In-Q-Tel enters new quantum, synthetic data investments
By
Ross Wilkers
In-Q-Tel makes two investments in quantum and synthetic data platforms as part of its mission to invest in promising technologies for the intelligence community.
In-Q-Tel has entered two more investments announced Tuesday as part of that organization’s mission as the intelligence community’s venture capital arm to identify and invest in emerging technology companies.
One of those firms IQT has backed specializes in the much-talked about domain of quantum computing. Q-CTRL focuses its energy on control engineering, or the tools that are intended to help reduce noise and error.
Q-CTRL sees the main challenge of quantum computing as in maintaining hardware stability and how both software and firmware interact with that stack.
Based in Los Angeles, Q-CTRL has in recent years worked on improving efficiency and performance of standoff detection, plus precision navigation and timing for defense and aerospace.
The company was founded in 2017 and join IBM’s Q startup network the next year. Founder and CEO Michael J. Biercuk started the Q-CTRL on the heels of research he led at the University of Sydney in Australia, where he is a professor of quantum physics and quantum technology.
Investment number two on the part of In-Q-Tel is in AI.Reverie, which built a synthetic data platform that works to create annotated images and videos in order to accelerate computer vision and machine learning.
In-Q-Tel was one of several new institutional investors that contributed a total of $5.6 million in equity financing that was led by Vulcan Capital. AI.Reverie has collected $10 million in financing since it was founded in 2016.
AI.Reverie designed its platform to train algorithms used by clients in the government and Fortune 500 group of companies. Projects it has been used for include airport simulation, weapons selection and delivery bots.
The idea behind using synthetic data is to achieve better outcomes in recognizing data diversity and labeling functions.
Terms of both In-Q-Tel investments were undisclosed.