With the introduction of Ocelot by Amazon Web Services, Majorana by Microsoft, and Willow by Google, major IT corporations are not sleeping on quantum chips. Despite the fact that any of these can be regarded as innovations, quantum entrepreneurs frequently concentrate on more useful developments, and they are making headway.
One such these is the Dutch business QuantWare, which was founded in 2020 and says that their technology is already powering quantum computers for clients in 20 countries. Scaling bottlenecks in quantum processing units (QPUs) is the main emphasis of its primary product, vertical integration and optimization, or VIO.
Although more qubits, the quantum counterpart of bits, are what everyone in the area of quantum computing is aiming for, combining more qubits on a single device is more potent and less prone to errors than networking multiple smaller systems together. Matthijs Rijlaarsdam, the CEO of QuantWare, claims that the company’s proprietary 3D chip architecture, VIO, “is the missing link in scaling up QPUs.”
The €5 million equity portion of the €7.5 million it previously obtained from the European Innovation Council following its €6 million seed round is part of the €20 million Series A (roughly $19.27 million) that QuantWave, a spinout of TU Delft and its affiliated research institute, QuTech, has now raised.
Aside from European finance, Dutch state-owned company Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund and regional economic development organization InnovationQuarter co-led this all-equity round, securing QuantWave’s place as a leader in the Netherlands’ expanding quantum ecosystem.
QuantWare’s team and technology, which was recently improved, will be scaled with the new funding: The firm declared in February that it would take preorders for its first quantum error correction QPU, Contralto-A.
QuantWare strives for a roadmap-focused approach, whereas Google’s Willow processor brought quantum error correction to the public’s attention. Contralto-A boasts that it is “almost twice as large as competing solutions that are commercially available,” and it is built to be upgraded to larger VIO-powered QPUs.
Large IT firms are also competing to see who can build the biggest QPUs with the most qubits. However, the race is also about making quantum hardware commercially available to everyone as quickly as possible, from the standpoint of entrepreneurs that run the danger of not surviving for very long without making any money.
Regarding that, QuantWare is taking two approaches: distributing QPUs that it has built and letting other businesses use its technology through its Foundry and Packaging Services. The additional funds will also be used to expand VIO’s chip fabrication capabilities and advance its development.
Several well-funded quantum businesses, like Alice & Bob, which recently raised $104 million, are among the consumers in addition to research organizations. Two of these are also collaborating with the Dutch startup on the development of technology and products: SEEQC, which disclosed $30 million in new funding in January, and Quantum Machines, which raised $170 million last month.
Although Microsoft is also in the race, it is too soon to predict which of these businesses, if any, will develop a quantum architecture that can produce a million qubits. According to Microsoft’s Majorana announcement, that horizon is “within years, not decades.”
Rijlaarsdam told TechCrunch that the potential of quantum to address significant, large-scale issues is what’s at risk.
According to him, “quantum computers will be able to solve a large and valuable class of problems that even a gigawatt AI cluster will not be able to.” “We are developing these systems for that reason. Examples include quantum system computations for the development of better materials, the identification of novel catalysts for the degradation of microplastics, or the enhancement of fertilizer sustainability.
However, QuantWare, a proponent of quantum open architecture, is not concerned with who will construct these million qubit systems; instead, it intends to play a role in accelerating their development with VIO.