We present the design, fabrication, and performance of high-speed oxide-confined 1030 nm vertical-cavity surfaceemitting lasers (VCSELs) with a short optical cavity, and multiple oxide apertures. High-speed modulation was facilitated by using the shortest possible cavity of a half-wavelength length and multiple oxide apertures to enhance the confinement of optical fields and reduce capacitance. We carefully optimized the multiple quantum wells and the doping profile in order to achieve a high-speed operation. The developed VCSELs exhibit a modulation bandwidth exceeding 25.1 GHz at 25°C, supporting back-to-back data rate up to 40 Gb/s under binary non-return-to-zero (NRZ) modulation.