(Bloomberg) -- Sequoia Capital-backed Quantum Circuits Inc. raised more than $60 million from investors including a fund set up by the US Central Intelligence Agency, as concern grows about quantum computing’s potential security implications.
Sequoia’s only portfolio company in the nascent field said on Thursday it won an investment from In-Q-Tel Inc., a nonprofit that deploys funds from US intelligence agencies. Quantum Circuits will use the money to commercialize time on its superconducting quantum computer which boasts built-in error-detection.
Quantum computers are still years away from delivering world-changing performance, but fears around the military and economic advantages they might give rivals are keeping investments flowing. Touting computing speeds millions of times faster than classical computers, quantum technology’s promise is attracting bets from the likes of Alphabet Inc., Honeywell International Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., as well as governments around the world.
Spun out of Yale University, Quantum Circuits seeks to make error correction more efficient in quantum computers, thereby making them more commercially viable. The conventional approach is to scale up first and then deal with errors, but the New Haven-based company provides a superconducting architecture based on so-called dual-rail cavity technology to make real-time correction possible, according to co-founder Robert Schoelkopf, an applied physics professor at Yale.
“We basically are building much more robust qubits, and we correct them first and then scale,” he said, referring to the basic unit of quantum processors. Catching errors at the single-qubit level leads to more consistent and repeatable computing results, according to Schoelkopf, who added that conventional qubits in large arrays favored by Alphabet’s Google and IBM make error correction a challenge.
In addition to Sequoia, Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital Partners and Hither Creek Ventures led the Series B round, which also included investments from Canaan Partners and Fitz Gate Ventures.
Riverlane, a startup that designs chips to help reduce quantum computing errors, last week said it raised $75 million.
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