Tech Disruptors

Lightmatter CEO Nick Harris joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Kunjan Sobhani and Jake Silverman to explain why lasers — not just chips — are the missing piece to making co-packaged optics practical at hyperscale. Harris unpacks Guide, Lightmatter’s VLSP light engine, and Passage, the company’s photonic interconnect platform, walking through real-world reliability, density and power trade-offs, and how new EDA and foundry partnerships (Synopsys, Cadence, GUC) move photonics into standard semiconductor workflows. The conversation covers near-package vs co-package optics, deployment timing, who the early buyers will be, and the milestones to watch as photonics shifts from lab demos to production racks.

Russia invasion of Ukraine “has completely reframed perceptions of drone utility and value. Where once high-end, exquisite systems dominated the procurement logic, today there’s a much clearer recognition that quantity and replaceability are just as critical,” says AV Chief Growth Officer Church Hutton. On this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Hutton tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior defense weapons analyst Wayne Sanders how the landscape of drone technologies and the scalability of platforms must balance between rapid production and programs of record, while maintaining a technological advantage over adversary weapon systems. Critical to this process is reducing “cost per effect” so that we’re no longer shooting down $10,000 drones with million-dollar interceptors. AV and other defense tech companies continue to have this as their mission statement.

Ciena is expanding from its telecom optical roots to become a critical enabler of AI-driven data-center infrastructure. In this episode of Bloomberg Intelligence’s Tech Disruptors podcast, Ciena Executive Advisor Scott McFeely joins BI analyst Woo Jin Ho to discuss how the company’s optical technology has evolved alongside hyperscale cloud and AI workloads, from coherent optics and WaveLogic DSPs to optical pluggables for scale across applications. They also explore how AI is reshaping optical demand around and inside the data center, Ciena’s move deeper into the rack through its Nubis acquisition and how its expansion into AI changes its intermediate-term growth trajectory.

‘We’ve seen an incredible acceleration of true automation, where AI agents were able to fulfill a significant amount of engagement with a consumer, whether it be voice or chat-based,” says Scott Russell, CEO of NiCE. He sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh to talk about the deployment of AI agents for contact centers. From fine-tuning of large language models to handling a high volume of transactions, the discussion focuses on the various considerations for AI agents related to customer service across a range of industries.

Quantum computing is extending beyond the lab to redefine how we address complex problems. On this episode of Tech Disruptors, IonQ CEO Niccolo de Masi joins Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Jake Silverman and Kunjan Sobhani to explain what quantum computing is and how performance, reliability and cost will determine the winners of the race for fault tolerance. The conversation also explores how quantum computing can complement future AI systems — enabling new breakthroughs in security, networking and high-impact applications like materials and life science — while setting up a “winner-takes-most” competitive dynamic in the industry.