Quantum Brilliance raises $13m for room temperature quantum computer
ANU start-up Quantum Brilliance raises $13m for its innovative quantum computer that operates at room temperature.
Quantum Brilliance, a Canberra-based start-up which is developing a quantum computer that operates at room temperature, has announced a $13m seed investment to fund the next stage of the company’s expansion.
The company, which uses technology developed at the Australian National University, plans to have 50 qubit quantum computer working within five years that can be used as a plug-in device to boost the power of conventional computers.
If it succeeds, Quantum Brilliance will have a technology with a key advantage over nearly all other types of quantum computers which must be kept at a temperature near absolute zero using bulky refrigeration equipment.
READ MORE: Breakthrough quantum computer from ANU
Quantum Brilliance CEO Andrew Horsley, a physicist at ANU, said that the company currently has table top sized devices with one or two qubits and is linking them to the CSIRO’s Pawsey computer in Perth to work on hardware and software integration with conventional computers.
Dr Horsley said his company was the only one in the world using diamond technology to develop a room temperature super computer. Diamond, which is a hard and stable material, shields the qubits from outside interference, enabling the technology to work at room temperature.
The $13m funding round is led by the founders of Australia’s first quantum computing applications company, QxBranch, and Main Sequence Ventures, the CSIRO-backed venture capital firm.
“We are quietly confident Quantum Brilliance has all the foundations in place to be a globally significant company and to reshape the quantum computing industry,” said QxBranch founder Shaun Wilson.
The ANU regards Quantum Brilliance as one of the university-linked start-ups which could enable it to fulfil its goal of seeing a $1bn company emerge from ANU research.
“It is wonderful to see venture investments in breakthrough research commercialisation spin-outs like Quantum Brilliance,” said ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt. “If the university’s goal to create a billion-dollar company in the next five years is to happen, it will be through these joint efforts.”
The new investment is a major step up for Quantum Brilliance which has previously received about $3.5m from investors since it was founded in 2019.
Some of the new investment will pay for hiring a vice president of engineering, as well as many other new positions for physicists, software engineers and control engineers.
The company is establishing an office in Germany, a centre of quantum technology, which has the precision manufacturing techniques to create the highly-engineered diamond chips that are required. Nitrogen atoms are precisely placed in the chips which allows qubits to be created and controlled using fluorescence and micro wave radiation.
Dr Horsley said the company’s exciting challenge was to scale up the number of qubits in a chip and then to manufacture them at scale.
“How do we make a million devices, how do we make 100 million devices, and turn it into an everyday technology,” he said.
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