Diraq, a Sydney-based quantum computing company, has successfully completed a Series A-2 capital raise of USD $15 million. This funding round was led by Quantonation, the world’s first venture capital fund dedicated to quantum technologies, based in Paris. Other participants in the funding round included John Higgins Family Investments and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. This brings Diraq’s total Series A to $35 million including the earlier funding of $20 million from Allectus Capital and total funding including all rounds and government grants and programs to $120 million. This new funding will be used to expand Diraq’s team in Australia, launch in the U.S., and capitalize on existing international partnerships.
Diraq is a global leader in quantum computing based on silicon quantum dots. The company’s technology aims to place billions of qubits directly on silicon to mitigate errors cost-effectively. This approach is expected to deliver energy-efficient processors with billions of qubits on one chip contained in one refrigerator, rather than thousands of chips and refrigerators requiring hundreds of square meters of space in a warehouse.
The company’s primary technical focus in the next 18 months will be on the development of a quantum chip through a standard semiconductor foundry. This milestone will serve as a proof point, solidifying the viability of Diraq’s technology and propelling the company’s scale-up program aimed at constructing the most powerful quantum computers in the world.
Diraq’s U.S.-based chairman, the Hon. William Jeffrey, former Director of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), highlighted that this funding round shows international recognition of their capabilities and potential impact. He emphasized the key advantage of their technology which is based on modified transistors – the same components that are integral to our daily lives. As one of the few global companies pursuing the goal of achieving millions of qubits on a single chip, Diraq can leverage over 50 years and trillions of dollars of investment in the semiconductor industry.
Diraq is dedicated to building a full-stack quantum computer that bypasses the current era of large, error-ridden systems and moves the industry directly to fault-tolerant computing. The company’s spin-based technology in silicon has demonstrated qubit control with sufficient accuracy to allow for scalable error correction, published in over 30 papers in the highly prestigious Nature group journals, including breakthroughs last year.
By taking on the complete process from quantum hardware through to the application layer, Diraq aims to bring the transformative power of quantum computing to a variety of industries with a powerful, cost-effective, and compact quantum processor to help solve the world’s most challenging problems. This funding will advance the company’s cutting-edge research and development initiatives to realize the full economic and commercial potential of quantum computing.
A press release provided by Diraq announcing this funding can be accessed here.
February 12, 2024
