A quantum startup based in the UK, Ukraine and the US has raised what it says is one of the largest seed rounds in quantum software, bagging $11m.
The funding round in Haiqu was led by Primary Venture Partners, with participation from Qudit Investments, Alumni Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Silicon Roundabout Ventures and returning investors Toyota Ventures and Mac Venture Capital.
Haiku is focused on building the software layer that can optimise the current state of quantum hardware. The startup said the funding will be used to support the upcoming launch of Haiqu’s operating system for quantum applications, which it says makes quantum more efficient and more resistant to errors. The funds will also be used to expand its team.
Haiqu was co-founded in 2022 by Richard Givhan, a Stanford-trained engineer, and Mykola Maksymenko, a former quantum researcher at Max Planck Society and Weizmann Institute.
Givhan said: “Quantum teams need to make empirical progress on hardware to close the gap toward industrially useful quantum applications. Today, too little experimentation happens because quantum cloud costs are prohibitive and hardware performance remains insufficient.
"Our goal is to change that overnight with a software system that can run larger applications at a fraction of the cost. We are grateful to have found investors who recognise the ugly truth: middleware isn’t sexy, but it matters.”
Brian Schechter, partner, Primary Venture Partners, said: “Quantum computing must demonstrate commercial advantage over classical compute in some domain in order to scale. The premise underlying our investment in Haiqu is that software is essential to realise this goal.
“More specifically, quantum hardware needs to operate more noise-resiliently and at greater scale. Haiqu minimises hardware shortcomings to get the best of what quantum has to offer today and in the many years before we have fully fault-tolerant qubits."
According to Crunchbase, Haiqu has raised $5.8m in total to date, prior to this funding round.
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