Insider Brief
- QT Sense has raised €4 million to advance Quantum Nuova, a quantum sensing platform that enables real-time measurement of cellular stress and biochemical activity in living cells at single-cell resolution.
- The financing includes a €3 million seed round led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, follow-on investment from QDNL Participations, an angel investor, and €1 million in non-dilutive funding from ONCO-Q and the Quantum Forward Challenge to support oncology and collaborative validation.
- QT Sense will use the funding to transition Quantum Nuova from prototype to deployable platform, expanding robustness, throughput, and analytics while placing early-access systems with research and drug discovery partners, including applications in colorectal cancer.
PRESS RELEASE — Biotech startup QT Sense has raised €4 million to accelerate Quantum Nuova, a breakthrough platform that uses quantum technology to track cellular stress within individual cells in real time-enabling scientists to watch cellular processes as they happen, a capability previously beyond the reach of biology.
The funding combines a €3 million seed round led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, alongside follow-on funding from the startup’s existing VC investor, QDNL Participations, and an angel investor. The total funding also includes a €0.6 million ONCO-Q grant to fast-track applications in oncology.
In addition to this core financing, QT Sense has secured €0.4 million through the Quantum Forward Challenge, supporting collaborative projects in which partners will actively deploy and validate Quantum Nuova in real research environments.
How it works
While traditional methods study frozen tissue or dead cells, QT Sense’s Quantum Nuova platform measures real-time biochemical activity in living cells and tissues, opening a new frontier in spatial biology.
Using ultra-sensitive fluorescent nanodiamond quantum sensors, Quantum Nuova detects oxidative stress, metabolic shifts, and free radical kinetics—dynamic signals that drive disease but have remained invisible until now—with single-cell precision.
With this live view of cell behaviour, researchers can for the first time see how cells react to drugs, adapt to stress, and diverge into hidden subpopulations. It introduces an entirely new layer of biological insight that genomics, proteomics, and traditional imaging cannot provide.
The technology has already been used to demonstrate the mechanism of action of FDA-approved drug compounds. With new ONCO-Q grant funding, it will now be applied to colorectal cancer—supporting drug development in one of the world’s most heterogeneous and treatment-resistant diseases.
Quantum Nuova will generate the first functional maps of oxidative stress and metabolic vulnerabilities in colorectal tumour models, laying the groundwork for new diagnostics and therapeutic strategies.
Next steps
This seed investment enables QT Sense to transform Quantum Nuova from a high-performing prototype into a ready-to-deploy discovery platform.
Improvements in hardware robustness, throughput, and integrated analytics will prepare the system for real-world use. Early-access units will soon be placed with strategic partners, enabling mechanism-of-action studies, functional heterogeneity profiling, and rapid, label-free readouts across many samples.
QT Sense’s CEO, Dr. Deepak Veeregowda says choosing Cottonwood was intentional—and critical:
“Cottonwood backs real deep tech. Their conviction in breakthrough hardware enables us to move fast and deliver Quantum Nuova to scientists and drug discovery researchers who need it. Quantum sensing reveals fundamental biochemical processes that were invisible until now—this is a scientific shift, not an incremental step. We’re building a platform that works every day in real labs, with scale, reliability, and seamless integration at its core.”
Alain le Loux, general partner at Cottonwood Technology Fund, said::
“QT Sense is exactly the kind of hard science company we look for—deeply disruptive technology rooted in world-class research, with the potential to fundamentally change how we understand and treat disease. We are proud to lead this investment and support QT Sense in transforming quantum sensing from a lab breakthrough into a scalable, real-world platform for drug discovery. We are very pleased that Cottonwood is backed by the NOM and Innovatiefonds Groningen to support the Dutch Biotech ecosystem.”
Ton van ‘t Noordende, general partner at QDNL Participations, said:
“As the first investor in QT Sense, we have seen Quantum Nuova evolve from its beginnings as a bold idea at the intersection of quantum sensing and life sciences. Today’s round shows how quickly that vision is translating into a real discovery platform for oncology and drug development. With a team that perfectly blends scientific expertise with strategy execution, QT Sense is exactly the kind of foundational quantum company we aim to support early: world-class science, clear clinical and commercial pull, and the potential to redefine how biology is done in the lab.”
The round includes follow-on funding from the startup’s pre-seed VC investor, QDNL Participations alongside an angel investor. This combined with competitive grant funding, collaborative validation programs, and early commercial orders, showcases growing confidence that dynamic, real-time biology will redefine the future of drug discovery.
