ZuriQ acquires 3.8 million Swiss francs in a first financing round

(CONNECT) ZuriQ receives 3.8 million Swiss francs in a financing round. The start-up, a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), intends to use the fresh capital to further advance the development of quantum computers. According to a statement, the seed financing round was led by Founderful, with SquareOne, First Momentum Ventures, OnSight Ventures and QAI Ventures also participating.

Quantum computers do not work with bits like conventional computers, but with quantum bits or qubits. These use the special laws of quantum mechanics. Initial applications can be seen in pharmaceutical research and chemical process engineering.

Like a bit in a classical computer, a qubit can assume either the state 1 or 0, but it can also assume an infinite number of states in between. Qubits can also communicate with each other, i.e. be quantum entangled. One approach to "connecting" qubits is the so-called ion trap technique. Until now, these ion traps have been based on one-dimensional ion chains. ZuriQs has developed a technology using a combination of electric and magnetic fields to trap ions in a two-dimensional grid. This innovation allows ions to move freely in all directions.

This is the decisive step taken by founders Pavel Hrmo, Tobias Sägesser and Shreyans Jain to unleash the power of the systems on a large scale. The idea was developed by the three researchers in the laboratories of Professor Jonathan Home at ETH. "We were very impressed by the speed of implementation by the ZuriQ founding team," investor Pascal Mathis, Partner at Founderful, is quoted in the press release. Looking to the future, ZuriQ is aiming for the thousands of qubits required for industrially usable quantum computing. ce/eb