthens its position as a global innovator, PhotonDelta facilitates the growth of startups, the creation of new photonic chip applications, as well as the development of infrastructure and talent.
Leveraging funding from the Dutch National Growth Fund, alongside strategic investments, they catalyze the acceleration of the photonic chip industry by stimulating industrialization of PIC technology, and PIC-based application building, and forging connections with viable markets and stakeholders.
Photo copyright SMART Photonics
In 2022, PhotonDelta announced it had been awarded 1.1 billion euros to fund 200 startups on the same day HighTechXL announced its partnership with PhotonDelta. As the Netherland’s only deep-tech venture builder, it made sense for HTXL to collaborate with PhotonDelta to get startups to market.
If high tech is hard, deep tech is harder. Yet HighTechXL has churned out five ventures using integrated photonics sensors in five distinct industries, and PhotonDelta has provided early-stage funding for three of them.
Multiple PIC startups are forming or growing exponentially, including the Netherlands’ only Pure-play InP foundry, SMART Photonics. In 2023, EFFECT Photonics moved its operations to HTCE.
The two pioneering photonics companies are neighbors at building HTC 37. SMART Photonics is a spin-off from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Philips and was launched in 2012. It’s been based at HTCE from the early days.
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Photo copyright EFFECT Photonics
EFFECT Photonics is also a spin-off from TU/e. It was founded in 2014 and moved from its Strijp-S location in late 2023 to building HTC 37. EFFECT Photonics is headquartered here and has additional facilities in the UK, the U.S. and Taiwan.
Campus resident NXP (HTC 60 and HTC 91), one of the largest chip makers in Europe, is part of a syndicate that recently invested 100 million euros in SMART Photonics to expand its manufacturing capabilities and develop new PIC technology.
While the photonics revolution is well under way, there are still technical challenges to overcome. As of early 2025, there are multiple startups focused on, or using, integrated photonics, including creating chips that can transmit data at various light wavelengths simultaneously on the same chip. Toward that end, Holst Centre in building HTC 31 is creating labs for outside companies to use for photonics research.
At this document, we list all the major integrated photonics players at Campus (and nearby) by category so you can understand the dense web of a thriving ecosystem and how all the players are connected. And while most of these companies are either based at High Tech Campus or have locations here, we’ve also included companies and institutions we consider essential to the integrated photonics ecosystem but that are located outside the epicenter of HTCE.
We call this #openinnovation.
Download the entire list of more than 30 integrated photonics players here.
