Zurich-based Aylight is Reinventing the Laser Behind AI's Optical Bottleneck

Aylight, the company that developed a fundamentally new optical frequency comb laser architecture- one that delivers unprecedented wavelength stability, energy efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, led by Bahareh Marzban and Dmitry Kazakov, has raised a €4.5M pre-seed financing round, co-led by Elaia and Swisscom Ventures with participation from Verve Ventures and Plug and Play. The funding takes Aylight's laser from a research result to first prototypes, manufactured in a semiconductor foundry. 

The funding comes as lasers become a critical bottleneck in scaling AI infrastructure. As data movement increasingly limits performance, demand is rising for next-generation optical interconnect technologies capable of delivering the bandwidth required by future AI data centers.

According to co-founder and CEO Bahareh Marzban, Aylight was founded to solve one of AI infrastructure's emerging bottlenecks by reimagining the laser at the core of optical interconnects. The company believes its technology can unlock higher performance from individual devices to full-scale AI systems, with the new funding supporting the path to its first commercial products.

Aylight is developing a new class of semiconductor laser that emits multiple precisely spaced wavelengths from a single chip, replacing the need for dozens of discrete lasers in optical interconnects. Built on a standard semiconductor laser platform, the technology is designed for manufacturing in existing photonics foundries.

Founded in 2025, Aylight emerged from research at ETH Zürich, combining a novel laser architecture with advances in photonics to address the growing bandwidth demands of AI infrastructure.

According to co-founder and CTO Dmitry Kazakov, Aylight's technology is built on a fundamental scientific breakthrough that rethinks semiconductor laser design from first principles. The company believes this approach unlocks capabilities beyond conventional laser architectures, positioning it to develop the next generation of high-performance lasers for AI infrastructure.

Beyond AI data centers, Aylight's comb laser technology enables micrometer-scale depth resolution, creating opportunities in semiconductor inspection, metrology, industrial automation, and high-precision 3D sensing for robotics.

According to Elaia Partner Clément Vanden Driessche, Aylight brings together a rare combination of scientific breakthrough, strong founding execution, and favorable market timing as optics becomes increasingly central to AI infrastructure. He highlighted the company's DWDM platform as a potential contributor to improving efficiency in AI systems, particularly as performance metrics such as tokens per watt gain importance.

According to Swisscom Ventures Partner Pär Lange, Aylight has developed a unique and efficient approach to DWDM laser sources that addresses the growing need for higher data speeds with lower energy consumption and a smaller footprint. He noted the company’s potential to scale into the rapidly expanding optical connectivity market for data centers and compete with existing solutions.