SandboxAQ initially was spun off from Alphabet Inc. (parent company of Google) in March of 2022. At that time, they disclosed that they had raised a 9 figure funding round, e.g. something above $100 million, from investors including T. Rowe Price, Eric Schmidt, Breyer Capital, Guggenheim Partners and Thomas Tull. We have learned that they continued to raise additional funds after the spin off and have closed their Series D round in December 2022 with a total of $500 million in funding. The company has not disclosed the names of any additional investors beyond the ones originally participating last year, but they did indicate that Alphabet is not a shareholder because SandboxAQ wanted to be able to work with other cloud providers that compete with Google.
Although this funding is one of the largest fundings so far in the quantum industry, it should be noted that SandboxAQ is not purely a software company. They do have an established quantum cybersecurity product with over 15 clients. They also acquired a French company cybersecurity company called CryptoSense last September and partnered with a Canadian cybersecurity company called eVolutionQ. But they also have two other product areas that may involve hardware. The first is an effort to implement quantum-inspired drug and material discovery using a large cluster or GPUs, and the second is to develop ultra-sensitive quantum magnetic sensors for navigation.
February 15, 2023