SMART Photonics' EIC Accelerator Project: Chip Plan Against Record

Most chips move data with electrons. Photonic integrated circuits move it with light, and the ones made from indium phosphide (InP) can also generate that light on the chip, with lasers built in. SMART Photonics, a 2012 spin-off of Eindhoven University of Technology, makes such chips to other companies' designs, the way a contract foundry makes electronic chips. In January 2019 the European Commission picked it in the 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator. The list names SMART Photonics as the only beneficiary of the project, which CORDIS confirms.

The grant came with ambitious numbers. The project summary on CORDIS says that "by 2023, SMART plans €210m revenues at a gross margin of 70% and employ 120 staff." Seven years on, the company employs more than 200 people, has raised €135 million in two large rounds since the grant, and in September 2026 signed a foundry partnership with GlobalFoundries. Whether it ever came near €210 million of revenue cannot be checked: no sales figure is public.

Where SMART Photonics Stands Now

SMART Photonics is active and still run by Johan Feenstra, who was chief executive for both of its large funding rounds. On 21 September 2026 it announced a partnership with GlobalFoundries, the US contract chipmaker, for an open-access foundry service that combines GlobalFoundries' silicon photonics with SMART's InP lasers and optical amplifiers, which are flip-chip mounted into a cavity on the silicon chip. The two companies say they spent more than a year on joint engineering. General availability is targeted for the second half of 2027, according to Semiconductor Today. The aim is the market for optical transceivers in AI data centres, where silicon chips cannot make their own light.

The company's careers page gives "over 200 colleagues representing more than 40 nationalities". The investor database Dealroom puts the headcount at 254. In November 2025 the European Commission selected SMART Photonics as one of eight companies to go forward to the EIC Fund for an equity investment under the EIC STEP Scale Up scheme, which invests €10 million to €30 million per company; the eight were proposed for €171 million in total, as IO+ also reported (Rasph covered the full round). The amount for SMART Photonics, and whether the investment has closed, has not been announced. Investor databases such as CB Insights already list EIC STEP Scale Up among its investors.

The Technology: A Foundry for Chips That Make Their Own Light

Photonic chips can be built on silicon, gallium arsenide or indium phosphide. The final project report sets out the difference that SMART Photonics' business rests on: silicon "can only produce passive components to manipulate light", while InP "can also form active components which generate light (such as lasers and amplifiers)". A fully integrated InP chip therefore needs no external light source.

The second part of the model is the foundry approach. According to TU/e, SMART Photonics is a "pure-play foundry", which in photonics "this Eindhoven company was the first of its kind", built on a generic process developed with Professor Meint Smit. Customers design their chips from a library of tested "building blocks" in a process design kit (PDK) and share wafers in multi-project runs to cut the cost of prototypes. The company now lists more than 50 building blocks, more than 100 patents, more than 500 chip designs made and six multi-project wafer runs a year on its website. The CORDIS report called it "unique as an independent InP foundry", with other makers of InP chips "vertically integrated" and building them only for their own products. That is the company's own claim, submitted to the EU; this article has not checked it against every competing foundry.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant agreement was signed on 9 June 2019 and the project ran from 1 July 2019 to 30 September 2022. CORDIS gives a total cost of €4,606,087.50 and an EU contribution of €3,224,261.25, so the company paid €1,381,826.25 itself. The project had four goals: industrialise production and show scaled manufacture, add new building blocks, build a design infrastructure for "first time right designs", and prepare the company commercially. The proposal also promised a pilot line of 1,000 wafers a year and the "readiness necessary [to] build a commercial scale facility at 20,000 wafers/year".

The final periodic report, for October 2021 to September 2022, is short on numbers. It lists an operational excellence framework with statistical process control, a process capability index (Cpk) above 1 for the main processes in epitaxy, lithography, etching and deposition, a plan for volume manufacturing, and "additional 35M funding for investment in new equipment", which matches the June 2020 round. It reports no wafer volumes, customers or revenue. No deliverables or publications from the project could be found on CORDIS.

1. Industrialise the production processDeliveredCpk above 1 for the main processes, per the CORDIS report; move from 3-inch to 4-inch wafers in January 2024, per IO+.
2. Process design kit and new building blocksDeliveredMore than 50 building blocks in the PDK, per the company and PIC Magazine.
3. Pilot line of 1,000 wafers a yearExceededThe company gives a 4-inch maximum of 5,000 wafers a year, via Wevolver; actual output is not public.
4. Readiness for a 20,000-wafer facilityPartlyA shared 6-inch pilot line aims for about 10,000 wafers a year from 2028.
5. 120 staff by 2023ExceededMore than 200 staff today, per the company; the 2023 headcount itself is not public.
6. €210M revenue at 70% gross margin by 2023Not shownNo revenue figure has been published by the company or a third party.

