Nu Quantum Secures £7 Million to Build Networking Infrastructure For Quantum Computers

Insider Brief

• Nu Quantum raised £7 million in a pre-series A round.
• The round is led by Amadeus Capital Partners, Expeditions Fund and IQ Capital.
• Nu Quantum is developing scalable quantum networking, essential to delivering useful quantum computing.
• Image: Nu Quantum management team (provided).

PRESS RELEASE — Nu Quantum, the Cambridge-based quantum networking company, today announces that it has raised £7 million in a pre-series A round. The round is led by Amadeus Capital Partners, Expeditions Fund, and IQ Capital, with increased commitment from Seed investors Ahren Innovation Capital; Seraphim Capital; University of Cambridge and Martlet. New investors joining the round include Presidio Ventures backed by Sumitomo Corporation, the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), and Deeptech Labs.

Nu Quantum is pioneering the development of scalable quantum networking, essential to delivering useful quantum computing and unlocking the full spectrum of applications that will have a transformative impact on society. Today’s quantum computers have limited capabilities because their fundamental building blocks, qubits, are extremely hard to assemble in numbers large enough (~100,000 to ~1M) to solve truly valuable problems.

Rather than try to create a single large core, a more efficient way to proceed is to interconnect many smaller cores, each containing 10s to 1000s of qubits, using a scalable quantum network. Nu Quantum’s product is a Quantum Networking Unit (QNU) capable of efficiently scaling discrete Quantum Processing Units (QPUs) to form a larger and more useful quantum computer. Nu Quantum’s technology is interoperable with, and can be applied to, different qubit modalities, and will accelerate the time to market of transformative quantum computing.

This new funding follows a £2.1 million seed round completed in September 2020, which jump-started the company’s significant expansion and ongoing recruitment activity. It will also deepen key partnerships with academia and corporations and accelerate the availability of robust and deployable systems.

Commenting on the fundraise, Dr. Carmen Palacios, Founder and CEO of Nu Quantum, said: “Large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing will bring about the technological revolution of our generation. We have built an exceptional team dedicated to the mission of building the quantum networking infrastructure necessary to make this a reality. We are grateful to the investors who share our vision for their support as we scale and commercialise our solution.”

 Dr. Manjari Chandran-Ramesh, Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners said: “The ability to apply quantum computing at scale is what’s needed to unlock the potential of this revolutionary advancement in processing power. Nu Quantum’s systems architecture approach, driven by quantum entanglement, is unique in the market today and has great commercial potential. Further, its product solution is poised to be able to adapt to any type of qubit technology, which makes the impact far-reaching. We are delighted to grow this partnership and work with new and existing investors on this next exciting chapter of Nu Quantum’s journey. ”

 Kerry Baldwin, Managing Partner at IQ Capital, said: “The important part that networking will play in future quantum systems is clear and Nu Quantum is one of the most technologically advanced quantum networking companies in the world today. We are proud to continue supporting them in realising their vision of a qubit modality-agnostic quantum networking platform. This new funding will allow them to ramp-up work on existing projects and engage with a broad range of commercial partners in the quantum computing ecosystem.”

Richard Crosfield, Investment Director at Presidio Ventures Europe, said: “Quantum computers are expected to significantly impact many industries, from pharma to financial services, if they can overcome the limitations that arise when increasing the logical qubit count. We believe that the quantum optical networking technology that Nu Quantum’s fantastic team is building is the most practical solution to address these critical scalability limits, which all manufacturers of quantum computers will be facing very soon.” 

Mikolaj Firlej, Managing Partner at Expeditions Fund, said: “This funding marks an important step for Nu Quantum to build quantum-based networks that transmits quantum bits [qubits] from quantum servers at high-speeds to handle various commercial-grade applications. We were looking for various quantum networking companies, but we believe that Nu Quantum represents the most advanced effort in this space globally. We believe that Carmen and team have the potential to do what Cisco once did for classical computers – that is, to build the interconnectivity layer for a new generation of computers.’