Silicon Photonics Emerges as Quantum Scaling Contender Backed by UK’s £2.5 Billion Strategy
Updated
Updated · The Quantum Insider · Aug 18
Silicon Photonics Emerges as Quantum Scaling Contender Backed by UK’s £2.5 Billion Strategy
3 articles · Updated · The Quantum Insider · Aug 18
Summary
Silicon photonics is gaining traction in 2026 as a scalable quantum-hardware approach because chip-scale circuits can generate, route and read out qubits while supporting multiple qubit types.
CMOS-compatible manufacturing underpins that case: integrated silicon circuits can be produced at high volume and tight tolerances, avoiding the heat, latency, alignment and drift problems of free-space optical setups.
Neutral atoms, trapped ions, photonic qubits and spin platforms all need precise optical control, and integrated photonic switching plus wavelength-division multiplexing could address large arrays on microsecond timescales.
PsiQuantum and Photonic Inc. are already betting on the technology, while hybrid modular designs could use silicon photonics as a low-latency optical interconnect between quantum processors and classical control systems.
Infrastructure remains the constraint: the UK’s 10-year £2.5 billion quantum strategy and the EU’s €400 million PIXEurope pilot line reflect a wider race to secure fabrication and prototyping capacity.