Photon Bridge Raises €10 Million as Vienna’s APEX Ventures Invests
Set Trending Topics as a preferred source on Google.
After chips and power, the A.I. industry faces its next bottleneck, and this time it is light: The Dutch photonics start-up Photon Bridge has raised €10 million (about $11.2 million) to make lasers for A.I. data centers manufacturable in the millions. The round is co-led by the Amadeus APEX Technology Fund, which Vienna-based APEX Ventures manages together with Amadeus Capital Partners, and the European venture capital firm 360 Capital.
A Vienna Deep Tech Investor as Co-Lead
APEX launched the Amadeus APEX Technology Fund in early 2023 together with the British investor Amadeus Capital Partners. The fund invests in seed and Series A rounds of deep tech start-ups in areas such as next-generation computing, A.I., space and energy. Alongside the two new lead investors, the existing backers Innovation Industries, Faber and the Brabant Development Agency (BOM) are also increasing their investment.
“Every new wave of compute creates new bottlenecks further down the supply chain, and lasers are the next one,” said Ion Hauer, an investment partner at APEX Ventures. Photon Bridge, he said, combines deep photonics expertise with a credible path toward manufacturing at very large scale.
Why A.I. Needs Millions of Lasers
Behind the investment is a shift in A.I. data centers. As clusters grow from thousands to hundreds of thousands of A.I. chips, moving data between processors becomes a bottleneck. Optical connections transmit data faster and more efficiently than copper and are therefore moving ever closer to the chips. With so-called co-packaged optics, the optical connection sits right next to the processor.
The problem: That requires lasers in unprecedented quantities. Today’s supply chain for high-power lasers was built for telecom and subsea networks, where volumes are much smaller. According to the market research firm Omdia, more than 20 million data center A.I. accelerators are expected to ship annually by 2028. Goldman Sachs Research expects the market for optical networking to grow ninefold to $154 billion (about €137 billion) by 2028.
“The industry will soon need millions of these laser sources every year,” said Paul Marchal, Photon Bridge’s chief executive.
Many Weak Lasers Instead of One Strong One
Rather than relying on ever more powerful individual lasers, Photon Bridge combines the light of several lower-power semiconductor lasers. Because the individual lasers operate at lower power densities, they are less sensitive to manufacturing defects, which improves production yield. The platform is designed to deliver up to 40 milliwatts of optical power per wavelength per fiber and can be produced at several indium phosphide foundries.
Founded in 2020, the Eindhoven-based company has its roots at the city’s University of Technology. With the new money, Photon Bridge plans to speed up product development, deliver first samples to customers in 2027 and move into volume manufacturing from 2028. It also plans to expand its team in Eindhoven.
Competition From the U.S. and Switzerland
Photon Bridge is not the only start-up focusing on multi-wavelength lasers for A.I. data centers. The U.S. start-up Xscape Photonics raised $37 million in the spring and unveiled an eight-wavelength laser, and the Lausanne-based start-up Enlightra has raised $15 million. Other European players in photonics for A.I. data centers include Spain’s iPronics, which raised $125 million in September, and France’s Scintil Photonics, in which Nvidia also holds a stake. On the established side, laser makers such as Lumentum and Coherent dominate the market.
