a historic family from Valencian high society bets on photonic semiconductors
The Valencian saga that has made part of its fortune bottling soft drinks is now taking a technological leap: a chip factory that uses light instead of electronswith almost 25 million of public money. The general overview. The Council of Ministers has approved almost 25 million in public financing for Attypics Photonicsas reported exclusively He Confidential. The company, 100% controlled by Baladre Capital (the holding company of Álvaro Gómez-Trénor, director of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners), plans a total investment of 50 million to build a photonic chip plant in Paterna, a municipality a few kilometers from the Valencian capital. The State enters with 49% through the Perte Chipthe semiconductor program linked to Next Generation funds. The context. The Gómez-Trénor They are an old acquaintance of Valencian high societywith two centuries of history that starts with an Irishman named Thomas Trenor Keating: He founded the Trenor Bank, traded in guano and got involved in the region’s agri-food industry. Nine generations later, the saga accumulates noble titles, historical properties (from the monastery of Sant Jeroni de Cotalba to buildings in the center of Valencia, passing through a park for public use in Torrent) and a reference position in the province’s business community. In detail. Attypics was born in April 2026 from a team of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia with more than fifteen years manufacturing photonic chips. The integrated photonics processes and transmits information using light instead of electrons: more speed, less energy consumption. The company wants to be the European private benchmark in the model Lab-to-Fab (from the laboratory to the factory) covering from prototyping to the manufacture of 200 and 300 millimeter wafers. The first phase includes 1,240 square meters of clean rooms and 100 direct jobs. The second would expand the facilities to more than 7,500 square meters and would exceed 300 jobs. Why is it important. Photonic chips are destined to be infrastructure in AI data centers, quantum telecommunications and high-performance computing. Europe has been trying for years to reduce its dependence on Asia and the United States for semiconductors, but private projects that actually materialize are rare. That a family with its own capital, stable dividends from Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and no need for advertising decides to commit 50 million to this niche says a lot about how certain family assets are reading the next decade. Entering now, with state support and a consolidated scientific team from the UPV, has overwhelming logic. Yes, but. Attypics is barely three months old. Integrated photonics is a field where the gap between the laboratory and industrial-scale production has brought down projects with more muscle than this. Depending on the Perte Chip also implies being exposed to the rhythms of the public administration, whose management of European technology funds has a bittersweet history in Spain. And the Gómez-Trénors, much more accustomed to collecting dividends than managing semiconductor factories, will have to demonstrate that the scientific capital of the UPV can become a sustainable business without the university umbrella. In Xataka | “My family tells me, but where are your products?”: inside the Spanish institute that is putting its chips on Mars Featured image | Ayar Labs
