Aylight, a photonics startup developing chip-scale multiwavelength lasers for AI infrastructure, has raised €4.5 million in pre-seed funding. The round was co-led by Elaia and Swisscom Ventures, with participation from Verve Ventures and Plug and Play.
The investment will support the development of the company’s first semiconductor-manufactured prototypes and expand its R&D team as it moves toward commercialization.
Powering the Next Generation of AI Infrastructure
Aylight is developing a new laser architecture that emits multiple wavelengths from a single chip, reducing the need for dozens of individual lasers in optical data links. Built on a standard semiconductor platform, the technology is designed for scalable production in existing photonics foundries.
Beyond AI data centers, the technology also has applications in semiconductor inspection, industrial automation, precision robotics, and high-resolution 3D sensing.
“We started from a problem, not a technology: the laser had become one of the real limits on how far AI can scale. What convinced me was seeing something first demonstrated for a completely different application and realizing it was the answer — so we translated it into a new kind of laser built for AI datacenters. By rethinking the light source itself, we unlock performance that wasn't there before, from the individual device all the way up to the full system. That's a foundation the whole industry can build on, and we're already seeing strong customer interest. This round takes us to first products,” said Bahareh Marzban, Co-founder and CEO of Aylight.
Expanding Beyond AI Data Centers
Founded in 2025 from research at ETH Zürich, Aylight aims to address growing demand for faster and more energy-efficient optical connectivity while enabling new applications across advanced sensing and industrial technologies.
“Everyone assumed the semiconductor laser was a solved problem. It isn't — there was physics left to find. That discovery lets us redesign the laser from first principles instead of fighting the limits of conventional designs, and it unlocks behavior no existing light source can offer. It positions Aylight to build the world's supreme lasers. The science was too good, and too timely, to leave on a lab bench,” said Dmitry Kazakov, Co-founder and CTO of Aylight.