Quantinuum has announced it has raised $300 million in a new investment brining the total capital raised by the company to about $625 million with a pre-money valuation of $5 billion. The investors included JPMorgan Chase, Mitsui & Co., Amgen and Honeywell who have all worked with the company for many years. The company believes that this will be the last private fund-raising that would be needed before an eventual IPO.
Quantinuum was formed in 2021 as a spinoff of the Honeywell Quantum Solutions group that merged with Cambridge Quantum Computing in the UK to form a quantum tech company that provides both hardware and software solutions. Honeywell Corporation will still own a majority ownership of Quantinuum even after this investment. The company currently has almost 500 employees with about 75% of them being scientists and engineers.
The company will use the funds continue its path towards providing commercial applicable quantum solutions with a focus on implementing a universal fault-tolerant quantum processor (see our previous articles reporting on previous developments in this area here and here) leveraging the high fidelity characteristics of their ion trap qubits as well as the mid-circuit measure feature incorporated in their machines. They will also continue to expand their software product portfolio being developed by the former Cambridge Quantum team in the UK. These include offerings such as TKET, InQuanto, LAMBEQ, and Quantum Origin. Additional funds will be used to expand their sales force to help increase customer commercialization of their quantum offerings.
A recent expansion of their efforts has been in providing on-premise machines for organizations that want to implement their own private cloud or are concerned about data residency requirements. The company just announced last week that they will be installing their H1 processor at Riken in Japan and indicated to us there they have received interest from other organizations in acquiring an on-premise processor.
The $5 billion valuation is the highest we know about for any standalone quantum company. For comparison, IonQ’s current market valuation current market cap is at $2.25 billion as this article is being written. But then again, Quantinuum also has an extensive software product offering, while IonQ is mostly a hardware company. Cambridge Quantum founder, Ilyas Khan holds about 20% of the shares in Quantinuum.
A press release provided by Honeywell International can be accessed here.
January 16, 2024