HQS Quantum Simulations raises €12 million in Series A funding

Karls­ruhe — HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons raises €12 million in Series A. Quan­to­na­tion, a VC fund specia­li­zing in quan­tum compu­ting, leads the funding round. The alre­ady invol­ved inves­tors UVC Part­ners, btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) invest again.

HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is a spin-off of the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT) and, as part of the Q‑Exa consor­tium, provi­des the soft­ware for the first quan­tum compu­ter manu­fac­tu­red in Germany.

With the new capi­tal, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons intends to streng­then its cloud plat­form HQS Quan­tum Assis­ted Design as well as expand its open source library Active Space Finder.

HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons, Europe’s leading startup for complex quan­tum simu­la­ti­ons, closes a Series A funding round. Toge­ther with new rese­arch funding, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is thus raising over 12 million euros. French quan­tum VC fund Quan­to­na­tion leads the finan­cing round as a new inves­tor. The alre­ady parti­ci­pa­ting VC funds UVC Part­ners, btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies and HTGF reaf­firm their commit­ment through rene­wed investments.

The market for quan­tum tech­no­logy has been growing rapidly for seve­ral years and reached a new record high last year. In Germany, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is driving the key tech­no­logy forward as part of the Q‑Exa consor­tium, among others. The inter­di­sci­pli­nary project aims to install the first German-made quan­tum compu­ter at the Leib­nitz Compu­ting Center before the end of this year. Like most large-scale compu­ting centers, the High Perfor­mance Compu­ting Center of the Bava­rian Academy of Scien­ces uses signi­fi­cant porti­ons of its compu­ting power to solve quan­tum mecha­ni­cal problems. HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons provi­des the neces­sary software.

With the capi­tal from the new finan­cing round, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons intends to further streng­then its posi­tion as a leading Euro­pean soft­ware provi­der in the field of quan­tum simu­la­tion. Foun­ded by four quan­tum physi­cists, the startup has been deve­lo­ping effi­ci­ent quan­tum algo­rithms for mate­ri­als, chemi­cal and phar­maceu­ti­cal rese­arch since 2017. The new round of funding will enable HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons to further deve­lop its Quan­tum Assis­ted Design cloud plat­form and expand its open-source Active Space Finder library.

For its Quan­tum Assis­ted Design cloud plat­form, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is deve­lo­ping unique soft­ware opti­mi­zed for use on current quan­tum compu­ters. In the near future, it will enable rese­arch groups and compa­nies without access to their own quan­tum hard­ware to perform the same quan­tum simu­la­ti­ons that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons enables with its soft­ware at the Leib­niz Compu­ting Center. With the open source library Active Space Finder, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is the only company in the world working on a solu­tion to the so-called Active Space Problem. Only the solu­tion of this problem enables prac­ti­cal use of quan­tum compu­ters for mate­rial simulation.

“The new round of finan­cing gives us the boost we need to further expand our team, streng­then our foun­da­tion and serve our custo­mers’ needs even more effi­ci­ently. The fact that our inves­tors have reaf­firmed their trust in us and that Quan­to­na­tion, the most renow­ned VC fund in the indus­try, has joined us shows that we are on the right track,” says Michael Martha­ler, Mana­ging Direc­tor of HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons.

The enorm­ous poten­tial as well as the recent advan­ces in tech­no­logy are attrac­ting more and more capital.

“Quan­tum simu­la­tion is on the verge of brin­ging signi­fi­cant commer­cial value to indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons and we believe HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is best posi­tio­ned to deli­ver on this promise,” Yann Fiebig, Prin­ci­pal at HTGF.

Benja­min Erhart of UVC Part­ners also assu­mes this: “We believe that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons will become the leading Euro­pean player in quan­tum simu­la­tion and bring great bene­fits to our society.”

Quan­to­na­tion, the world’s first VC fund specia­li­zing in quan­tum tech­no­logy, leads the finan­cing round.

“We want to advance the deve­lo­p­ment of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies and their use in commer­cial products. High perfor­mance compu­ting is an exci­ting market for this and we are confi­dent that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is deve­lo­ping the right products for quan­­tum-level chemi­cal and physi­cal simu­la­ti­ons to make a huge impact in these indus­tries,” Chris­to­phe Jurc­zak of Quan­to­na­tion.

btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies remains invested.

“We look forward to helping the HQS team bring available quan­tum compu­ting to the mate­ri­als science and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries,” said Chris­tian Reit­ber­ger, part­ner btov.

Co-foun­­der and COO of HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons Iris Schwenk is convin­ced that this goal is within reach with the new round of funding: “When we star­ted in 2017, we were four scien­tists who wanted to build a bridge between acade­mia and indus­try in quan­tum compu­ting. Today, with more than 30 talen­ted scien­tists from a wide range of disci­pli­nes, we are the leading quan­tum startup in Europe — and we’re just getting started.”

About HQS Quan­tum Simulations
HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons was foun­ded in 2017 as a spin-off of the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT) and deve­lops soft­ware for the simu­la­tion of quan­tum systems. The startup’s soft­ware works on conven­tio­nal compu­ters, but can be easily trans­fer­red to quan­tum compu­ters. HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons’ goal with this approach is to enable compa­nies and rese­ar­chers to quickly and effi­ci­ently tran­si­tion their simu­la­tion work­flow to quan­tum compu­ting as it beco­mes available.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 650 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than EUR 3.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,800 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 150 companies.

Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­­fer-Gesel­l­­schaft and the compa­nies ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Bank, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, 1+1 AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, FOND OF, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.