(Reuters) – French quantum computer start-up PASQAL said on Tuesday it has raised 100 million euros and aims to deliver major business advantages over conventional computers by next year.
According to PASQAL CEO and co-founder Georges-Olivier Reymond, this is the largest fundraising for a quantum start-up in Europe, as the share price collapse of three manufacturers of New York-listed quantum computers, IonQ, Rigetti Computing and D-wave Quantum, has made financing the industry difficult.
“As other companies will likely struggle to find cash, this may be a good opportunity for us to take advantage of available talent,” Georges-Olivier Reymond told Reuters, adding that the start-up plans to double down. its workforce to reach approximately 200 employees in 2023.
The start-up recently sold two quantum computers to France and Germany for high-performance computing centers. Alain Aspect, one of its founders, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022 for his work on quantum science.
The scientific community expects that quantum computers will one day be able to perform certain calculations millions of times faster than today’s fastest supercomputers.
Georges-Olivier Reymond said PASQAL’s quantum computer is currently capable of solving complex financial optimization problems as accurately as classical computers and he hopes it will soon show an advantage over them.
“When we launch the next generation of devices with hundreds of qubits, hopefully 1,000, showing a true quantum advantage with this technology, that will be the revenue inflection point,” he said.
The number of qubits, or quantum bits, is an indication of the power of the quantum computer.
PASQAL’s most recent computer has 350.
The round was led by Singaporean fund Temasek, the European Innovation Council, Saudi Aramco’s venture capital group, Wa’ed Ventures, and Bpifrance.
(Reporting Jane Lanhee Lee, French version Diana Mandiá, editing by Kate Entringer)