Swiss photonics startup Aylight has closed a €4.5 million pre-seed round to accelerate the development of its chip-scale multiwavelength laser technology — targeting a growing bottleneck in AI infrastructure.
The Round
The funding was co-led by Elaia and Swisscom Ventures, with additional participation from Verve Ventures and Plug and Play.
Proceeds will fund:
- Development of first semiconductor-foundry prototypes
- Expansion of the R&D team
The Technology
Founded in 2025 by Bahareh Marzban and Dmitry Kazakov following research at ETH Zürich, Aylight builds chip-scale multiwavelength lasers designed for AI data-centre optical interconnects and high-precision frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) sensing.
The core innovation is a frequency-modulated comb (FM comb) architecture that generates multiple precisely spaced wavelengths from a single chip — eliminating the need for arrays of discrete lasers in optical communication systems. Critically, the design is compatible with existing semiconductor photonics foundries, lowering the barrier to manufacturing at scale.
Why It Matters for AI
As AI infrastructure scales, data transfer between chips has become a key performance constraint in data centres. Optical interconnects offer a path to higher bandwidth and lower energy consumption — but their effectiveness hinges on laser quality and efficiency.
"We started from a problem rather than a technology: the laser had become one of the constraints on scaling AI infrastructure. This funding will help us bring our technology from research to our first products." — Bahareh Marzban, co-founder and CEO, Aylight
Beyond the Data Centre
Aylight's laser platform is not limited to interconnects. The company is also targeting applications that demand high-resolution 3D sensing, including:
- Semiconductor inspection
- Metrology
- Industrial automation
- Precision robotics
The breadth of potential use cases gives the company multiple paths to commercialization as it moves from the lab to first product.
