One of the biggest names in the rapidly developing Dutch quantum technology sector is QuantWare. Its off-the-shelf quantum processors, based on superconducting circuits, are making waves in the quantum industry and the startup has been busy scaling up following a €6 million funding round earlier this year.
“We want to become the Intel of quantum,” says CEO and co-founder Matthijs Rijlaarsdam.
While quantum CPUs are traditionally developed by large companies that build full-stack quantum computers, QuantWare is part of an ecosystem of companies taking a more modular approach.
“Full-stack development made sense before we were around, but it’s bad for innovation,” says Rijlaarsdam.
“QuantWare exists to make the development of quantum computers faster. We don't make chips for our own quantum computers, so we make a lot more chips, we sell a lot more chips, and that allows us to be an order of magnitude more affordable than the rest, making the cost of building a quantum computer much, much lower.”
Building a market
Despite the progress it has made in its first few years, there’s no denying that the market QuantWare serves is currently very small. But Rijlaarsdam believes the ‘build it and they will come’ approach will pay off.
“I am convinced that this will be the way of building quantum computers,” he says. He likens the modular approach to how the arrival of standalone CPUs kickstarted the ever progressing progress of specialization in the semicon industry.
“Quantum computers will move out of the mainframe era soon, and move to open architecture. That’s more or less a law of nature. And once quantum computers can do something economically relevant, which will still take a while, then this market will explode. The trick is being at the right scale, at the moment that happens.”
Rijlaarsdam doesn’t envision a near future when there’s a quantum computer in every home and office. Instead he sees quantum becoming part of the market for supercomputers.
Rijlaarsdam believes the power of quantum computers will make them near-essential to organizations.
“The size of the market will be gigantic, because of the value these systems will be able to create.”
The story so far
Rijlaarsdam comes from a computer science background, which complemented the physics expertise prevalent in most of the rest of QuantWare’s early team.
Rijlaarsdam met co-founder Dr Alessandro Bruno while studying for a Masters degree focused on quantum information science at quantum-focused institute QuTech, situated on the campus at TU Delft.
“Alessandro is arguably the best superconducting chip maker in the world. We got to talking and while it took me some time to fully grasp the huge vision that he has on how to build truly large quantum processors, I knew right away that he was gonna be a very fun guy to work with.”
During the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 the pair cooked up the idea behind QuantWare and spun it out of TU Delft. Now, two-and-a-half years later, the startup’s headcount has reached 40.
The wins the company has clocked up in that time include its 5-qubit Soprano processor being used in the first quantum computer in Spain, at the Quantum Computing Technology laboratory in Barcelona.
The first quantum computer in Israel will also use a chip from the startup. The Israeli Quantum Computing Center will offer an open-architecture quantum computer for use by the country’s commercial and research communities.
The importance of company culture
“We’ve passed a lot of technology milestones since we started, but for me, the progress of the culture and the team has been important,” says Rijlaarsdam.
Quantum technology is traditionally a male-dominated field, and QuantWare has been careful to foster a diverse team in response to this.
“If you want to make the best quality decisions, you need to have a difference of views and a difference of opinions. Quantum is a relatively diverse field; it's international, and quite often people have different backgrounds, because it is a cross-discipline field. But it’s not that diverse in terms of gender, says Rijlaarsdam.
“I believe something like 10% of people in quantum are women, and that's simply not good for the quality of the decisions. And so that's something we really value and spend a lot of time on; it's one of our key long term goals. We make sure our recruitment reaches underserved groups and that compensation is fair and equal, and we pay attention to the little details, like the wording of job openings.”
Building a lead
QuantWare has so far seen no notable competition in the superconducting quantum chip space.
“Historically, the only parties that have been able to make superconducting chips, did that with the idea that they were going to make the whole computer,” explains Rijlaarsdam.
“Superconducting chip-making has an extremely high barrier of entry. The university we spun out of, TU Delft, has historically been one of the best places to make superconducting qubits. And so there aren't really a lot of other places where there's a team with this level of expertise.
“On top of that, you need to have access to facilities that are very capital intensive because you need to have cleanrooms and specialist chip-making tools. Those two factors mean that it's not easy to compete with us.”
And the Dutch quantum ecosystem really is a boon to the startups it fosters.
“QuTech and TU Delft are big, excellent institutes, and all of that is on the same campus,” says Rijlaarsdam.
“The building that we are in has a bunch of quantum startups in there. There are a couple of others close by. On top of that, the facilities here are super-mature, super-well-developed. Even if you had a very large amount of capital today, it would take you a decade to build up something like this.
“So I think that is a unique combination that doesn't exist anywhere else. So it's only natural that Dutch quantum companies are starting to pop up, and that they're at a relatively advanced level in a short period of time.”
What’s next for QuantWare Rijlaarsdam says he can’t share publicly yet what new processor QuantWare has in the works, but he’s clear about the direction the company is taking in the meantime.
“Since raising the round earlier in 2023, we are all about scaling up our production and our processes. In two months, we will be the biggest producer of a type of superconducting amplifier that significantly improves the readout of a quantum computer. There’s huge demand for it, and we want to serve that demand.
“It’s the same thing with our QPUs; we’re scaling up the quality and quantity. It’s all about maturing the products that we have.”
When quantum computers are ready to bring tangible benefits to business and academia, QuantWare wants to be ready. Based on its current trajectory, the company is in a strong position to capitalize on that quantum explosion.
