Paul Marchal
Chief Executive Officer
Photon Bridge
Paul Marchal is CEO of Photon Bridge and a deep-tech entrepreneur at the intersection of semiconductors, photonics, and advanced packaging. He is the co-developer of TSV and Wide-I/O technologies that underpin HBM and today’s AI compute architectures. With more than a decade of startup leadership experience, Paul has founded and scaled multiple technology ventures, guiding teams from fundamental innovation to market adoption. He has raised over €35 million to date and is known for translating complex, breakthrough engineering into scalable, industrial platforms. His work consistently focuses on making next-generation hardware simpler, manufacturable, and economically viable.
Presentations
Eliminating Sub-Micron Alignment: Self-Aligned Cantilever Packaging for Scalable Silicon Photonics
As AI systems extend into sensing and physical interaction, photonic packaging requirements shift toward scalable heterogeneous integration, optical power handling, and manufacturability. We present a silicon photonics (SiPh) packaging platform for multi-wavelength light sources targeting external light source (ELS) and sensing applications. The platform uses a cantilever-based assembly method that enables deterministic integration of arbitrary materials onto SiPh. Cantilevers self-align during placement and are assembled using standard pick-and-place tools with 2–3 µm accuracy in <20 s per site, supporting >16 optical connections per placement without sub-micron active alignment. Large cross-section waveguides relax CD tolerances by >10× while supporting optical power densities exceeding 5 × 10⁷ W/cm², enabling a high-yield, manufacturable packaging solution for ELS, spectrometers, and LiDAR.