BelGaN, a gallium nitride (GaN) foundry in Odenaard, East Flanders, was once Belgium's last industrial chip manufacturer. However, in July 2024, BelGaN filed for bankruptcy, leaving more than 440 employees unemployed. Now, its asset managers have reached an agreement for a European investor to buy the plant for 20.35 million euros (including an advance payment of 2 million euros already paid). The facility contains two large clean rooms, but does not involve manufacturing equipment, which was sold in an online auction of around 1,800 batches (including wafer processing machines, mainframe computers and other specialized equipment) between the end of November and mid-March this year, with auction proceeds of more than 23 million euros.
In mid-March, asset managers revealed that new investors planned to invest between €200 million and €250 million to restart chip production at the plant, which is expected to provide 500 jobs, though gallium nitride is no longer involved in the production.
Ali Herman, an asset manager, said: "There is a business plan for the production of photonic chips." He added: "This new technology is mainly used in AI data centers and the automotive industry. ”
According to the Belgian newspaper Die Zeit, the project will gradually increase the number of jobs, from nearly 100 employees in 2026 to nearly 600 in 2030, while also creating an equal number of indirect jobs.
Market Prospects for Photonic Chips Photonic chips, also known as optical chips, are integrated circuits that use light instead of electricity to transmit data. With the rapid development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, and the Internet of Things, the demand for high-speed and low-power computing is increasing day by day, and photonic chips have shown huge application potential in these fields, and their market prospects are very broad.
Figure: European companies are investing up to €250 million in photonic chip production
The market size is growing rapidly
According to market research firm Yole, the photonic integrated circuit market is expected to reach $54 billion by 2035. Nowadays, data traffic is exploding, especially in data centers, which have to process massive amounts of data every day. Traditional electronic chips are gradually difficult to meet the needs in terms of data transmission speed and energy consumption, and photonic chips have become the key to solving this dilemma with the advantages of high transmission speed, high bandwidth, and low power consumption. Taking the optical interconnection application of data center as an example, photonic chips can achieve faster data transmission, reduce the delay of data processing, and greatly improve the operation efficiency of data centers, which also promotes the rising demand for photonic chips by data center operators and strongly promotes the expansion of market scale.
Multi-field application expansion
Artificial Intelligence and Data Centers: In the field of artificial intelligence, AI computing power clusters require extremely high data processing speed and efficiency. Photonic chips can be used for optoelectronic hybrid computing, significantly improving computing speed and energy efficiency, and meeting the needs of AI algorithms for fast processing of massive data. In the data center, in addition to optical interconnection, photonic chips also have advantages in optical storage, which can achieve faster data reading and writing and improve the performance of storage systems.
5G/6G Communications: As communication technology evolves to 5G and beyond, there is a growing demand for high-speed and stable communication connections. Photonic chips can be applied to high-speed optical modules to improve signal transmission speed and quality, reduce signal attenuation, enable 5G/6G networks to carry more device connections and data traffic, and enhance the overall performance of communication networks.
Automotive: In the automotive field, especially with the development trend of autonomous driving, vehicles need to quickly process large amounts of data from sensors such as lidar and cameras. Photonic chips can efficiently process this data, improve the response speed and decision-making accuracy of autonomous driving systems, and ensure driving safety. The new investors plan to apply photonic chip technology to the automotive industry, seeing great potential in this area.
Other emerging fields: In the biomedical field, photonic chips can be used for high-resolution imaging to assist in disease diagnosis; In the field of quantum computing, the research of photonic qubits also brings new possibilities for the development of quantum computing. In the aerospace field, photonic chips can be applied to optical networking and data transmission to improve the performance of aerospace systems.
Technological innovation drives development
The development of silicon photonics technology has made it possible to integrate optical components such as lasers and modulators directly into silicon chips, which has greatly facilitated the development of photonic chips, which can enable high-speed data transmission over longer distances, meeting the needs of telecom companies and data centers for more efficient communication solutions. In addition, the research of quantum photonic chips is also advancing, which uses the principles of quantum mechanics for ultra-high-speed computing, and has broad application prospects in the fields of cryptography, data encryption and quantum computing, which is expected to promote the further growth of the photonic chip market in the future.
