Startup seeking to integrate quantum computing into real-world apps raises $10M

Why it matters: Despite their potential, quantum computers have largely remained confined to laboratories and have yet to demonstrate their usefulness for real-world tasks. However, a small San Francisco startup called BlueQubit aims to be among the first to make this groundbreaking technology practical.

BlueQubit recently secured a $10 million seed funding round led by Nyca Partners to advance its mission of helping businesses harness the power of quantum computing. The company's flagship product is a quantum software-as-a-service (QSaaS) platform, which provides industries with access to quantum processors and emulators for tackling problems that classical computers cannot solve.

BlueQubit claims its software stack, combined with proprietary algorithms, can run quantum emulators up to 100 times faster than existing solutions. The company achieves this through a unique approach: leveraging classical GPUs to test and refine quantum algorithms before deploying them on quantum hardware. This strategy enables effective scaling and supports the development of innovative quantum machine learning and optimization techniques.

While sectors like pharmaceuticals and materials science are poised to benefit significantly from quantum computing as it becomes more accessible, Nyca Partners anticipates that the financial services industry will be the first to see transformative impacts.

"We have been looking for a team to invest in who are looking to enable financial services firms to hit the ground running once quantum is here," said Tom Brown, partner at Nyca.

BlueQubit ultimately aims to accelerate the mainstream adoption of quantum technology by bridging the gap between quantum hardware capabilities and enterprise software demands, according to TechCrunch.

The company's founders, CEO Hrant Ghairbyan and CTO Hayk Tepanyan, bring deep experience from their work developing quantum technologies at Google. Ghairbyan contributed to pioneering efforts that later informed Google's Quantum AI team, while Tepanyan worked on Google's infrastructure team.

After observing rapid advancements in quantum computing, the duo launched BlueQubit in 2022. Interestingly, the idea for the company struck them while surfing.

"We decided to start the company while sitting on surfboards in Santa Monica, CA, in the spring of 2022," Ghairbyan told TechCrunch. "We had just heard a new announcement from the IBM Quantum team about progress on superconducting qubits, and it was clear that the quantum landscape was advancing at an incredible pace."

Quantum computing, alongside generative AI, has become one of the hottest topics in tech. Its development has accelerated significantly in recent years. Earlier this month, Google's quantum computing lab unveiled a new chip, Willow, which reportedly performs certain benchmark calculations in just five minutes – tasks that would take the world's fastest supercomputer "10 septillion years" to complete.