Ah I missed the 10m reference there. I'm not sure it makes more sense though. Typical intra-datacenter connections are 10s-100s of meters and use VCSELs, so introducing microleds just for the very short links instead of just parallelising the VCSEL connections (which is being done already)? If they could actually replace the VCSEL I would sort of see the point.

There's been a constant drum-beat that even intra-rack is trying to make its way to optical as fast as it can, that copper is more and more complex and expensive to scale faster. If we have a relatively affordable short range optical system that doesn't require heavy computational work to do, that sounds like a godsend, like a way to increase bits per joule while reducing expensive cabling cost.

Sure yes, optical might use expensive longer range optical today! But using that framing to assess new technologies & what help the could be may be folly.