SYDNEY, Australia (February 13, 2024) – Diraq, a global leader in quantum computing based on silicon quantum dots, today announced the successful completion of a Series A-2 capital raise of USD $15 million. The raise will advance the company’s cutting-edge research and development initiatives to realize the full economic and commercial potential of quantum computing.

The funding round was led by Paris based, specialist investor Quantonation, the world’s first venture capital fund dedicated to quantum technologies and participation from John Higgins Family Investments and UNSW, Sydney. The round extends Diraq’s Series A of USD $20 million led by technology investor Allectus Capital bringing the total funding of Diraq’s technology to USD $120 million, with research funding from Australian and US government programs included. 

“This new Series A-2 funding will be used to expand our team in Australia and launch in the U.S. as well as capitalise on our existing international partnerships,” said Andrew Dzurak, CEO and founder of Diraq. “We are working closely with our foundry partners to drive qubit development based on tried and tested CMOS techniques coupled with our proprietary designs. We are focused on delivering energy-efficient processors with billions of qubits on one chip contained in one refrigerator, rather than thousands of chips and refrigerators requiring hundreds of square metres of space in a warehouse.” 

“We are excited to lead Diraq’s Series A-2 round as the company continues to evolve as a key player in the global silicon quantum ecosystem,” said Will Zeng, a Quantonation partner who will join Diraq’s board.  “The primary technical focus in the next 18 months will be on the development of a quantum chip  through a standard semiconductor foundry. This milestone will serve as a proof point, solidifying the viability of Diraq’s technology and propelling the company’s scale-up program aimed at constructing the most powerful quantum computers in the world.”

Diraq’s U.S.-based chairman, the Hon. William Jeffrey, former Director of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said “This funding round shows international recognition of our capabilities and potential impact. There is a key advantage to our technology which is based on modified transistors – the same components that are integral to our daily lives. As one of the few global companies pursuing the goal of achieving millions of qubits on a single chip, we can leverage over 50 years and trillions of dollars of investment in the semiconductor industry.”

Diraq is dedicated to building a full-stack quantum computer that bypasses the current era of large, error-ridden systems and moves the industry directly to fault-tolerant computing. The company’s spin-based technology in silicon has demonstrated qubit control with sufficient accuracy to allow for scalable error correction, published in over 30 papers in the highly prestigious Nature group journals, including breakthroughs last year.

By taking on the complete process from quantum hardware through to the application layer, Diraq aims to bring the transformative power of quantum computing to a variety of industries with a powerful, cost-effective and compact quantum processor to help solve the world’s most challenging problems.