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FROM THE EDITOR.

It’s been an exciting week in quantum with a few companies announcing major rounds.

This week, UK-based Nu Quantum announced that it closed a Series A worth $60 million Series A. These funds will be used to accelerate development of its quantum networking platform, according to the reports. Right on the heels of that announcement, Israeli trapped-ion startup, Quantum Art, reported its $100 million Series A raise. The company plans to use those funds to continue the build of its platform and accelerate commercialization.

A few things to note: First, we have been following both companies for some time now and have been impressed with the leadership. These funding rounds offer solid backing to continue their collective journeys, but they also — symbolically at the very least — represent the growing confidence in their teams and technologies. Second, we appreciate the international makeup of these startups. It’s a sign not just of healthy national ecosystems — but also a symbol of the strength and sprawling nature of this global community we’re building.

Congratulations to these companies!

Have a great weekend. Thanks for reading!

— Matt, Chief Content Officer at The Quantum Insider

INSIDER BRIEF.

• Photonic Introduces Distributed Quantum Resource Estimation

• VTT to Begin First NATO DIANA Accelerator

• Einride and IonQ's Electric Partnership

• Breaking Barriers to Scale Quantum

• Four Things Every Business Leader Should Know About Quantum Computing

• Google Gives UK Researchers Willow Access

•  Quantum Cybersecurity Research Partnership

• Researchers: Quantum Computers Can Outperform Classical Limits

• EPB And Vanderbilt University Launch Innovation Institute

• Quantum Transistors’ 99.9988% Fidelity

• XPRIZE Quantum Applications Names Seven Finalists

  ANALYST NOTES.

The Noteworthy & Nuanced

Wordplay, wordplay everywhere! QUDORA Technologies has introduced Qamelion, a quantum computing emulator for testing algorithms under realistic, hardware-like noise conditions. Some features include adjustable noise models, hybrid classical quantum execution, and compatibility with OpenQASM, Qiskit, and QIR, enabling thorough evaluation of near-term and future algorithms. Available through QUDORA’s cloud with a free trial, Qamelion will also be offered in Japan through Fixstars Amplify.

“Pan-European Quantum Corridor” - sounds fancy, doesn’t it? SEALSQ has expanded its Quantum Investment Fund from $35M to more than $100M. All in order to create the aforementioned corridor and advance Europe’s post-quantum security and sovereign quantum computing ambitions. The company is deploying capital across PQC hardware, secure satellites, blockchain identity systems, QKD, and quantum-ready semiconductors in multiple countries.

Illinois is pumping out support for quantum startups. The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP) and Silicon Catalyst have formed a partnership that will give companies in Silicon Catalyst’s accelerator access to lab space, specialized equipment, cryogenic infrastructure, and the National Quantum Facility. This is all facilitated by the Illinois EDC, as part of a strategy to attract and retain quantum firms in the state. — Alan Kanapin, Analyst at The Quantum Insider

The Research Rundown

Check out this week’s handpicked quantum research. These are studies headed for real-world impact: improving accuracy, reducing latency, using fewer resources, or solving problems that classical methods struggle with. These are early developments, but they hint at where quantum might earn its keep.

• Researchers introduce a quantum machine learning framework for optimizing CO₂ plume geothermal systems. Developed by a team from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute and Sultan Qaboos University, this approach enables real-time exploration of injection pressures, geological settings, and well configurations.

• Researchers develop a quantum-computing-inspired optimization and prediction framework to improve real-time load balancing across server networks supporting IoT and digital twin applications. By encoding server performance parameters into qubit-like probabilistic states, the system evaluates many task–server allocations simultaneously and predicts optimal virtual machine assignments.

• Researchers from Sichuan University develop a quantum-based method to speed up how scientists identify and label interferon genes, a process traditionally slowed down by BLAST’s search step. By reformulating the search on a quantum circuit, the team cuts the search effort dramatically and shows the approach working end-to-end on both simulators and real quantum devices.
  
  — Cierra Choucair, Journalist & Analyst at The Quantum Insider

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Quantum Source has released a technical report, developed with The Quantum Insider, comparing all major qubit modalities and outlining engineering pathways toward fault-tolerant quantum computing. The analysis shows the field has shifted from theory to practical engineering, with recent logical-qubit demonstrations and hybrid architectures, such as Quantum Source’s deterministic atom–photon platform, emerging as potential routes to scalable systems.

