Photon Bridge raises €10M to tackle AI’s emerging laser bottleneck
The Dutch startup’s approach is designed around manufacturing yield, which is a consideration that becomes increasingly important as laser production moves from traditional telecom volumes towards the scale required by AI infrastructure.
Dutch photonics startup Photon Bridge has raised EUR 10 million to tackle an emerging bottleneck in AI infrastructure: producing the millions of lasers that will be needed to connect increasingly large clusters of AI processors.
The round was co-led by new investors Amadeus APEX Technology Fund and 360 Capital, with existing investors Innovation Industries, Faber, and Brabant Development Agency (BOM) also increasing their investment, Photon Bridge said.
“AI is fundamentally changing the way computing infrastructure is built,” said Paul Marchal, CEO of Photon Bridge. “We are moving towards enormous systems in which hundreds of thousands of processors have to operate together, and moving data between them is becoming one of the defining constraints on performance.”
That means optics has to move closer to the compute. But it also creates an entirely different manufacturing challenge.
“The industry will soon need millions of these laser sources every year,” Marchal said. “Instead of making individual lasers increasingly powerful and difficult to manufacture, we move that scaling challenge into the architecture.”
Photon Bridge’s approach is designed around manufacturing yield, which is a consideration that becomes increasingly important as laser production moves from traditional telecom volumes towards the scale required by AI infrastructure.
“Every new wave of compute creates new bottlenecks further down the supply chain, and lasers are the next one,” said Ion Hauer, Investment Partner at APEX Ventures. “Photon Bridge is addressing this with a technology that combines deep photonics expertise with a credible path towards manufacturing at very large scale.”
“AI is turning lasers from a telecom component into a semiconductor-scale product,” said Cesare Maifredi, Partner at 360 Capital. “Once you start talking about millions of units a year, manufacturing yield becomes fundamental. Photon Bridge has designed its architecture from the beginning around the volumes this market is going to require.”
The financing will allow Photon Bridge to accelerate product development and customer qualification, deliver its first samples in 2027, and prepare for volume manufacturing from 2028. The company also aims to expand its team in Eindhoven as it moves towards commercialization.
