By Jane Lanhee Lee
OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) – Sydney-based startup Q-CTRL, whose software helps run quantum computers more precisely, said on Tuesday it had raised $27.4 million with the arrival of Salesforce Ventures in as a new investor.
Quantum computers, which run their processes based on the theories of quantum physics, could one day perform certain calculations millions of times faster than today’s fastest supercomputers. Billions of dollars have been invested to prepare for when quantum computers can outperform classical computers on important tasks that could change the industry, experts say.
“Currently, quantum computers almost never give you the right answer,” said Q-CTRL CEO and Founder Michael Biercuk, adding that with a small quantum computer with about 16 quantum bits, or qubits, the chances of to get the answer right are one out of two. a million. “We augmented it thousands of times to make it very useful.”
The more qubits the machine has, the more powerful the computer. Several quantum computer makers claim they will have more than a thousand qubits within one to two years. But these atomic-level qubits are subject to a lot of interference from the environment, leaving a gap between what they might do and what a user actually feels.
Biercuk explains that it’s like old televisions whose images are obscured by white snow or interference. Q-CTRL’s software helps see through some of this static to increase the chances of reading the correct response from the quantum machine.
He said that while the world waits for bigger and more precise quantum computers, companies are pumping money to be ready for the day when a quantum computer can beat a classical computer in something useful. Biercuk said chemistry or finance is where this could happen first.
“When we talk to end users of quantum computers for one of our products, almost all of the companies that contacted us were financial institutions,” Biercuk said.
Q-CTRL plans to use the funding for sales and marketing and will grow its team from 80 to 120 this year. It said it recorded more than $15 million in revenue between its quantum computing and quantum sensing divisions last year.
It works with both quantum computing hardware and software makers including IBM, IONQ, and Classiq.
(Reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)