Seen as a buoyant sector, quantum computing is attracting more and more capital. Proof of this is SandboxAQ, an Alphabet spin-off, which has just completed a $500 million seed round. The funds Breyer Capital and T. Rowe Price participated in the operation, as did the former boss of Google, Eric Schmidt, also the president of the American start-up, and Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce, via his vehicle. Ventures investment.
Founded in 2016 within Alphabet, the company is interested in the uses of quantum computing in the fields of cybersecurity, health and finance. It develops SaaS solutions, which earned it the name of “quantum Salesforce”. SandboxAQ has notably designed a prototype to monitor heart rate and a device responsible for detecting changes in the earth’s magnetic field to make navigation systems much more precise. The start-up’s approach particularly appealed to the US Air Force, which decided to award it a contract last month for its quantum navigation technologies.
An independent company after six years with Alphabet
In March 2022, SandboxAQ broke away from Alphabet to become independent and thus more easily capture capital from venture capital funds. The company had also achieved a nine-figure fundraiser, the amount of which had not been disclosed. A year later, this new funding round of half a billion dollars will allow the Californian start-up to accelerate its development. To date, it claims around fifteen customers, including Vodafone Business and SoftBank Mobile, and indicates that it collaborates with around thirty universities to train talents in quantum computing.
The sector has experienced a spectacular rise in power insofar as it should make it possible to make a significant technological leap forward, making it possible to solve problems that are much more complex than at present. Quantum computers rely on processors capable of manipulating qubits. As the latter can be in several states at the same time, their superposition allows millions of calculations much faster than with the most advanced conventional supercomputers. However, the technology is still far from mature and tech giants including Google and IBM are fighting a battle to achieve quantum supremacy.