Highlights
- In 2025, the USPTO awarded nearly 600 semiconductor-related patents that list Capital Region inventors.
- 1 in 6 semiconductor patents listing local inventors pertained to photonics, optics, and/or quantum computing.
- GlobalFoundries is positioned to accelerate photonics R&D under $300 million agreement with U.S. Department of Commerce.
- PsiQuantum and Quantinuum source quantum computing components from GF.
- Capital Region job postings for photonics engineers spiked in 2025.
The Capital Region’s R&D industry is shining brighter, with one out of six of the semiconductor-related patents that were awarded in 2025 and that listed local inventors involving photonics, optics and/or quantum computing, according to a Center for Economic Growth analysis of data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Patents
From NY Creates and the AIM Photonics Manufacturing Innovation Institute to PsiQuantum and GlobalFoundries, Capital Region researchers are developing new light-based technologies that are more energy efficient and faster than their electron-based counterparts. These photonic innovations are critical for next-generation artificial intelligence datacenters, quantum computing, and automotive and aerospace/defense applications with increasing bandwidth and power pressures.
In 2025, the USPTO awarded about 600 semiconductor-related patents1 listing inventors who live in the Capital Region. Among them, 91, or 14 percent, had Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) codes relating to silicon photonics/optics2 and/or quantum computing3. That means almost one in six semiconductor patents listing local inventors pertain to those fields.
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Nearly half of those photonics/optics/quantum-related patents (48 percent) were assigned to GF and nearly one-fifth (19 percent) were assigned to Tokyo Electron, which operates a research center at NY Creates’ Albany NanoTech Complex. Other assignees included PsiQuantum, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY Creates (with researchers assigned to AIM Photonics), and IBM. While IBM is planning to build the nation’s first quantum foundry at Creates’ Albany NanoTech Complex, its core quantum R&D hub is at its Yorktown Heights research center in the Hudson Valley.
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AIM Photonics
Years before GF started Fotonix manufacturing in Malta, photonics R&D was already underway in the Capital Region. In 2015, the Department of Defense (now the Department of War), announced the nation’s first US-based institute for manufacturing integrated photonics: the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics), a $600-million-plus initiative for silicon photonics prototyping. In 2021, DoD awarded a $321 million, seven-year extension that, with 50 percent matching funds from New York State and other sources, further enabled the AIM Photonics Institute at NY Creates, which operates an open-access 300 mm silicon photonics prototyping and multi-project wafer (MPW) platform to likewise undertake test, assembly, and packaging operations.
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