Jul 31, 2026 · 25 min · 11 segments
Host: Nicola Marchese Guest: Tobias Egle, Senior Associate at Fine Structure Ventures \---------- 👉 Subscribe to our newsletter: thescenarionist.com/welcome…
Tobias EgleGuest
Nicola MarcheseHost
Don't take anything for investment advice, of course, right? Yeah, we disclaim it in every episode.
So in photonics, I mean, there's sort of, let's mention three quite important areas, I think that I've looked into in the past, continue to do so or looking into now.
And what got me originally fascinated by investing in photonics starting in 2022, is a modulator stack.
And they are, amongst other things, responsible for, let's say, two pretty important numbers in optical interconnects in AI data centers.
with sort of how much work do you need to encode the electrical signal into the optical domain and then also bandwidth density, right? The faster you can switch on and off and encode the signal into optics, the more information you can push through the pipeline essentially.
And that's the reason why people are chasing higher and higher or faster and faster modulators essentially.
For instance, People who are listening might have read this recently, Hyperlite is a company that has raised, I think, $80 million in a Series C most recently.
And it's pretty interesting to see, right, this thin film, the Thymniabate stack.
There's an earlier interesting category, I believe, that sort of was the first investment that I did when I was at mVentures, is a category called ferronomatic glass.
And the interesting part here is that this is... silicon compatible alternative.
So it's sometimes very difficult to integrate new materials or materials at least that are new to this particular industry into a process.
Don't take anything for investment advice, of course, right? Yeah, we disclaim it in every episode.
So in photonics, I mean, there's sort of, let's mention three quite important areas, I think that I've looked into in the past, continue to do so or looking into now.
And what got me originally fascinated by investing in photonics starting in 2022, is a modulator stack.
And they are, amongst other things, responsible for, let's say, two pretty important numbers in optical interconnects in AI data centers.
with sort of how much work do you need to encode the electrical signal into the optical domain and then also bandwidth density, right? The faster you can switch on and off and encode the signal into optics, the more information you can push through the pipeline essentially.
And that's the reason why people are chasing higher and higher or faster and faster modulators essentially.
For instance, People who are listening might have read this recently, Hyperlite is a company that has raised, I think, $80 million in a Series C most recently.
And it's pretty interesting to see, right, this thin film, the Thymniabate stack.
There's an earlier interesting category, I believe, that sort of was the first investment that I did when I was at mVentures, is a category called ferronomatic glass.
And the interesting part here is that this is... silicon compatible alternative.
So it's sometimes very difficult to integrate new materials or materials at least that are new to this particular industry into a process.
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