Vertical‐cavity surface‐emitting lasers (VCSELs) with thermally stable electrical characteristics, including slowly changing operating voltages and series resistance, have been achieved over a wide temperature range between 100 and 380 K. A stable and low threshold voltage (1.9 V at 300 K to 3.0 V at 100 K) results from the temperature insensitive carrier transport across the continuously graded heterojunction interfaces of a distributed Bragg mirror, and from the very low series resistance that has been achieved by reducing the spreading resistance of the VCSEL. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.