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This year’s Photonics100 honourees are drawn from an industry in growth, but they also highlight some of its challenges


US T


he second child is easier, or so they say! Whether true of people or not, bringing the second annual Photonics100 list into the world


was certainly more challenging than the first... but for entirely positive reasons. For starters, we had many more


nominations this year, giving us a much better spread of responses from across the industry. We are extremely grateful to everyone who took part, whether they made it into the final list or not. Secondly, the contributions were more


comprehensive this year, which took longer to assess. However, this has helped us to paint a clearer picture of our vast and multi-disciplinary industry, one which we will continue to share with you over the next year on electrooptics.com/thephotonics100 in the form of extended interviews, features and more.


As you can see from the panels on these


pages, the global spread of this year’s list has expanded, while the gender gap has widened a little, but we are sure you’ll agree that this year’s 100 is again drawn equitably from the domains of research, start-ups, integrators and vendors and is as illuminating as (or perhaps more than?) last year’s line-up.


The trillion-dollar photonics market? Since the last Photonics100 was published, market growth predictions issued in 2022 have continued on track or been surpassed. According to Straits Research, the value


of the global photonics market is estimated to reach $1,100bn by 2030, up from $630bn in 2021, and to grow at a CAGR of 7.3% during the forecast period (2022–2030). In Germany, Jörg Mayer, Managing Director of Spectaris, the German trade


Germany UK


Israel Spain


France


30 17 14 5 5 4


The Netherlands 3 Lithuania Belgium Sweden Australia


2 2 2 2


Greece


Switzerland Canada Pakistan Czechia Ukraine Poland


Portugal Japan Austria


Denmark


2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1


2


30


association, told the opening day of Laser World of Photonics this summer that annual sales growth of around 7% is expected until 2027. Spectaris said the market for core photonic components, such as LEDs, lasers and sensors, is growing at a rate of more than 10% per annum. In the UK, the photonics industry is


The Photonics100 by gender


While this year’s Photonics100 had honourees based in more countries than last year’s list, the gender split did not show an improvement in terms of diversity, with 23 women making it on to this year’s list, down from 26 last year. This is doubly concerning if we again look at the proportion of women who responded to SPIE’s 2023 salary survey. Some 23.3% of respondents to SPIE’s survey were women, which may lead one to believe that the Photonics100 is at least matching the overall breakdown of the industry in terms of gender representation. However, SPIE’s number was up two percentage points on the 2022 figure, while the Photonics100 fell by two since its first iteration.


It is a subjective set and a smaller sample size, certainly, but we would still like to see more women next year joining the likes of


Female 23%


predicted to grow to more than £17bn by 2024 and to £50bn by 2035, according to a report from the UK Photonics Leadership Group (PLG) published this summer. The PLG attributes these growth


projections to rising demand for photonics technologies in agriculture, health, communications, defence, satellites, and manufacturing industries, as well as the increasing commercialisation of quantum products. Recent announcements on both


Male 77%


Pu Jian, Cailabs’ Chief Product Officer & Deputy-CEO; Ruti Ben Shlomi, LightSolver CEO; Bárbara Buades, Meetoptics CEO; and Zero Point Motion CEO Lia Li, to name but a few.


investment and government funding bolster this robust view of the industry. Included


among recent funding announcements were: n PhotonVentures, a Dutch venture capital firm, which raised €60m in its inaugural fund to invest in the European photonics industry, and is aiming for €150m by the


end of 2024. n SmartPhotonics, which specialises in photonic integrated circuits, secured €100m


g 6 Photonics100 2024


Country


# of P100 honourees


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