Israeli startup Source of quantityQuantum Source, a company developing technologies for practical photonic quantum computers, today announced that it has raised $50 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Eclipse, with participation from Standard Investments, Level VC, and Canon Equity, as well as existing investors Pitango First, Grove Ventures, 10D, and Dell Technologies Capital. This brings Quantum Source’s total raised to $77 million.
The company said the capital will be used to “expand its R&D team and achieve important technological milestones that will enable the efficient use of quantum computers with millions of qubits.”
Quantum Source was founded in 2021 by semiconductor industry veterans and serial entrepreneurs: CEO Oded Melamed and Chairman Dan Charash, who previously founded a chip company and sold it to Broadcom for $300 million. Other co-founders include Gil Simo, a former senior Apple executive, and professor Barak Dayan. The company currently has 44 employees, according to IVC.
The relatively unknown startup made headlines last May when former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joined its board. At the time, Globes reported that Bennett met with several startups before deciding to join QuantumSource after a two-hour meeting.
Quantum Source is developing a quantum computer, a computer that uses the natural chemical processes of light particles to produce computations at a rate and power millions or billions of times greater than supercomputers—which are themselves extremely powerful computers.
The company says quantum computing represents a radical shift in the computing paradigm, with the potential to dramatically accelerate technological advances in drug design, materials development, cybersecurity, and more. Large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers, with millions of qubits, are essential to unlocking the potential of quantum computing but have yet to reach commercial viability. Photonic quantum computing offers the best path to commercialization, but the biggest hurdle has been the massive inefficiency of creating entangled photonic states, a challenge that Quantum Source is tackling.
The most promising way to implement this type of computer, the company explains, is photonic quantum computing, which has been making headlines in recent months after two huge deals. The Australian government signed an agreement to implement a photonic quantum computer for $620 million, and the US state of Illinois announced an investment of about $500 million to implement a similar system.
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“The public, private and government sectors have made significant investments in the quantum industry, underscoring the impact that quantum computing can have in shaping our future,” Bennett said. “Quantum Source is at the forefront of this revolution and I believe they will be the team that unlocks the promise of quantum computing to transform critical industries.”
This article was published in Globes, Israeli Business News – en.globes.co.il – on September 10, 2024.
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