Show Notes 164: Bright Lights and Big Ideas: Photonics at Cambridge Tech Week

Welcome back to our Cambridge Tech scene round-up! This week’s Cambridge Tech Podcast delivers a lively dose of news, expert insight, and vibrant discussion.

What’s Lighting Up Cambridge?

As ever, hosts Faye Holland and James Parton set the stage, sharing news you need to know:

• Major local growth. The number of new UK technology incorporations in the east of England soared to another record high in Q3 2025 … jumping 40% from Q3 2024.

• Venture Capital is Flowing: The east of England has attracted £785 million in venture capital investment in Q3 2025, double the value of the previous quarter.

• Cambridge social enterprise Form the Future bolsters its leadership with AstraZeneca’s Sean Grady and Professor Andy Neely of Innovate Cambridge coming onboard.

The Main Event: All Eyes on Photonics

In the second of our exclusive recordings from Cambridge Tech Week 20025, we spotlight photonics, a sector critical to the future of compute, AI, quantum, and more. The expert panel includes Elizabth Pattersob from Seagate Technology, Dr Gwen Wyatt-Moon of Propsectral, Dr Josh Silverstone of Hartley Ultrafast, Mark Rushworth of Finchetto Ltd and Matthew Andreson of Wave Photonics, neatly hosted by Dr Andy Sellars of Cornerstone.

• Silicon Photonics Hits its Stride: Silicon photonics is finally becoming mature and we can contemplate using it for really, really large scale stuff, which is very exciting.

• New wafer-scale integrations could massively up the ante for data centre performance and bandwidth.

Photonics at the Heart of AI and Data Storage:

• Seagate’s Mosaic 4 Plus hard drive, using photonic HAMR technology, can store up to 30TB – and the ambition is 100TB and beyond.

Quantum Leap:

• Photonics is going to be crucial for scaling different modalities of quantum computers … that is likely going to be a photonic interface.

Why the UK? Why Now?

• Forget that tired “we don’t make things here” narrative. The UK is carving a niche in photonics that doesn’t require bleeding-edge foundries:

Manufacturing Opportunities:

• Cutting edge electronics is beyond the UK’s capability. Cutting edge photonics is not.” With photonic devices often using legacy (but capable) semiconductor equipment, volume production at UK facilities like Southampton’s Cornerstone is realistic.

Specialisation over Scale. The UK excels in:

• Packaging technology and rapid prototyping

• University-industry collaboration

• Strong material science (e.g., thin film lithium niobate)

• Talent and R&D Ecosystem:

• The fact that we do have very strong connections with universities, we have a good talent pipeline, that already exists … a real strong capability.

Room for Growth:

The panel also points to challenges (like retaining skills locally and scaling manufacturing) but consensus is clear: the ecosystem from idea to prototype is world-class.

Innovation Agenda: Food, Health, and a Touch of Art

• The keynote from Professor Andrew Fitzgibbon captures the spirit of the episode: let’s use novel technologies to tackle core human challenges and free up creativity.

• “When we build technologies, we are building those technologies to provide us with food, shelter, keep ourselves healthy … and then of course, we can spend the rest of it making art.”

If you want to hear the vibrant debate, real-world applications, and candid opinions straight from the experts, make sure you tune into this week’s episode.

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