Photonics Startup Aylight Raises €4.5 Mn in Pre-Seed Round

The funding round was co-led by Elaia and Swisscom Ventures, with additional support from Verve Ventures and Plug and Play. The new funding will help Aylight accelerate the development of its advanced laser technology and bring it closer to commercial use.

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Aylight has developed a technology that can produce multiple laser wavelengths from a single chip. This reduces the need for several separate lasers in optical communication systems. The technology is based on a frequency-modulated comb (FM comb) and can be manufactured using existing semiconductor photonics production facilities.

The company says the demand for faster and more efficient optical connections is growing as AI infrastructure continues to expand. As more data needs to move quickly between computer chips, better optical communication technology is becoming essential for improving data centre performance.

Bahareh Marzban, co-founder and CEO of Aylight, said, "The company was founded to tackle one of the key constraints facing AI infrastructure: 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."

The new funding will help Aylight develop its first semiconductor-foundry prototypes. It will also be used to grow the company's research and development (R&D) team.

The company is initially focusing on improving optical interconnects, which are used to transfer data quickly between computer chips and data centres.

In the future, Aylight's laser technology could also be used in semiconductor inspection, industrial automation, precision robotics, and advanced 3D sensing, where accurate and high-quality measurements are important.

Founded in 2025 by Bahareh Marzban and Dmitry Kazakov, Aylight develops advanced laser chips for AI data centres. Its technology helps improve optical connections, making data transfer between computer chips faster and more efficient.

The company also builds high-precision laser sensing technology that can be used in applications such as 3D sensing, industrial automation, and other advanced imaging systems.