Photon Bridge Raises €10m to Break AI's Laser Bottleneck

Eindhoven-based photonics startup Photon Bridge has raised €10 million to fix what its backers call the next bottleneck in the AI supply chain: lasers.

The company announced the round on Wednesday. Amadeus APEX Technology Fund and 360 Capital co-led it. Existing investors Innovation Industries, Faber and the Brabant Development Agency (BOM) all increased their stakes.

Photon Bridge will spend the money on product development, customer qualification and hiring in Eindhoven. The timeline is concrete: first samples land in 2027, volume manufacturing starts in 2028.

Why do AI clusters need millions of lasers?

As AI clusters grow, moving data between processors — not computing — becomes the performance constraint. That pushes optical connections closer and closer to the processor, a shift accelerating with co-packaged optics.

The demand math is stark:

• Omdia forecasts more than 20 million data-center AI accelerators will ship annually by 2028.
• Goldman Sachs Research expects the optical networking market to expand ninefold to $154 billion by 2028 on the back of AI infrastructure build-out.

Each of those accelerators needs optical links. And each link needs laser light.

What does the technology actually do?

Photon Bridge's platform combines and multiplexes light from multiple lower-power semiconductor lasers. Instead of relying on one high-power laser, it fuses many weaker sources into one output.

The company says this design improves production yield and scales efficiently as volumes climb. The platform delivers high wavelength counts with up to 40mW of optical power per wavelength per fiber. It can run across multiple indium phosphide (InP) foundries, which means Photon Bridge isn't locked into a single manufacturer.

In a market that will soon count lasers in the millions, that foundry flexibility matters as much as the physics.

What are the investors saying?

CEO Paul Marchal framed the shift plainly: AI is fundamentally changing computing infrastructure, and the industry will soon need millions of laser sources per year.

Ion Hauer, investment partner at APEX Ventures, pointed to supply chain mechanics: "Lasers are the next bottleneck in the supply chain," and Photon Bridge offers "a credible path towards manufacturing at very large scale."

Cesare Maifredi, partner at 360 Capital, zeroed in on the manufacturing problem. When you're building millions of units a year, he said, manufacturing yield becomes fundamental — and Photon Bridge designed its architecture for exactly those volumes.

What happens next?

The funding also funds team expansion in Eindhoven, supporting Photon Bridge's move from lab to commercialization.

The clock is the story here. If Omdia's 2028 accelerator forecast holds, the companies qualified and producing lasers at scale by then — not just designing them — will capture the demand.