Dutch startup Quantware, which designs and builds processors for quantum computers, has raised $178m in Series B equity funding to kick-start industrial production of its technology.
The round was co-led by US semiconductor giant Intel’s venture arm and Dutch VC Forward.One.
Non-profit VC firm IQT, which makes strategic investments on behalf of US intelligence services including the CIA, and sustainability investor ETF Partners also participated, as well as historical backers Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund, Innovation Quarter Capital, Ground State Ventures and Graduate Ventures, all based in The Netherlands.
It is one of the largest fundraises secured by a European quantum computing startup, after Finland’s IQM, which closed a $320m Series B last year, and French scaleup Pasqal, which recently completed a $200m equity funding round.
Quantware spun out from QuTech, a research institute attached to Delft University of Technology, in 2021 to manufacture quantum processors that it says can scale easier than existing technologies and create more powerful devices.
The startup has developed an architecture to scale its processors, which it also opens and sells to other quantum computing manufacturers to help them scale their own devices.
Packing more qubits
Quantum computers are expected to eventually unlock vast amounts of power compared to traditional computers, but the technology remains in early stages due to the difficulty of scaling the devices.
A fully-fledged quantum computer will require hundreds of thousands of qubits (the equivalent of bits in classical computing), significantly more than today’s most advanced devices, which pack around 1,000 qubits.
According to Quantware, current quantum processors are not able to support many qubits because almost 90% of the chip is taken up by wirings for signal routings, an issue that grows exponentially with every qubit that is added.
“If you wanted to get to 1m qubits, you’d need a chip the size of Central Park,” says cofounder and CEO Matt Rijlaarsdam. “That’s not going to scale.”
The startup has developed an architecture that routes signals more efficiently, which it says makes processors 100 times more qubit-dense. It also attaches processors together to reach larger sizes.
So far Quantware has delivered processors with up to around 100 qubits. In January, it announced a new architecture for 10k-qubits processors, which it says will ship to customers in 2028.
Industrial scaling
While Quantware manufactures its own processors, which it sells to quantum companies, research institutes and tech corporations, it also sells the architecture underpinning the technology to third-party companies building quantum computers. The architecture can be leveraged for any processor using electron-based superconducting qubits.
Customers typically send their chips to be scaled in Quantware’s facilities.
Following the Series B, the startup plans to double down on commercialisation of its own processors as well as those it builds for third parties.
The company is currently building an industrial-scale fabrication facility in The Netherlands, which is scheduled to open this year. This will multiply Quantware’s production capacity by 20, says Rijlaarsdam; he declined to specify how many processors the startup has manufactured to date but said it had shipped to more than 50 customers across 20 countries.
“The focus has shifted to scaling production capacity,” says Rijlaarsdam. “We will make these quantum processors at an industrial scale — and that’s what we need to get to larger quantum computer sizes.”
