US-headquartered quantum computing technology developer PsiQuantum completed a $450m series D round yesterday that included software provider Microsoft’s corporate venture capital unit, M12.
The round was led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock and also featured fellow investment management firm Baillie Gifford, VC fund Blackbird Ventures and Singaporean government-owned investment firm Temasek.
PsiQuantum is developing what it expects to be the first commercially viable quantum computer, utilising a system where photonic circuits are patterned onto a silicon chip and used to manipulate photons.
The company began producing silicon photonic and electronic chips for its Q1 system in May 2020. The round valued it at $3.15bn according to Silicon Valley Business Journal, and it has now raised $665m since it was founded in 2016, it said.
M12 had joined BlackRock, Playground Global, Atomico, Founders Fund and Redpoint Ventures in a $215m round for PsiQuantum in April 2020, following an undisclosed amount from Imec.xpand the previous year.
Samir Kumar, managing director at M12, said: “We invested in PsiQuantum based on the strength of the company’s bold vision matched by a robust, disciplined, stepwise engineering plan to achieve that goal.
“We are impressed by the technical progress we have seen in hardware development along with refinement of a novel quantum architecture ideally suited for photonics.
“PsiQuantum and Microsoft have a shared perspective on the need for a good number of logical qubits enabled by fault tolerance and error correction on 1 million-plus physical qubits when it comes to building a truly useful quantum computer.”
