PsiQuantum, the Palo Alto-based startup that’s been tapped to build quantum computers in Chicago and Brisbane, Australia, has raised a $1 billion dollar Series E that values the 9-year-old company at $7 billion. The round was led by BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, and Temasek, and includes NVentures, the venture capital arm of chip maker Nvidia. The deal is one of the largest single private investments in quantum computing technology to date.
While your average person would be hard-pressed to explain what a quantum computer does, or why you’d want one, investors have decided that they want in.
Since the start of September, the quantum computing industry has seen some of its largest funding rounds yet, including a $320 million Series B for Finnish company IQM and a $600 million capital raise for Quantinuum, a joint venture of Honeywell, at a $10 billion pre-money valuation. Also this week, Infleqtion announced plans to go public via special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), targeting proceeds of about $540 million.
An ‘aggressive road map’ to big systems
PsiQuantum cofounder and chief science officer Pete Shadbolt says the new funding will help the company realize its plans to build a photonics-based, utility-scale quantum computer. (PsiQuantum has tested key components of its system but has not yet built a complete quantum computer.)
PsiQuantum has been shifting from the “centimeter scale” work of chip and device design, Shadbolt says, to focus on the “kilometer scale” work of building out cooling cabinets and other infrastructure for data-center-size computing facilities. He says the new funds will also help PsiQuantum scale up its manufacturing of the “bespoke parts and materials” that will be used in intermediate-scale systems.
“We do have a very aggressive road map to get to big systems, but we’re not trying to do it all in one leap,” he says.
The round includes existing investors Third Point Ventures and T. Rowe Price Associates, along with newcomers such as Macquarie Capital, Qatar Investment Authority, Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), and S Ventures (SentinelOne). PsiQuantum has now raised just over $1.8 billion, according to the company.
AI exuberance meets quantum computing
The AI-level influx of capital into quantum computing in recent weeks could be a sign of the technology maturing, or of investors with AI FOMO trying to catch the next big thing. Or both.
“AI is built on classical computing, which has underpinned the last 50 years of technology,” Tony Kim, head of the Fundamental Equities Technology Group at BlackRock, said in the funding announcement for PsiQuantum. “Now, we are at the dawn of an adjacent computing platform—rooted in quantum mechanics—that will allow us to simulate the physical world with transformative accuracy. The tech stack of the future will integrate quantum computing and AI, paving the way for machine superintelligence.”
Luke Ward, private companies investment manager at Baillie Gifford, an early PsiQuantum investor, said in the announcement, “The company has consistently hit technical milestones while forging deep partnerships across industry and government. With a vision rooted in practicality, PsiQuantum is now positioned at the forefront of what could be a trillion-dollar industry, able to solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. This goes beyond what is possible with AI.”
Both statements help explain the entry of Nvidia into the space, which marks a remarkable turnaround. At his CES keynote talk in January 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had suggested that useful quantum computers were still about 20 years away, sending publicly traded quantum-related stocks plunging.
But he has apparently revised his assessment, declaring at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in Paris this June that “quantum computing is reaching an inflection point.” Now the company is putting money on it. NVenture’s investment in PsiQuantum is its third quantum deal since the start of the month—and its third quantum deal ever.
NVentures also joined the latest funding round for Quantinuum, which uses trapped-ion technology in its computers. And yesterday, QuEra—which makes quantum computers that use so-called neutral atoms—announced an unspecified investment from NVentures to expand a $230 million Series B round announced in February.
Collaborating with Nvidia
In addition to the investment support from NVentures, PsiQuantum is collaborating with Nvidia across a broad range of development areas, including quantum algorithms and software, the integration of quantum processors and GPUs in so-called hybrid systems, and PsiQuantum’s silicon photonics platform.
“No quantum computer is going to be useful in a vacuum,” says Shadbolt. “Quantum computers are going to generate data [for AI] and they also need input from GPU clusters. So, that’s a really natural place for Nvidia to get involved. Already in the Japanese quantum computing ecosystem there’s a big Nvidia GPU cluster plugged into a bunch of quantum computers. That’s sort of a growing trend around the world.”
PsiQuantum’s extensive work in photonics—the transmission of information via light—make it an appealing strategic partner, as makers of AI super computers are increasingly looking to integrate photonics to keeping up with the massive data transmission and energy demands of AI systems as they grow. Earlier, this week, chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) showed off its new COUPE (Compact Universal Photonic Engine) process for manufacturing densely layered chips that fuses photonic integrated circuits and electronic integrated circuits, at the Silicon Photonics Global Summit in Taiwan.
Nvidia’s investments across three different quantum computing platforms—each pursuing a different technology for generating qubits, the fundamental units of quantum information—suggest that it is hedging its technological bets.
The competition, says Shadbolt at PsiQuantum, is “simultaneously frustrating and very exciting. It’s frustrating that we all use different technologies and it’s vociferously debated. On the other hand, I think that’s a symptom of this being a journey that is just beginning, and I’d rather be on a journey that’s beginning than a journey that is coming to its end.”
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