To circumvent the numerous performance-limiting effects of hot-carrier phenomena in semiconductor quantum-well lasers, we have demonstrated the innovative approach of directly injecting carriers into the lasing subband by tunneling. These lasers, made with a variety of material systems, have shown evidence of reduced hot-carrier effects. Specifically, measured small-signal modulation bandwidth of approximately 50 GHz and maximum intrinsic bandwidth of 110 GHz have been achieved with 0.98 micrometers lasers. These are the highest measured modulation bandwidths in any laser. Auger recombination has been virtually eliminated in 1.55 micrometers lasers and reduced chirp and temperature dependence are also demonstrated. Significant reduction of hot-carrier and carrier leakage effects have also been recently demonstrated in small-area vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. These experimental results are supported by recent simulations that identify gain suppression in high speed lasers to be caused by a coupling between the electron temperature and the quasi Fermi level. Lasers with quantum dots as gain media promise high differential gain, very low threshold current, temperature-insensitive operation and high modulation bandwidth. We have investigated room-temperature single-mode ridge-waveguide quantum box lasers in which the quantum box gain regions are realized by self-organized growth and carrier injection is achieved by conventional means over hetero-barriers and by tunneling. The tunneling injection quantum dot lasers show improvements in both differential gain (6 X 10-14 cm2) and modulation bandwidth. These results will be presented and discussed.