Technology brief: Photonics and lasers

Patent landscape

Status: no landscape series for this technology. Photonics and lasers are classified by what they are, not by their use in quantum technologies, so no CPC group isolates their quantum use.

Patent families of companies taking part

Status: 128 of 128 companies looked up, latest lookup 2026-10-29. 192 distinct quantum patent families across them (every quantum CPC group searched).

Companies with families, by the country CORDIS records for them: France 5, Germany 4, Netherlands 3, Austria 2, Switzerland 2, Denmark 2, Spain 1, United Kingdom 1, Israel 1, Italy 1, South Korea 1, Poland 1. This is where the company is registered in CORDIS, not the applicant residence of each patent or where anything is made.

These families cover every quantum CPC group searched, not this technology alone: no patent group isolates it.

Source: European Patent Office, Open Patent Services, under its terms of use; derived counts only. EPO Open Patent Services terms

Supply-chain stages and documented actors

This building block corresponds to the supply-chain segment Photonics, lasers and optics; the segment uses its own title keywords, so its counts on the supply-chain page differ slightly.

Supply-chain segments of the projects

1187 projects; a project counts in every segment whose keywords its title names. 128 companies (private for-profit organisations in CORDIS) and 379 organisations in all take part.

Documented here means taking part in an EU-funded project, as CORDIS records it. These organisations are not verified suppliers, and no customer or supplier relationship is inferred from shared projects.

Sources: CORDIS projects and organisations (Publications Office of the European Union), retrieved 2026-10-16; parts tree from public review articles. Supply-chain segments, projects and companies

Research and funding

1187 projects in the sources used (CORDIS 192, EU Funding & Tenders Portal 6, Kohesio 49, ANR (France) 80, FWF Research Radar 83, OpenAIRE Graph (national funders) 297, NWOpen API (Netherlands) 32, Research Ireland 17, Gateway to Research (United Kingdom) 391, ARAMIS (Switzerland) 37, Research Council of Norway 3). A project belongs to this building block when its title names it, with the keywords of the technology map; each source counts once per project.

Each project counts once. A total adds the amount each source states for its projects within one measure and one currency only: EU contributions, national awards and other measures are never added together. Total cost includes the award and is shown separately. A country filter keeps whole projects with a participant in the country, so its total is not the country's share. Programme envelopes, partner shares, co-funding and payments are separate layers and are never added to awards; payments are not published by the sources used. Outputs are linked only through an explicit project or grant identifier or reviewed documentary evidence, never by name alone; only a reviewed document can show a demonstrated contribution. CORDIS and Funding & Tenders amounts are one measure, the EU contribution (maximum grant agreed in the grant agreement, not payments). Country codes EL and UK are read as GR (Greece) and GB (United Kingdom). National and regional rows whose title names no quantum technology are left out unless asked for.

Largest awards in euro

• NLPQT – National Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Technologies (total eligible expenditure EUR 197,029,284.13, start 2018-11-02)
• P4Q: Photonics for Quantum Pilot Line (EU contribution (maximum grant agreed) EUR 24,927,964.81, start 2026-04-01)
• OPTIMAS: OPTIcal MilitAry Secure communications (EU contribution (maximum grant agreed) EUR 16,949,330.70, start 2024-12-01)
• atomQtrl: Securing the French supply chain of quantum atom-control dedicated lasers (aid allocated (France 2030, operated by the ANR) EUR 15,000,000, start 2023-04-01)
• PHOQUS: Photon-based scalable quantum information science (EU contribution (maximum grant agreed) EUR 11,490,257, start 2026-09-01)

Includes rows from the ANR open data: ANR, data.gouv.fr, ODbL 1.0; those rows are shared alike under the Open Database Licence.

Sources and retrieval dates: CORDIS 2026-10-16; EU Funding & Tenders Portal 2026-10-21; national 2026-10-24. Every award in Follow the money

Facilities and deployment

Status: not recorded. The infrastructure catalogue and the deployment tracker classify entries by quantum pillar, not by building block.

Regional positions

Only figures that state their geography are shown. Figures for different regions, definitions or years are listed side by side and never combined, scored or ranked.

Participation in these EU-funded projects

826 participations from EU Member States and 645 from other countries (one per project and country). EU programmes fund mainly participants in the EU and associated countries, so this is not a comparison of regional strength.

Figures from published reports about this technology

Status: no approved report figure is about this technology alone.

Figures about quantum technologies as a whole

Context only: these figures cover every quantum technology, not this one.

Sources: approved figures of the report evidence store, each with its publisher, edition and page; CORDIS for participations. Registered reports and their figures · Public funding commitments around the world

Evidence gaps

What this page does not cover, so that missing evidence is not read as absence:

• No patent landscape: no CPC group isolates this technology (see the CPC mapping below).
• Patent counts are published documents in a CPC group, not patent families, and no applicant country is available from the search used; the families of companies come from organisation lookups and are not a census.
• Supplier relationships are not documented: companies are participants of EU-funded projects, not verified suppliers, and no customer or supplier link is inferred.
• Projects are assigned to a technology by keywords (a pillar suggestion pending editorial review, or words of the title), so some projects are missed or misplaced.
• Funding covers EU programmes (CORDIS, Funding & Tenders) and the national sources the portal holds; national programmes outside them, private investment and payments are not included.
• The infrastructure catalogue and the deployment tracker record quantum pillars, not building blocks, so no facility is listed for this technology.
• No approved figure from a published report is about this technology alone, so no regional comparison specific to it is shown.
• No production location, capacity, market share or ranking of countries or actors is shown: the sources used do not establish them.
• Research output (publications) by technology is not collected: the portal counts publications by country for quantum as a whole only.

CPC mapping and method

CPC groups counted (CPC version 2026.08, scheme pages read on 2026-10-23; lower levels included):

• G06N 10/00 Quantum computing, i.e. information processing based on quantum-mechanical phenomena (read 2026-10-23)
• H04L 9/0852 Quantum cryptography (read 2026-10-23)
• H04B 10/70 Photonic quantum communication (read 2026-10-23)

Groups checked and not used:

• B82Y 10/00 Nanotechnology for information processing, storage or transmission, e.g. quantum computing or single electron logic: The title names quantum computing only as one example of nanotechnology for information processing, so the group also holds documents that are not about quantum computing.
• G01R 33/0354 SQUIDS (measuring magnetic fields using superconductive devices): Superconducting quantum interference devices are used in quantum sensing, but no CPC title in G01R 33 names quantum sensing, and the group is not limited to quantum sensors. Quantum sensing has no landscape series in this pilot.
• G01R 33/26 Measuring direction or magnitude of magnetic fields or magnetic flux using optical pumping: Optically pumped magnetometers include atomic quantum sensors, but the title does not limit the group to them. Quantum sensing has no landscape series in this pilot.

Each count is one search request to EPO Open Patent Services, sent by a scheduled job, never by a page. The landscape may use at most 12 of the 120 requests a day that the portal sends to the service, and at most 4 per run; organisation lookups keep that share free while counts are due. Earlier counts stay on display when a request fails.

This technology: Photonics and lasers are classified by what they are, not by their use in quantum technologies, so no CPC group isolates their quantum use.