€1.65M to €10.4M: Pilot Photonics' EIC Accelerator Comb Lasers

A laser that emits several precisely spaced wavelengths at once, known as an optical frequency comb, can do the work of several separate lasers in a fibre-optic transmitter. Pilot Photonics, a Dublin City University spin-out, set out to put one on a single chip. In June 2019 the European Commission selected its project PICOMB in the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the grant-only forerunner of the EIC Accelerator, and the EU paid €1,650,565.88 towards a €2,357,951.25 project. The proposal promised more than €50 million of revenue from the product within five years of the start and 26 new jobs.

The chips were built. The revenue has not appeared in any public source, and no transceiver maker has announced a product using the comb. In June 2026 the EIC selected the company a second time, for PICO, a chip that generates radio signals with light, with a recommended investment of up to €10.4 million in grant and equity.

What Pilot Photonics Does Now

The company is active. The Irish Companies Registration Office lists Pilot Photonics Limited as a private company limited by shares with status "Normal", registered on 4 August 2011, with accounts filed for the year to 31 December 2024 and an annual return made up to 30 September 2025. Solocheck shows the same filings, classes it as a small company, counts 25 shareholders and lists returns of share allotments dated June 2025 and April 2026, which means new shares were issued; the amounts are not public. Irish small companies may file abridged accounts, and no revenue, profit or staff figure for Pilot Photonics could be found in a free source.

Most of its recent announcements concern not the comb from PICOMB but a fast-switching tunable laser. Launched in January 2023, it switches wavelength in nanoseconds while keeping a narrow linewidth of 150 kHz, a combination the company said no other commercial tunable laser offered, according to its launch release. In March 2026 the start-up Finchetto said it would build these lasers into the next demonstrators of its all-optical data centre switch, and in June 2026 the Galway space laser company MBRYONICS chose them for its terabit-class satellite transceivers, which optics.org also reported. Neither announcement gives volumes or contract values.

The comb has not disappeared. The product page still lists the integrated comb laser assembly (iCLA), the light source that came out of PICOMB, next to laser arrays for co-packaged optics and the Lyra OCS 1000 comb source. Because the comb technology remains at the centre of its newer EU projects, the company is classed here as active rather than pivoted.

The Technology: Many Lasers From One Chip

Coherent optical transceivers, which carry most long-haul internet traffic, use one tunable laser per wavelength. A comb laser produces several wavelengths with a fixed spacing and a fixed phase relation from one source. Pilot generates the comb with a patented gain-switching technique that creates several laser lines from a single device, according to Silicon Republic, and an injection-locked demultiplexer on the same chip separates the lines, its website says. In 2018 Frank Smyth told Gazettabyte that a four-channel comb source cost about a third of a design with four single-mode lasers and needed one thermo-electric cooler instead of four. Fixed spacing also means channels can sit closer together without the guard bands that independent lasers need, the PICOMB report says.

The cost and power claims are the company's own and have not been tested independently in public. The established alternative, arrays of separate tunable lasers, is what transceiver makers ship today, and the PICOMB report itself says commercial coherent transceivers use "one or in some cases two independent single mode lasers".

What PICOMB Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

PICOMB appears under Ireland in the Commission's list of EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 winners for the 5 June 2019 cut-off, with Pilot Photonics as its only beneficiary; the list names no partner company. It was the second EU grant for the same idea: in 2014 the company had received €50,000 for a six-month SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study, also called PICOMB. The grant agreement was signed on 5 December 2019 and the project ran on schedule from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2022, according to CORDIS.

The goal, the final report says, was "to gain market acceptance" for the comb-based transmitter through chip design, prototypes and customer trials, "with a view to commercial partnership formation". The report lists comb laser and coherent optical engine chips, control electronics and software, an evaluation demonstrator, new patents and a trademark, and "trials, development contracts with leading customers", none of them named. It says the light source, now called iCLA, supports data rates of up to 1.8 Tb/s depending on configuration. Pilot showed the iCLA and the SuperTROSA transmitter at the ECOC conference in September 2022, with chips made through the JePPIX pilot line, according to Wiley Industry News.

