Quantum-focused VC firm QDNL Participations has today announced the first close of its new fund, which significantly expands its vision to back early-stage quantum technology startups, wherever they are based. The first close amounts to €25 million, with the firm targeting €60 million for the fund. QDNL Participations was established to accelerate the thriving Dutch quantum technology ecosystem with a €15 million fund. That fund has invested in nine of the Netherlands’ most high-potential quantum startups, including Qblox, QuantWare, QphoX and Q*Bird.

Twente will become the center of a global revolution in photonics with the development of New Origin, an advanced production facility for photonic chips. Thanks to a grant from the province of Overijssel and the involvement of regional development company Oost NL as a shareholder, the company is progressing from planning to the actual construction of the plant.

The QAIMS team at TU Delft have won the Golden Application prize ‘pushing the boundaries of quantum tech for mobility’ in the prestigious Airbus-BMW Global Quantum Computing Challenge.

Researchers at QuTech have managed to, for the first time, perform coherent logic operations between spin qubits 250 micrometers apart on the same chip. Such ‘enormous’ distances create new opportunities for operations between qubits, as they normally only sustain over 100 nm. These results hold promise for scalable networks of spin qubit islands on a chip. The researchers published their results in Nature Physics.

The Centre for Quantum and Society (CQS), in collaboration with Quantum Delta NL, has announced the launch of the Quantum for Good Challenges, accelerating the development of societally beneficial quantum applications ahead of the UN International Year of Quantum. For the next four years CQS will host annual multiple competitions to drive the advancement of quantum applications aimed at addressing major societal challenges.

Dutch quantum technology company Orange Quantum Systems [OrangeQS] has today launched the OrangeQS Max, which is designed to accelerate the development of quantum computers by making it possible to test new, more powerful quantum chips with a fraction of the R&D resources that are normally required for such testing.

Q*Bird is excited to share their recent achievement in securing quantum communications. Q*Bird, in collaboration with SURF and Quantum Delta NL, has successfully installed a multi-user, multipoint-to-multipoint Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) network in Utrecht. This achievement sets a new benchmark for secure communications, addressing the critical need for advanced data protection in the research and education sector.

Dutch quantum computing startup Fermioniq has announced that its quantum emulation product, Ava, is the first third-party tensor network simulator to be available through the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform. CUDA-Q users will be able to leverage the powerful emulation capabilities of Ava to run their quantum programs, accessing the platform via the cloud alongside real quantum hardware.

An international research team led by QuTech has demonstrated a network connection between quantum processors over metropolitan distances. Their result marks a key advance from early research networks in the lab towards a future quantum internet. The team developed fully independently operating nodes and integrated these with deployed optical internet fibre, enabling a 25 km quantum link. The researchers published their findings in Science Advances.

QDNL Participations, the venture capital firm launched to accelerate the thriving Dutch quantum technology ecosystem with a €15 million fund, has signaled its wider ambitions for the future with a significant expansion of its team.