QuantWare’s €20 million Series A will push quantum processors forward

Our portfolio company QuantWare had some big news this week, with the announcement of its €20 million Series A round to aid its mission to create the world’s most powerful quantum processors. 

We provided follow-on funding for this round, which was co-led by Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund and Innovation Quarter.

QuantWare is positioned to be a critical company in the growing global quantum computing market. Its VIO technology solves the scaling bottlenecks that limit the size of QPUs today, allowing users to scale any qubit design, unlocking the fastest path towards quantum computers with more than 1 million qubits in a single processor. 

QuantWare offers VIO via its own designed QPUs, while third-party customers can make use of the technology via Foundry and Packaging Services. The company already powers quantum computers for customers in 20 countries around the world.

The new funding will be used to further develop VIO and build out QuantWare’s chip fabrication facilities.

While we invest globally at QDNL Participations, QuantWare’s success so far helps validate our long-held belief in the strength and potential of the Dutch quantum tech ecosystem.

Read more on the round from TechCrunch.

More portfolio news

• Our portfolio companies Qphox and Qblox have teamed up with Rigetti Computing to demonstrate a method of improving the scalability of quantum computers by replacing coaxial cables with far more compact, low-heat optical fibers. You can read more in their joint paper in Nature Physics.

• Q*Bird has been awarded a €1 million subsidy alongside Eurofiber to enable Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) across two of Eurofiber’s main datacenters in the Netherlands.

• QT Sense recently announced a €6 million raise to understand diseases at a single-cell level with quantum sensing

Quantum momentum

More recent developments from the world of quantum tech:

• In addition to its Series A, QuantWare recently announced the launch of pre-orders of Contralto -A, a QPU made for error correction. Following the recent announcement of Google’s ‘Willow’ error-correcting quantum chip, QuantWare has seen a surge in demand for customers looking to achieve a competitive roadmap towards large scale error correction. Contralto-A is intended as a first step on such a roadmap and is designed to be easily upgradable to QuantWare’s larger VIO-powered QPUs. It is almost twice as large as competing commercially available solutions.

• Microsoft caused a real stir with the announcement of its Majorana 1 chip, the first based on topologically protected Majorana qubits, offering a potentially highly efficient path to scaling quantum computing. Microsoft also released a paper in Nature on some of the impressive science behind their new chip, but the paper did not contain results or details on the actual qubits. Given some of Microsoft’s prior papers on this topic had to be retracted due to false data, the announcement and paper spurred a lot of discussion within the quantum community.

• Quantum middleware player Horizon Quantum is gearing up to go public via a SPAC, valuing the company at $500 million. This is a good signal for the investment climate in this field, especially in the context of recent large raises, such as Alice and Bob’s €100 million Series B or Quantum Machines’ $170 million Series C. Horizon also recently set an interesting precedent by acquiring quantum computing hardware, even though it is a software player, which signals the field maturing and increases the customer base for QPU vendors such as QuantWare.

• IonQ is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire Swiss quantum-safe encryption company ID Quantique, a Swiss firm specializing in quantum-safe encryption, in a deal valued at around $250 million. IonQ recently acquired quantum networking assets from Qubitekk.

• Boston-based QuEra, which is focused on using neural atoms in quantum computing, has raised a $230 million convertible note from the likes of Google and SoftBank.

Look out for more news from QDNL Participations soon.