March 24, 2025 -- Iceberg Quantum today announced its launch, a $2 million pre-seed funding round, and a partnership with PsiQuantum. The company is developing fault-tolerant quantum computing architectures based on LDPC codes, with the goal of accelerating the path to useful quantum computing using significantly less hardware.

Iceberg Quantum believes large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing will be transformative—yet realizing this potential remains incredibly difficult due to one critical roadblock: the massive hardware overhead required for quantum error correction.

Qubits are inherently far more error-prone than transistors. To perform any useful computation, quantum computers require an architecture that protects programs against these errors using a fault-tolerant encoding—where instructions are carried out on logical qubits rather than physical ones. These logical qubits are created by combining several error-prone physical qubits into error correcting codes.

Today, the predominant approach to designing fault-tolerant architectures is based on the surface code, which is highly qubit-intensive—requiring at least 1,000 physical qubits to encode a single logical qubit. This overhead is the key reason why quantum applications remain frustratingly distant.

But in the last few years, an alternative path has opened up. Breakthroughs in quantum LDPC codes—combined with enabling advances in hardware—point to a dramatically more efficient route to fault tolerance.

Based on the conviction that LDPC-based architectures are the future of fault-tolerant quantum computing, Iceberg Quantum was founded by three recent PhD graduates in fault tolerance. The company believes these architectures will be the critical enabling technology that makes quantum computing practical—unlocking useful applications much sooner and with more than an order of magnitude less overhead. In the long run, they will be essential to making quantum compute abundant.

Iceberg Quantum also believes that realizing this vision requires a focused, dedicated effort. The need for quantum error correction means that, unlike in classical computing, the first truly useful quantum computers will require complex, sophisticated architectures from the outset. Designing these architectures is a big and still underestimated challenge. The fastest way forward is to tackle this challenge head-on—within a dedicated company, solely focused on developing the best possible fault-tolerant architectures.

To take the first step, Iceberg Quantum has raised a $2 million pre-seed round led by Blackbird, with participation from LocalGlobe. The company is deeply grateful for their support and will use this capital to build a team of the world’s best quantum architects dedicated to designing the best fault-tolerant architectures and nothing else.

Iceberg Quantum is also thrilled to announce its first partnership with PsiQuantum. The PsiQuantum team has made a bold bet on photonics while taking a fault-tolerance-first approach from day one, a principle Iceberg Quantum shares. Together, both companies work towards a more efficient path to useful quantum computing by applying LDPC-based architectures to their photonic platform.

The opportunity to shape the future of quantum computing is enormous—but so is the work ahead. If you share this ambition and want to help bring fault-tolerant quantum computing closer to reality—whether by joining the team or partnering with it—Iceberg Quantum would love to hear from you.