Munich, Germany — Quan­tum compu­ting start-up planqc today announ­ced a €4.6 million funding round led by UVC Part­ners and Speed­in­vest. With this funding, planqc will deve­lop highly scalable room-tempe­ra­ture quan­tum compu­ters based on atoms in opti­cal latti­ces. planqc was foun­ded by a team of scien­tists from the Max Planck Insti­tute of Quan­tum Optics and the Ludwig Maxi­mi­lian Univer­sity of Munich and is the first spin-off of the Munich Quan­tum Valley, one of the leading centers for quan­tum tech­no­logy in Europe.

Current digi­tal quan­tum compu­ters are limi­ted by both the number of qubits used and their gate quality. While the number of qubits limits the amount of infor­ma­tion that can be proces­sed, the limi­ted gate quality inevi­ta­bly leads to errors in the result of a compu­ta­tion (so-called noise). While these NISQ (short for noisy inter­me­diate-scale quan­tum) compu­ters have recently outper­for­med clas­si­cal compu­ters on some abstract problems, they are still far from a “quan­tum advan­tage” for indus­try-rele­vant problems. TWAICE has increased sales by about 250 percent since May 2021. The company’s growing custo­mer base includes more than five of the world’s leading auto­ma­kers, as well as seve­ral major rene­wa­ble energy storage deve­lo­pers and operators.

planqc’s unique combi­na­tion of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies is the fastest way to scale to thou­sands of qubits, which is a prere­qui­site for an indus­try-rele­vant quan­tum advan­tage. Quan­tum compu­ters from planqc store infor­ma­tion in indi­vi­dual atoms — by nature the best qubits — and arrange them in highly scalable arti­fi­cial light crys­tals. Quan­tum gates based on precis­ely control­led laser pulses are used to process quan­tum infor­ma­tion. planqc bene­fits from basic rese­arch at the Max Planck Insti­tute and the world’s leading laser and photo­nics indus­try in Germany.

Planqc’s foun­ding team brings toge­ther deca­des of inter­na­tio­nal rese­arch on neutral-atom quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies at world-leading insti­tu­ti­ons such as Harvard Univer­sity, Oxford Univer­sity, Univer­sity of Cali­for­nia Berke­ley, Univer­sity of Colo­rado, Univer­sity of Inns­bruck, CQT Singa­pore, and MPQ. The foun­ding team is comple­ted by multi-super­vi­sor and finan­cial expert Ann-Kris­tin Achleit­ner and serial entre­pre­neur Markus Wagner, foun­der of i5invest.

Support for planqc conti­nues to be provi­ded by scien­ti­fic advi­sors Imma­nuel Bloch and J. Igna­cio Cirac. Both are direc­tors at MPQ and are known for their pionee­ring work on quan­tum simu­la­tion and quan­tum infor­ma­tion. In addi­tion, quan­tum algo­rithm expert Dieter Jaksch, profes­sor of physics at Oxford Univer­sity and the Univer­sity of Hamburg, was recrui­ted as an advi­sor. “This world-class team combi­nes the tech­ni­cal and commer­cial exper­tise to build the world’s most powerful quan­tum compu­ters,” said Amanda Birken­holz, invest­ment mana­ger at UVC Partners.

About UVC Partners

UVC Part­ners is a Munich and Berlin based early-stage venture capi­tal firm inves­t­ing in Euro­pean B2B start-ups within the enter­prise soft­ware, indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and mobi­lity sectors. The fund typi­cally invests between €0.5 million and €10 million at the outset and up to €30 million in total per company. The port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team as well as from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading center for inno­va­tion and busi­ness crea­tion. With over 300 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. This colla­bo­ra­tion allows UVC Part­ners to provide start­ups with unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial part­ners. www.uvcpartners.com

About planqc

planqc builds quan­tum compu­ters and stores quan­tum infor­ma­tion in indi­vi­dual atoms — inher­ently the best qubits. Quan­tum infor­ma­tion is proces­sed by arran­ging these qubits in highly scalable regis­ters and then mani­pu­la­ting them with precis­ely control­led laser pulses. planqc features a unique combi­na­tion of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies that opens the fastest path to quan­tum proces­sors with thou­sands of qubits, crea­ting the neces­sary condi­ti­ons for an indus­try-rele­vant quan­tum advan­tage. planqc was foun­ded in April 2022 by Alex­an­der Glätzle, Sebas­tian Blatt, Johan­nes Zeiher, Lukas Reichs­öll­ner toge­ther with Ann-Kris­tin Achleit­ner and Markus Wagner. planqc is based in Garching near Munich. www.planqc.eu