INSIDER SPOTLIGHT: 2025 — The Year of Quantum Fundraising — Isn’t Over Yet

➡️ Two major funding rounds — $60 million for Nu Quantum and $100 million for Quantum Art — add exclamation points on strong year for quantum investment across architectures and geographies.
➡️ Nu Quantum reportedly closed the UK’s largest quantum Series A to date, backing its distributed, networked approach to scaling quantum processors.
➡️ Quantum Art raised one of the largest Series A rounds for a trapped-ion startup, accelerating commercialization and its roadmap toward thousand-qubit machines.
➡️ The rounds highlight the increasingly international nature of the quantum ecosystem, with capital from Europe, the U.S., Israel, and Asia.
➡️ Both companies signal a trend: quantum startups are entering a scale-up phase, raising growth-stage capital to pursue ambitious hardware roadmaps and early commercial traction.

Analyst Commentary

Two large funding rounds — Nu Quantum’s $60 million Series A in the UK and Quantum Art’s $100 million Series A in Israel — offer a snapshot of a quantum-computing industry entering a scale-up phase. The raise sizes are interesting on their own, but what might be more interesting is to see these rounds as a sign of the future trajectory. Quantum companies are graduating from lab-stage prototypes to commercial-facing hardware programs that require significantly more capital. After years of conservative fundraising driven by a lot of uncertainty, 2025 may end up being one of history’s most robust year for quantum financing across modalities and across the stack.

Let’s talk about Nu Quantum first. Nu Quantum’s raise takes its place as one of the more a significant funding rounds for distributed quantum computing. The company said it secured a record-setting Series A ever, anchored by impressive, important backers, namely National Grid Partners, as participation came from across Europe, the U.S. and Asia. Nu Quantum’s thesis — that practical, fault-tolerant machines will require modular interconnects that tie many small processors into a networked quantum datacenter — has moved from an outlier view to a given for many in the ecosystem. The company has already demonstrated subsystems for qubit-photon interfaces and networking units, and this round allows it to push toward full-stack distributed error correction and high-rate photonic entanglement. As classical data centers were transformed by networking, Nu Quantum is betting the same pattern will define quantum scale-out. The raise signals both market confidence in networking as a scaling strategy and the arrival of UK quantum startups into later-stage capital markets.

Quantum Art raised $100 million to accelerate development of its reconfigurable, multi-core ion-chain architecture and to advance a 1,000-qubit system known as Perspective. Investors from Israel, the U.S., and Europe backed the round, giving it one of the most globally distributed cap tables in the sector. Importantly, Quantum Art is pursuing a hardware strategy explicitly designed for scale: multi-qubit gates to compress operations, optical segmentation for parallelism, and dense 2D arrays that preserve connectivity. The company has reported rapid technical progress — including a fully controlled 200-ion chain and early results with NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q platform — marking a shift from pure research to early commercial traction. This raise positions the company to bridge today’s few-qubit prototypes with eventually thousand-qubit, application-oriented systems.

Let’s merge these two separate news items together. These rounds offer a glimpse of how quantum computing is evolving in 2025. First, they point to a healthier capital environment. Investors are increasingly willing to fund ambitious hardware roadmaps, especially those that address long-standing scaling challenges through architectural innovation. Second, the rounds highlight the international composition of the ecosystem. Quantum is no longer driven by a handful of national champions; it is a globally distributed industry with deep technical teams and cross-border capital. Finally, the raises show how quantum startups are growing into their next phase. The era of small seed rounds supporting exploratory prototypes is giving way to a period defined by platform engineering, multi-year roadmaps, and the first steps toward commercial deployments.

The strategic implication is that quantum computing is beginning to resemble other deep-tech industries as they transition from research to productization. Networking layers, scalable trapped-ion architectures, and modular distributed systems are attracting the level of capital required to test real-world performance at scale.

Please don’t consider the emergence of the quantum industry as a foregone conclusion. It’s not. There are so many potential disruptions that could happen. However, if this pattern holds, 2025 may be remembered as not just the year when quantum science celebrated its century of discovery, but also the year that the quantum industry shifted from promise to growth — with companies raising the capital needed to build machines capable of fault-tolerant workloads and real commercial impact.

DATA SPOTLIGHT.

PacketLight Networks and NEC demonstrated quantum key distribution over a 400G dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) network using a dual-fiber setup. They integrated NEC’s QKD system with PacketLight’s PL-4000M 600G Muxponder, achieving 100% data throughput and low latency, verified via a 100GbE tester. The QKD ran over a dedicated parallel fiber, maintaining quantum signal integrity. The result: a cost-effective, scalable quantum-safe model with zero performance tradeoffs on existing high-capacity infrastructure.

INDUSTRY HIGHLIGHTS.

🤝 New Zealand and South Korea have launched three joint quantum communication research projects targeting long-distance secure networks, compact QKD hardware, and interfaces linking optical and microwave quantum signals.

