Drivers, Trends, & Quebec Opportunity Keynote Jose Pozo Optonique Vision 2035, Quebec, May 14th 2026

Thank you to Optonique for the invitation to open Vision 2035 in Québec City on Thursday, May 14th. It was a privilege to share a global perspective with a room of people who are genuinely building this industry. For those who were not there, the presentation and Q&A are now available here on YouTube and LinkedIn. The core argument was straightforward: photonics is no longer a niche sector. It is the enabling infrastructure of defense systems, AI data centres, semiconductor manufacturing, and 6G networks. Governments know this, which is why investment is accelerating globally. A few takeaways from the talk: Defense and AI together represent the largest demand wave photonics has ever seen. NATO spending is expanding at historic speed. The US AI buildout — Meta at $37B capex, Microsoft at $80B — is driving optical interconnect demand that supply chains cannot currently match. These are not projections. These are purchase orders being written now. Europe has the most sophisticated photonics coordination structure in the world, but a serious industrialisation problem. The recent Peter Wennink Report on the Netherlands is worth reading. Strong research plus good coordination is not enough without manufacturing investment and demand-side policy. Québec should learn from that gap, not replicate it. China's strategy is import substitution at scale. Over $45B per year in state R&D, four times more photonics PhDs than the US, and multiple 300mm silicon photonics fabs under construction by national mandate. The competitive pressure this creates for Western supply chains is not distant. It is arriving. Canada's position is genuinely interesting. The CPFC commercial spinout announced on May 6th — North America's only end-to-end InP compound semiconductor facility — changes the strategic calculus for Québec overnight. The fabrication anchor now exists. The critical next gap is advanced packaging, specifically InP-CMOS co-integration for AI and defense applications. Québec has 50% of Canada's entire photonics industry, a 35-year applied R&D institution in INO, and a globally competitive anchor in EXFO. The foundations are there. What gets built in the next 24 months will determine whether Vision 2035 becomes a plan or a result.