Zurich’s Aylight has raised €4.5M in pre-seed for a laser chip that emits multiple wavelengths simultaneously, aiming to reduce the number of lasers AI data centres need.
The round is a fraction of the money raised by rivals Ayar Labs ($500M) and Lightmatter ($400M), and comes weeks after Nvidia committed $4B to secure laser supply.
It’s not the only startup chasing this fix: Swiss-American Enlightra raised $15M in December 2025 with a strikingly similar pitch.
In March 2026, Nvidia committed $4B across Coherent and Lumentum to lock down laser and optical-interconnect supply for AI data centres, a signal that moving data between chips, not raw compute, is becoming AI infrastructure’s next constraint.
A Zurich startup thinks the industry is solving the wrong problem. Aylight has raised €4.5 million in a pre-seed round, co-led by Elaia and Swisscom Ventures with Verve Ventures and Plug and Play also participating, to build a chip that could make buying more lasers beside the point.
