In early October, the European Commission (EC) announced a €1 billion initiative to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in key industries, highlighting the region's ambition to strengthen its technological sovereignty and industrial competitiveness. 

The funding is aimed at boosting AI adoption across sectors viewed as critical to the European Union’s economic future, such as energy, manufacturing, health care, defense, communications and more. Health care applications increasingly combine optical imaging and spectroscopy with AI-driven diagnostics. The huge data requirements of AI workloads rely on optical communication networks for connectivity that exhibits high speed and low latency. In manufacturing, photonics-based tools such as laser machining enable the high precision and automation that AI aims to advance. 

The plan is framed around AI, but many of the industries targeted depend on light-based technologies developed for communications, sensing, imaging and manufacturing, which places optics and photonics at the core of the digital transformation the EC is seeking to realize.

The announcement comes at a time when Europe’s photonics industry is working to establish its importance in the EU’s 10^th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, or FP10. This scheme will succeed Horizon Europe (FP9) and will cover the 2028–2043 period. 

These initiatives suggest a reordering of priorities, with the field of photonics providing the hardware backbone and AI acting as the software engine powering Europe’s competitiveness and industrial evolution.

In September, major technology and industrial leading companies joined the Photonics21 association on a call for a stand-alone €2 billion photonics programme within FP10. The coalition, which included firms such as Bosch, Nokia, Volkswagen and Dutch multinational ASML, argues that photonics is a critical enabling technology underpinning AI, quantum, semiconductor manufacturing and other areas that are vital to the EU’s technological independence. 

The common ground between industrial and political agendas marks a step forward in Europe’s understanding of technological sovereignty. The EC’s AI plan represents an effort to ensure the region does not fall behind in data-driven innovation, while the Photonics21 coalition highlights that true autonomy relies on mastery over the physical technologies, such as lasers, sensors and photonic chips, that enable those digital systems to function. 

Together, these initiatives suggest a reordering of priorities, with the field of photonics providing the hardware backbone and AI acting as the software engine powering Europe’s competitiveness and industrial evolution, an approach that combines mastery of light with mastery of code.