PhotonDelta photonic IC contest targets new PIC applications
PhotonDelta has launched the 2026 edition of its engineering challenge for new applications built on photonic integrated circuits (PICs), aiming to pull earlier-stage ideas into an ecosystem that can design, prototype, package and (if it makes sense) fund them. The announcement was timed with PIC Summit USA 2026 in Sunnyvale, California.
PhotonDelta photonic IC contest: what’s on offer
The headline incentive is a mix of engineering capacity and a potential funding path. The 2026 winner can access up to €100,000 worth of engineering and manufacturing services and be considered for PhotonDelta backing of up to €2 million, with a pitch slot on the PIC Summit Europe 2026 main stage.
How the PhotonDelta photonic IC contest will run
Submissions are open until 19 June 2026, with winners due to be announced in August (date not specified). The contest is positioned around application pull (communications/computing, imaging, sensing, wireless) rather than a single device technology, and it is backed by an ecosystem that spans design, foundry access and packaging/assembly. PhotonDelta’s own ecosystem update on Perceptra’s follow-on funding gives a useful clue to the intended “after the prize” pathway: the 2025 winner subsequently secured €1.2 million from PhotonDelta and began relocating R&D activity into the Netherlands’ photonics cluster.
Relevance for photonic chip commercialisation
The practical point is speed: photonic IC application ideas often stall between lab proof-of-concept and the first manufacturable iteration, largely because “the hard bits” are spread across specialist design flows, MPW access, test, and packaging. This year’s PhotonDelta photonic IC contest is another attempt to standardise that on-ramp and turn one-off prototypes into something that can be built again, validated, and sold. As previously reported by eeNews Europe when the first edition of the engineering contest was launched, PhotonDelta has been using contests and targeted funding to seed applications as well as startups.
For applicants, the bar is likely to be less about a polished product plan and more about whether the concept is technically plausible on a PIC, has a credible route through packaging and test, and maps to a real deployment problem. For PhotonDelta and partners, the contest is a structured way to surface demand-side use-cases that justify investing in shared infrastructure and supply-chain capability.
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