“Copper is running out of steam.” Yannick De Koninck, who helped

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“Copper is running out of steam.” Yannick De Koninck, who helped develop silicon photonics at Nvidia, explains why AI models & agents are pushing data centers from copper to light: “The models have gotten so large that they no longer fit on a single GPU. So what we need to do is interconnect multiple GPUs together to run these models.” “As these GPUs get faster, they need more data, they need more data at a faster rate, and copper is running out of steam.” “That's why we're transitioning to…

Molly O’Shea@MollySOShea12h ago

NEW: Why This NVIDIA Engineer Left to Build @ThemaFoundry Thema is building photonics manufacturing capacity in Europe “If you look at an AI factory today, 50% of that is GPUs, but the other 50% is the technology to interconnect these GPUs.” I sat down with Thema's CEO Herwig Van Hove & CTO Yannick De Koninck in Monaco to go deep on the photonics supply chain powering the next generation of AI infrastructure. Yannick spent 5 years at NVIDIA, where he helped build its silicon photonics technology from scratch to product-ready maturity. He left what he calls the “golden palace” to join Thema & help build large-scale photonics manufacturing in Europe. › Production starts 2027 › Full ramp by 2028 › Talent from NVIDIA, AWS, TSMC & Lam Research We get into › Why copper breaks inside AI infrastructure › How photonics could reduce the networking & energy bottlenecks facing AI factories › Why the photonics supply chain wasn't prepared for the AI boom › What Yannick learned building silicon photonics at NVIDIA › Thema's plan to begin production in 2027 & build a major photonics manufacturing platform in Europe

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