27 Jul PsiQuantum Raises $450 Million to Build Its Quantum Computer

Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2021.

Palo Alto, Calif., startup says its approach of using photons as quantum bits will lead to reliable calculations without errors

By Sara Castellanos
July 27, 2021

Quantum computing startup PsiQuantum Corp. has landed a $450 million investment led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock Inc., amid increased investor interest in the next-generation computing technique.

The funds will be used to expand its team, which currently has about 150 people, and to build a 1 million-quantum-bit machine, said Jeremy O’Brien, co-founder and chief executive of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company. “Within this decade, we’ll be seeing the world-changing applications of that technology,” he said. Such commercial-grade quantum computers don’t yet exist, but eventually they could solve problems many millions of times faster than a conventional computer and potentially solve problems a regular supercomputer could never solve.

PsiQuantum has raised $665 million since its founding in 2016 and its Series D funding brings its valuation to $3.15 billion, Dr. O’Brien said. The investment is validation of the company’s approach to building its quantum computer, which will use particles of light to store information, he said. The company is building the machine with help from GlobalFoundries Inc., one of the largest specialist chip-production companies, Dr. O’Brien said.