With a broader scope, Invest in Photonics transforms into Inpho Venture Summit, Photonics and Beyond

May 12, 2016

Invest in Photonics has been reconceived as a financial investor and strategic business partnering event emphasizing higher-level networking.

Conard Holton

Invest in Photonics has been reconceived as a financial investor and strategic business partnering event emphasizing higher-level networking. The renamed Inpho Venture Summit, Photonics and Beyond will have a broader scope aimed at spoting bankable opportunities in nanotechnology, Internet of Things, biotech, and healthcare markets. The biennial conference will take place this year October 6–7, at the Palais de la Bourse in Bordeaux, France.

The new chairman is George Ugras, managing director of IBM Venture Capital Group, who will preside over a conference that includes equity investment opportunities in hardware technologies including photonics that enable the growth of digital innovation and connected devices, impacting a large number of industrial sectors.

Approximately 200 participants from across Europe, North America, and Asia are expected to attend the Summit. These include representatives of the European Fund for Strategic Investment’s Juncker Plan, which has investment capital worth €315B, of which one-quarter will be made available to SMEs and midcap firms through banks, intermediaries, and VCs.

“Photonics continues to evolve. Combined with other smart technologies, it has led to exciting innovations addressing bankable economic challenges,” said Ugras. “I am pleased to chair a new chapter in the Bordeaux region’s initiative to further private placement investment in photonics and other disruptive hardware technologies developed in Europe. Each event draws increasingly higher profile industrial players and investors with a singular objective: to strike a deal.”

Similar to previous years, a short-list of 20 SMEs will be selected to each make a 5-minute elevator pitch for funding. Registration is now open to European companies. An award of €5,000 will be given to the most promising company. In 2014, within months of winning the award, Netherlands-based Effect Photonics closed a Series-A funding round.

The program committee will headline five themes this year: energy efficiency, mobility/autonomous vehicles, health/consumer applications, telecom/datacom, and a new session called crazy technologies, or technologies that the world can expect 10 – 15 years from now.

Source: Inpho Venture Summit

About the Author

Conard Holton | Editor at Large

Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.