Paris, June 8, 2021 – Pasqal today announced it has raised €25M in Series A funding. The round was led by Quantonation and the Defense Innovation Fund, managed by Bpifrance on behalf of the Defense Innovation Agency (AID), with Runa Capital, Daphni and Eni Next participating and includes previously announced commitment by the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund. The funding will be used to advance the development of Pasqal’s analog and digital quantum processors, strengthen its applications co-design approach, build its Quantum Computing as a Service hybrid cloud offer as well as initiate international expansion.
Building on the long-time excellence of the French academic research in the field of cold atoms physics, Pasqal is already strong of 25 quantum engineers and technicians at the forefront of the emerging quantum industry. In Pasqal’s processors, neutral atoms are manipulated with laser light with exquisite precision to realize quantum processors on-demand with high connectivity and at unprecedented scale, above 100 qubits and towards the 1000 qubits threshold. Pasqal has been developing the full computing stack, from atomic qubits to software tools for efficient operation and incorporation into major third-party programming environments. One quantum computer is already in operation and 2 more are in construction. Pasqal has established partnerships for application co-design with High Performance Computing communities in Italy (CINECA) and France (GENCI), as well as with partner startups and end-users such as utility EDF and financial institutions.
Georges-Olivier Reymond, CEO of Pasqal, said: “We are very excited to have amazing investors backing us up in our journey to materialize commercial quantum computing advantage in real life applications. This is a wonderful recognition for our highly talented team.”
Florence Parly, French Minister of the Armed Forces, said : “The Ministry of the Armed Forces is pleased to support the development of Pasqal through the first investment of the new Defense Innovation Fund. This fund supports the growth of French technological champions with dual applications (civilian and military). With one of the world’s most renowned research teams, Pasqal will be among the leaders in Quantum Computing in the future. The applications of their technology in defense are multiple and some highly strategic.”
“We are thrilled to lead this round and continue to support Pasqal in the next phase of their development. They have shown over the last two years an amazing capacity to turn a highly sophisticated technology into a product, while continuing to do ground breaking work on the applications side” said Dr. Christophe Jurczak, partner at Quantonation.
Nicolas Dufourcq, General Manager of Bpifrance, said: “Pasqal is a jewel of French Deeptech, which Bpifrance has supported since its inception, notably through the i-Lab innovation competition and the French Tech Seed fund. We are therefore very proud to support Pasqal in its A Series and to renew our confidence in its technological excellence. This also confirms the active role of Bpifrance to grow and accelerate Deeptech companies.”
Gabriele Franceschini, CEO of Eni Next, said: “Eni Next is very pleased to be starting this collaboration with Pasqal, a leader in the field of Quantum Computing. We foresee numerous applications of their highly scalable technology in the route towards energy transition and decarbonization of Eni’s products and operations.”
Dmitry Galperin, partner at Runa Capital, said: “Pasqal’s Quantum Processor is based on the arrays of neutral atoms interacting in a Rydberg state. This approach is different from the ones pursued by incumbent players like IBM or Google, but we believe it provides the fastest path for scaling to thousands of high fidelity qubits and achieving quantum advantage for a variety of practical applications.”
More to read: https://pasqal.io/2021/06/08/pasqal-raises-e25-m-in-series-a-funding-to-speed-up-commercialization-of-quantum-processors/
Press release: https://pasqal.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2021-06-08-PR-Pasqal-Série-A.pdf
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