🇸🇰 IonQ, via its subsidiary ID Quantique, has deployed Slovakia’s first national quantum communication network, supporting the EU’s EuroQCI initiative with a hybrid QKD and post-quantum cryptography architecture.

🌿 01 Quantum has integrated post-quantum cryptography into Bullfrog Power’s Environmental Token to secure long-term verification of corporate sustainability claims. Staples Canada is the first participant in the pilot, using quantum-safe digital certificates to protect environmental records.

🇮🇳 QuantrolOx and India’s C-DAC have partnered to launch Quantum EDGE Academy, a full-stack training platform that combines quantum algorithm education with simulated superconducting hardware. The program integrates coursework and interactive hardware simulation to support scalable quantum workforce development.

🤝 Canada and Germany have launched the Canada–Germany Digital Alliance to deepen collaboration on quantum technologies, AI, digital infrastructure, and innovation. As part of the agreement, the two countries will issue a joint call for quantum technology proposals in January 2026 to support commercialization and collaborative R&D.

💰️ SEALSQ has expanded its Quantum Investment Fund to over $100 million to strengthen Europe’s post-quantum security, sovereign quantum computing efforts, and a pan-European Quantum Corridor.

🖥️ The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park and Silicon Catalyst have partnered to support quantum startups by providing access to specialized lab space, equipment, and scale-up infrastructure in Illinois.

🤖 ORCA Computing and ST Engineering are collaborating to develop quantum machine learning–based cyber anomaly detection using ORCA’s photonic quantum processors. The partnership aims to identify subtle security threats across large-scale networks.

🎁 XPRIZE Quantum Applications has named seven Finalist teams whose quantum algorithms show credible, benchmarked pathways toward real-world impact in areas including health, climate, energy, and materials science. The teams now advance to Phase II, where they must demonstrate measurable performance, resource requirements, and potential quantum advantage.

🔗 EPB of Chattanooga and Vanderbilt University plan to launch the Institute for Quantum Innovation, establishing a new Chattanooga-based campus to link Vanderbilt researchers and graduate programs with EPB’s trapped-ion quantum computer and photonics quantum network.

🏔️ G7 ministers meeting in Montréal committed to deeper cooperation on AI, quantum technologies, digital infrastructure, and industrial competitiveness, with Canada leading the launch of a new SME AI Adoption Blueprint and Toolkit. On the sidelines, Canada also announced new digital and quantum cooperation agreements with the EU, the UK, and Germany.

🐈‍⬛ Alice & Bob has joined TERATEC to help advance quantum–HPC integration in Europe, focusing on best practices and co-design across hardware, software, and applications. The partnership aims to prepare HPC centers for early fault-tolerant quantum computing.

🧪 Algorithmiq and Microsoft are collaborating to develop fault-tolerant quantum chemistry methods, with early results showing improved ground-state preparation and reduced measurement overhead for molecular simulations.

🇬🇧 Google and the UK government are opening access to Google’s Willow quantum chip, allowing UK researchers to propose and run experiments with support from Google and the National Quantum Computing Centre to explore potential real-world applications.

EVENTS.

Dec. 17-18 -- Science Diplomacy - Bridging divides in a fragmented world will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference explores how science diplomacy can bridge divides and promote innovation, competitiveness, and international cooperation.

Jan 13–14, 2026 -- Quantum.Tech: Commercial Applications of Quantum Computing, Communications and Sensing, Doha, Qatar

January 27 and 28, 2026 -- Qubits 2026 D-Wave is bringing its annual user conference, Qubits, to Boca Raton, Florida. The event will be held at The Boca Raton resort.

March 24 -- The QSECDEF World Symposium will be held on 24 March 2026 from 12:00–18:00 CET at the Palais des Congrès de Paris (Auditorium Havana), gathering global leaders from industry, government, and research to advance quantum-secure communication and infrastructure.

April 27-30 -- The Quantum Matter International Conference & Expo (QUANTUMatter2026) will take place at the Barceló Sants Hotel in Barcelona. The conference to foster the incubation of new ideas & collaborations at the forefront of quantum technologies, emerging quantum materials and novel generations of quantum communication protocols, quantum sensing and quantum simulation.

June 22-24 -- IQT Nordics: Oslo, Norway

June 24-26 -- Quantum. Tech World: Boston, Mass

June 25-26 -- Quantum.Tech World -- Empowering Quantum, AI & HPC at Enterprise -- Scale, co-located with Quantum.Tech World will be held at Encore Boston Harbor in Boston, United States.

July 1-3 -- The 2026 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Control, Computing, and Learning (IEEE qCCL 2026) will take place from Wednesday to Friday, July 1-3, 2026