1. Comb and coherent engine chips, prototypesDeliveredChips and an evaluation demonstrator in the CORDIS report; iCLA shown at ECOC 2022 and listed with a datasheet.
2. Customer trialsPartlyThe report says trials and development contracts were secured; no customer is named anywhere.
3. Commercial partnership for comb transceiversNot achievedNo partner has announced a comb-based coherent transceiver. The 2026 partnerships concern tunable lasers.
4. More than €50M revenue from the product within five yearsNot achievedNo revenue has been published. In 2026 the company forecast ">€44M annual PICO revenue by 2029" and €100M+ company revenue as future goals.
5. 26 new jobsNot achievedNo headcount is published. Gazettabyte reported 11 staff in 2018; the website names 20 people in 2026.

PICOMB did what a development grant can most directly buy: working chips and a demonstrator, on time. What it was meant to unlock, a commercial partner and a product line worth tens of millions, has not been announced six years after the start. The PICOMB delivery is therefore rated partly delivered.

What the Company Has Done Since

Most of the money that followed came from public bodies. In March 2022 the Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Growth Fund II invested €1.8 million, according to Silicon Republic and the company's own release, after a round of close to €1 million led by Kernel and the Dublin Business Innovation Centre in February 2018, also reported by Silicon Republic. In October 2022 the company signed its fourth contract with the European Space Agency, worth €600,000, to develop miniature comb lasers for space science, its release says; a fifth, worth €1 million, followed in June 2026 for an optical frequency generator unit, which the company says builds on PICOMB, according to its announcement.

The EIC came back twice. In 2024 its Transition programme granted €2,482,500 for COCOPOP, which builds on PICOMB to make a comb-based external laser source for co-packaged optics in AI data centres, running from April 2024 to March 2027; the company's announcement put it at €2.5 million. Its first report marks the lab demonstration milestone as achieved and the breadboard prototype as "partially achieved" after delays in chip fabrication, and says a 16-channel laser array built along the way is now sold as a standalone product. The company is also a funded partner in the Horizon Europe project ADOPTION on co-packaged optics (€368,824.75, 2023 to 2026) and in the doctoral network INSIGHT (€341,087.04, from November 2026), and a partner without listed EU funding in MWP4SPACE.

The Second EIC Award: PICO

PICO is on the Commission's list of selected companies published with the EIC's 15 June 2026 announcement of 38 Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator winners, recommended for blended finance. The list is headed "EIC Accelerator 2026, 1st and 2nd Batch"; the source table used for this series dates the round 6 May 2026. Pilot announced "a recommended investment of up to €10.4m" on 2 July 2026, as did TechCentral and its investor Kernel Capital. None of them gives the split between grant and equity.

CORDIS lists the grant: €1,673,437.50, signed on 29 September 2026, for a project from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2028. PICO is meant to generate stable microwave, millimetre-wave and sub-terahertz signals from 8 to 220 GHz on one indium phosphide chip, using the same gain-switched comb, for 6G networks, satellite payloads and test equipment. The objective says the technology was "validated by Airbus, Keysight and ESA via paid contracts and formal evaluations", promises a qualified TRL8 product made with two sources including the Dutch foundry SMART Photonics, and forecasts more than €44 million of annual PICO revenue by 2029 and over 77 jobs. Pilot Photonics does not appear on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which has 319 entries over 16 pages; the EIC says equity investments "will follow based on each company's individual development and funding strategy". The project has just started, so its delivery is rated too early.

Why Europe Should Care

The European Chips Act, in force since 21 September 2023, aims to strengthen Europe's semiconductor supply chain and reduce external dependencies, and the PICO objective presents the project as support for the Chips Act and "EU digital sovereignty". Pilot designs its chips in Ireland and has them made on European indium phosphide platforms, including SMART Photonics, which is itself in the EIC Fund portfolio. Its partners announced in 2026 are European too: Finchetto, MBRYONICS and the European Space Agency.

The Verdict

Pilot Photonics has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.