Did you know that the worldwide photonics market was worth approximately $983.5 billion (€906.6bn) in 2024 and is expected to surge to $1,642.6bn (€1,514.1bn) by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights? Photonic chips carry and process data with light, instead of electricity, and they’re used in a variety of sectors. These include healthcare, data communication and engineering, as well as for things like autonomous driving and lab-on-a-chip devices. Photonic chip manufacturing company Ephos is making waves in the sector by replacing the silicon traditionally used in chips with glass. In this episode of The Big Question, CEO and co-founder of Ephos Andrea Rocchetto discusses how glass chips can help data centres be more energy efficient, as well as outlining the challenges facing tech companies in Europe at the moment. Can glass chips really slash data centre energy needs?Data centres currently account for about 1% to 1.5% of worldwide electricity consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. In Ireland, data centres currently account for more than 20% of all electricity consumption. The agency also highlighted that by 2026, data centres across the world could potentially be using about 1,000 terawatt-hours per year, which is roughly equivalent to Japan’s entire electricity consumption. Currently, tech giant Google is the only company that has deployed photonic technology at scale. This has already slashed data centre energy usage by 40%.In turn, this has allowed the company to save money, mainly related to network infrastructure setup costs.However, Google uses silicon chips at the moment, with Rocchetto pointing out that glass chips can be about 20 times more efficient. That’s compared to the leading chip manufacturing technology on the market currently. “We build chips with glass. Glass has a special property, which is the same material of which optical fibres are made of, and by using the same material as the optical fibres, we can minimise a type of signal loss that occurs when you stick together an optical fibre and a chip,”Rocchetto said.Ephos’ glass chips also work at room temperature, which significantly reduces the energy needed for cooling in data centres.The removal of strict cooling requirements also means companies are less geographically restricted.“So bear in mind that about 10% of the energy cost of a data centre goes into networking and about 40% goes into cooling. And so roughly 50% can be reduced by using photonic technologies like the one built by Ephos,” Rocchetto highlighted. “Europe has a darker outlook at the moment”Europe has been dealing with high inflation, slowing economic growth and dampened consumer and business confidence for several months now. This has significantly hindered innovation, compared to other key markets like the US, making it more difficult to scale up rapidly and gain access to a global market. Rocchetto said that building a tech company in Europe at the moment was getting harder, mainly because of regulatory issues, but also because of culture and talent challenges.“Regulation is something that makes it harder to transfer the technology from an academic lab into a startup. Regulation is what makes it harder to fire people when there is a crisis in the semiconductor industry, which is a very cyclical industry,” he pointed out. Varying regulations in different countries, along with their rapidly changing nature, can further complicate these issues, Rocchetto argued. This requires companies to invest significant time and effort to remain compliant. Currently, Ephos has set up its pilot production plant in Milan, Italy, with the company’s talent mainly coming from France, Italy and Poland. When this production plant is scaled up, it could go a long way in increasing the EU’s competitiveness in the global semiconductor sector, by boosting domestic production.This, in turn, could help the bloc become more independent and less reliant on overseas players for vital chips - particularly as geopolitical tensions rise.Although Europe offers a wealth of talent, such as highly skilled engineers, there is still a dearth of sufficiently experienced engineers who also have experience in scaling up a tech company.European culture is less risk-tolerant than other markets like the US, while also offering shallower pools of capital for companies.“Let’s not shy away. Europe has a darker outlook at the moment. And that has an impact on people's enthusiasm for building new things. We definitely need a more proactive and more optimistic attitude towards building, which I feel it's lacking in Europe at this stage. And we very much need that to build the new industry,” Rocchetto said.The Big Question is a series from Euronews Business where we sit down with industry leaders and experts to discuss some of the most important topics on today’s agenda.Watch the video above for the full discussion on glass-based photonic chips.