The Quantum gold rush
Last October, Nature released a fascinating article called Quantum gold rush: the private funding pouring into quantum start-ups. In short, this showed the increasing interest in venture capital getting involved in the space.
We wanted to push this further and decided to build our own dataset of funding rounds, updated for recent announcements, triangulated back to multiple sources. It’s fair to say that a lot of coffees have been drunk during quarantine…
So what are the conclusions?
2020 is the biggest year yet for Quantum Computing
- The $215m raise for PsiQuantum earlier this year was the largest single reported fundraise of a Quantum Technology company. It also means that 2020 is already the biggest year for funding in the sector.
- There has still been over $150m of other funding notably with Rigetti ($71m) and Quantum Machines ($18m) in March 2020.
- 2017 was also a big year with big raises from Silicon Quantum Computing, PsiQuantum and Rigetti.
Total private funding pales in comparison to other technologies
- Private funding in the Quantum Technology sector still pales in comparison to other areas.
- AI companies raised ~$10bn in 2018, nearly 10x raised by Quantum Technology companies since 2006.
- However, such comparisons are unfair given the rather broad definition of “AI” (is it obvious that we’re sceptical…?)
US still dominates, but increasing international interest
- Companies in the US and Canada comprise the vast majority of private funding rounds. This isn’t a
- Nonetheless, Funding in Europe has been on the rise with examples including the likes of IQM
- China is notoriously hard to get data on. Please get in touch with us if you are kind stranger with intel on the market!
We are constantly improving and iterating this, and would therefore really value your feedback. We’re a startup so we want to share our work early on (even if not perfect). Please email us at [email protected] to get in touch with us.
