Baden-Württemberg Invests Around €1.3 Million in the Future of Photonic AI

Symbolic Grant Check Presented to IMS CHIPS

Stuttgart, 10 December 2025

On the occasion of the symbolic handover of the funding check, our institute management and Thomas Deuble were present to receive the check from Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism. This marked an important milestone for the further development of photonic AI technologies in Baden-Württemberg – and allows us to officially launch the project.

The funding of approximately €1.3 million is provided under the “Strategic Technologies for Europe” (STEP) platform and financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

At the core of this funding is the project “Real-World Laboratory for Photonic AI II”, which creates a practice-oriented development and testing environment for companies and research institutions.

Photonic computing – the use of light instead of electrons for data processing – enables extremely fast, scalable, and energy-efficient computing operations. Especially in the fields of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, this technology offers significant advantages:

• up to 100 times lower energy consumption compared to conventional digital AI chips,
• extremely high processing speeds,
• a key technology manufactured in Europe, contributing to digital sovereignty.

Given the already high energy consumption of AI data centers and forecasts predicting that global electricity demand could increase by up to 25 percent by 2030 due to AI alone, the potential of photonic technologies becomes particularly evident.

With the Real-World Laboratory for Photonic AI, IMS CHIPS aims to establish Baden-Württemberg and Europe as leading locations for energy-efficient AI hardware. Through technology-intensive innovations “Made in Europe,” dependencies on non-European providers are to be reduced and long-term security of supply strengthened.

What exactly Dr. Hoffmeister-Kraut said during the grant check handover can easily be viewed in the following video:

Further information on ERDF funding in Baden-Württemberg:
https://efre-bw.de/