Maxim Karpov, 34, developed a multicolored laser system for high-bandwidth, fiber optic communication inside data centers to accelerate AI and other applications. His unique comb lasers, or “combs,” have the potential to hugely increase the speed of communication within and between servers by replacing copper wires.
Copper has increasingly become a data-center bottleneck, he says, due to its limited bandwidth, low transmission distance, and high power consumption. But state-of-the-art fiber optic systems, which are the leading competitor to copper, are expensive, and complicated to assemble. For the best performance, they require multiple lasers, of different colors, coordinated to fire in sync.
Karpov’s tech has solved this problem. Just one of his multicolored combs can replace 16 individually colored lasers, with the potential to scale past 100. This not only speeds up data transmission but also boosts energy efficiency while potentially cutting manufacturing and installation costs.
Combs, which have existed for decades, work by using a laser fitted to a component called an optical resonator. The laser excites the resonator into outputting multiple colors, somewhat like the way plucking a stringed instrument creates multiple overtones. Until now, combs were bulky, expensive, built with custom designs, and limited to only a few industrial uses.
Karpov’s big breakthrough was creating a miniaturized, silicon-based resonator that can be printed on the same lithography machines used to manufacture computer chips. “The core part will fit on your fingernail,” he says. “It’s just a few square millimeters.”
He cofounded a startup called Enlightra in 2021 to bring it to market. The company already sells a development kit that fits into a server rack. Over the next few years, Karpov aims to mass produce miniaturized, modular combs that can be built right into the graphics processing unit boards sold by companies like Nvidia.
“Industry will need tens of millions of these—it’s a huge market,” he says. “So we need to make them super small, and make them power-efficient, and as low-cost as possible.”
