Photon Bridge, a Dutch photonics startup, has secured €10 million in a funding round co-led by Amadeus APEX Technology Fund and 360 Capital. Existing investors Innovation Industries, Faber, and the Brabant Development Agency also participated in the round. The capital will be used to accelerate product development, customer qualification, and team expansion in Eindhoven.
The startup aims to address the growing demand for lasers in AI infrastructure. As AI clusters scale to hundreds of thousands of processors, data movement between chips becomes a performance constraint. Optical connections offer higher efficiency than electrical interconnects, but the industry currently lacks the manufacturing capacity to produce the millions of lasers required annually for this shift.
Photon Bridge utilizes an architecture that multiplexes light from multiple lower-power semiconductor lasers rather than relying on a few high-power units. This approach improves production yield by reducing sensitivity to manufacturing defects. The platform supports high wavelength counts with up to 40 mW of optical power per wavelength per fibre and is compatible with multiple indium phosphide foundries.
The company plans to deliver its first product samples in 2027 and aims to reach volume manufacturing by 2028. According to Omdia forecasts, annual shipments of data-centre AI accelerators are expected to exceed 20 million units by 2028, necessitating a transition to semiconductor-scale manufacturing for laser components.