On the engineering, the project did what it set out to do: a stable, measured process, a design kit customers use, and capacity well beyond the pilot line it promised. The business case it was sold on is another matter. A company that had €210 million of sales at a 70% gross margin would hardly need the Dutch state to step in to keep it in the country, as happened in 2020, or €60 million of public money in 2023. The scorecard marks the revenue goal as not shown, because no source in this article publishes any sales figure.

What SMART Photonics Has Achieved Since the Award

The money that followed the grant was large and largely Dutch. In June 2020 a consortium led by Innovation Industries put in €35 million, of which €20 million came from the Dutch state through the Brabant Development Agency, according to eeNews Europe and TU/e. TU/e reported that the company "had so far failed to attract interest from European investors" and that the state stepped in because foreign investors were interested. Mona Keijzer, then state secretary for economic affairs, wrote to parliament that without the plant, integrated photonics R&D could "disappear from North-Brabant and even the Netherlands", according to TU/e; IO+ describes the state's €20 million as a loan.

In July 2023 the company announced €100 million from ASML, NXP, VDL Groep, ING, BOP Impact Ventures and Invest-NL's Deep Tech Fund, with earlier backers returning and €60 million of public money from the National Growth Fund project PhotonDelta, according to Compound Semiconductor and TU/e. The sources differ on what kind of money it was: the company's announcement, as quoted by Compound Semiconductor, calls the new backers "lenders", while Invest-NL lists its own €5 million as shares. The split between loans and equity in the round has not been published. Silicon Canals also mentions an earlier €13 million loan from Rabobank, without a date; no second source for it was found.

Before the grant, the company had raised €7 million in March 2017 to build a new plant, according to IO+, and another €6 million, mainly from private investors, in September 2018, when investors also converted €4.5 million of loans into shares, according to PIC Magazine. In April 2019, three months after the EIC cut-off, PhotonDelta lent it €3.75 million, its first financing of an ecosystem partner, according to IO+.

On production, the company moved from 3-inch to 4-inch wafers in January 2024, which doubled its production rate because a 4-inch wafer holds nearly twice as many chips, with support from the EU Interreg project OIP4NWE, according to IO+. Its chief operating officer, Guy Backner, said the larger wafers would let it meet market demand "at a competitive price level". The next step is a 6-inch InP pilot line at the High Tech Campus. It is not SMART's own fab: it is hosted by the research organisation TNO as part of the EU Chips Act pilot line PIXEurope, with SMART Photonics among the partners. Ground was broken in March 2026, with more than €150 million of investment, full operation planned for 2028 and a target of up to 10,000 wafers and 10 million chips a year, according to TrendForce. Optics & Photonics News gave the pilot line budget as €153 million in July 2025 and expected it to be operational in 2027; later sources give 2027 to 2028. SMART Photonics' own production page gives a higher figure: its "new 6-inch production", run "in partnership with TNO", is "expected to manufacture more than 12,000 wafers per year" once fully running in 2028. No independent source repeats that number, and how much SMART itself is investing in it has not been published.

The company also kept winning EU research money. North Data lists Horizon Europe and other EU funding after the EIC project, including €1,169,963 for Seqret, a quantum key distribution project, from January 2023, and €4,962,203 of Dutch state aid in July 2023, according to North Data.

The Money: What the Register Shows

The Dutch company register lists SMART Photonics B.V. under KvK number 54843219 at High Tech Campus 37, with no insolvency or name change recorded, according to North Data. Its last balance sheet on file there is for 2022, published on 4 July 2024. The figures in it, and any revenue, equity or loss numbers, are not freely available, and no news report has published them. That leaves the most important number from the 2019 proposal, the €210 million revenue target, without any public check.

Why Europe Should Care

Few EIC beneficiaries sit so squarely in an EU strategic priority. The European Chips Act aims to strengthen Europe's sovereignty in semiconductors, and the Commission proposed a Chips Act 2.0 in June 2026 to reduce strategic dependencies further. The 6-inch InP pilot line next to SMART Photonics is funded under that act. The Dutch state has treated the company as strategic since 2020, when it put in €20 million so that the company would, in TU/e's words, "remain in Dutch hands". InP photonic chips matter for data centre links, 5G and 6G networks, lidar and quantum communication, and an independent European foundry gives European start-ups a place to make them without going to Asia or the United States.

The flip side is concentration. Most of the company's money since the grant came from the Dutch state, Dutch strategic investors and Dutch public funds, and the next large cheque, if it closes, comes from the EU's own fund. The GlobalFoundries deal is the first sign of a large international customer channel, and it only starts in 2027.

The Verdict

SMART 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.