SEEQC closes $30M investment round

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Booz Allen Hamilton’s venture capital arm and NordicNinja led the round for SEEQC, which started in 2019 with the idea of integrating classical and quantum computing techniques.

SEEQC, a six-year-old startup that makes digital chips to power quantum computing systems, has fetched $30 million in new capital to further accelerate the commercial rollout of its flagship product.

Booz Allen Hamilton’s venture capital arm and NordicNinja led the funding round announced Tuesday. SIP Capital is a new investor that joins existing investors EQT Ventures, M-Ventures, BlueYard Capital, FAM and Asset Management.

The world is still working to understand the promise and potential of quantum computing, but what is certain is that it will provide a fundamentally different approach from today’s supercomputers.

It is natural that U.S. government agencies are interested in the technology and want to be at the forefront of it. SEEQC already touts partnerships with the likes of NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Defense and Energy departments.

Major commercial players such as NVIDIA and BASF are also working with SEEQC, which started in 2019 with the idea of integrating classical and quantum computing techniques onto a single digital processor. The idea behind that is to make the management of large numbers of quantum computing units easier.

“Quantum computing needs to move beyond beautiful physics experiments into scalable, enterprise-grade systems that solve real-world problems,” John Levy, SEEQC’s co-founder and chief executive, said in a release. “In the same way that classical computers were revolutionized by scaling from vacuum tubes to transistors to integrated circuits and today’s microprocessors, we’ve built the chip-based backbone that the entire quantum computing ecosystem needs to move beyond huge, complex hardware to finally achieve the same powerful scaling as classical processors.”

SEEQC designs its chips to operate at the kind of ultra-low temperatures that qubits work in so users can obtain real-time digital readout, control and multiplexing functionality.

Energy optimization, drug and material discovery, security, cryptography, and artificial intelligence modeling are examples of the quantum use cases SEEQC is eyeing. Quantum is also seen by many observers as helping make data centers more energy efficient, for instance.

The eventual emergence of quantum does present challenges in cybersecurity given its differences with classical computing, which is naturally a concern for federal agencies.

“Quantum technologies are poised to disrupt nearly every field, and we’re excited to support and partner with SEEQC in the critical effort to develop novel solutions to address major technical bottlenecks that currently exist,” JD Dulny, vice president and leader of Booz Allen’s quantum practice, said in a release. “It is imperative that the United States remains a global leader in the transformative field of quantum, and this investment will further accelerate quantum technology toward mission relevance.”

SEEQC represents the 13th early-stage company Booz Allen has invested in through its corporate venture capital arm since the $100 million fund launched in 2022.