By Jane Lanhee Lee
OAKLAND, Calif (Reuters) – Quantum computer software startup Classiq based in Tel-Aviv said on Thursday it raised $33 million from the investment arms of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and other investors.
While the promise of a world-changing quantum computer is still years away, the last year has seen several quantum computer companies go public on the stock market, and many new players, hardware and software, have been coming out of the research labs and getting venture capital funding.
Quantum computers use the phenomena of quantum mechanics and hope to eventually operate millions of times faster than today’s advanced supercomputers.
Classiq has raised a total of $48 billion now, only 20 months after it was started. The company declined to share its latest valuation. This round also included personal investments from Lip-Bu Tan and Harvey Jones – well known executives and investors in the chip industry.
Classiq has a software platform that other quantum software developers can use to build specific applications, such as financial asset optimization tools or tools for testing the properties of new molecules for drug discovery.
“In the last couple of years, we see many enterprises in various fields, in finance, in automotive, chemistry, establishing quantum software teams,” Nir Minerbi, co-founder and CEO at Classiq told Reuters. “They want to be able to prepare the software, to create the IP (intellectual property) by themselves.”
Minerbi said software developed on Classiq’s platform will be able to scale up along with quantum computers’ developments.
Today’s quantum computers are still in the early stage with a limited number of quantum bits, or qubits, which is the computer’s processing power. Late last year IBM said it had a 127 qubit Eagle processor.
Still, researchers say quantum computers will need thousands of qubits before they can run algorithms that are game-changing.
(Reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates)
