CamGraPhIC

On 15 April 2026 the European Commission approved €211m (£183m) of Italian state aid for CamGraPhIC, the largest single grant ever made to a University of Cambridge spinout and ten times the size of any UK grant previously awarded to a Cambridge company. The company produces graphene-based co-packaged optoelectronic transceivers operating at more than 100 Gb/s, consuming 80% less energy than silicon equivalents at higher bandwidth and lower latency. Its primary market is AI data centre interconnect, alongside high-performance computing, automotive, telecoms, and aerospace.

CamGraPhIC was co-founded by Professor Andrea Ferrari of the Cambridge Graphene Centre and Dr Marco Romagnoli, formerly of Italy's CNIT. The company's intellectual property originates from Cambridge; pilot manufacturing facilities are scheduled to open in Pisa and Bergamo in 2028, with the commercial entity and industrial capital anchored in Italy. The Cambridge Graphene Centre's foundational research stretches back more than a decade, making CamGraPhIC one of the longer-gestating deep-tech spinouts in the UK university system.

The case crystallises the UK's lab-to-factory gap. The technology is precisely what the Sovereign AI Unit and the AI Growth Zones exist to secure domestically: ultra-efficient photonic interconnects for AI infrastructure. IP remains in Cambridge while Italy secures the manufacturing, the jobs, and the €211m of industrial capital. Onward's Venturing Out research has documented this structural gap across multiple spinout sectors. The approval on 15 April sits in a broader context: one month later, Lansdowne Partners anchored a €128.9m VC fund explicitly targeting UK university spinouts in quantum, advanced materials, and semiconductors, the first institutional attempt to retain comparable IP chains inside the UK.