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Electrical cochlear implants (eCIs) restore hearing and enable speech comprehension to half a million implantees, thereby re-connecting deaf patients to the auditory scene surrounding them. Yet, eCIs suffer from limited spectral selectivity, resulting from current spread around each electrode contact and causing poor speech recognition in background noise. Optogenetic stimulation of the auditory nerve might overcome this limitation, as light can be conveniently confined in space. Here, we combined virus-mediated optogenetic manipulation of cochlear neurons and microsystems technology to establish acute multi-channel optical cochlear implant (oCI) stimulation in adult Mongolian gerbils. 16-channel µLED-based oCIs evoked activation of the auditory pathway with high spectral selectivity and modest power requirements in hearing and deaf gerbils. These results prove the feasibility of µLED-based oCIs for spectrally selective activation of the auditory nerve.