Quantum computing company secures $500 million in funding

Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI), a startup based in the United States, recently opened a foundry for integrating photonics with thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN). The company announced that it has raised $500 million in total proceeds through a new private equity offering.

It means that the Nasdaq-listed New Jersey startup, whose foundry is located within Arizona State University’s Research Park in Tempe, has now attracted $900 million support over the past year.

The firm said that the additional cash would be used to help accelerate commercialization efforts, strategic acquisitions, expand sales and engineering personnel, working capital, and general corporate purposes.

"This successful $500 million offering, backed by strong support from both new and existing top-tier institutional investors, was priced at a significant premium compared to our four recent offerings," pointed out QCI’s CEO, Yuping Huang.

TFLN entanglement

“This additional funding further strengthens our balance sheet and positions us to advance our multi-year growth strategy of accelerating commercialization, pursuing strategic acquisitions, expanding our sales and engineering teams, and enhancing our manufacturing capabilities.”

QCI did not specify who its latest backers are, other than to say that the offering was led by “several large existing shareholders alongside an initial investment from a pre-eminent global alternative asset manager”.

Its filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicate an unusual history, with the company previously known as “Ticketcart” and “Innovative Beverage Group Holdings” before it became QCI, listed on the Nasdaq, and merged with a company called “QPhoton”.

TFLN photonics foundries
While the funding effort means that QCI can now boast a balance sheet featuring $850 million in cash holdings, the firm’s most recent financial results indicate that it remains at a very early stage of business development.

For the quarter ending June 30, QCI posted a pre-tax loss of $36.5 million on negligible sales revenues, although that figure was heavily impacted by a $28 million write-down in the value of a “derivative liability”.

At the operating level, the company posted a loss of $10.2 million, bringing its operating loss for the first six months of 2025 to $18.5 million - up from $11.6 million for the equivalent period last year.

Towards the end of June QCI reported that it had shipped its first commercial product, an entangled photon source to support research in quantum networking and secure communications that was destined for a South Korean research institute. It is also working with research groups at the Delft University of Technology and NASA, and has secured a TFLN chip order from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Earlier in the year the company appeared at the SPIE Photonics West technology exhibition, promoting its TFLN foundry service for photonic integrated circuits (PIC), with the operation subsequently awarded ISO certification.

Other proponents of TFLN photonics, which has emerged as a potential competitor to silicon photonics and indium phosphide material platforms in certain PIC applications for AI data centers, include the startups Lightium and HyperLight, as well as the CSEM spin-out CCRAFT.

They all point to the promise of up to eight times faster speed and a ten-fold reduction in energy consumption as the key advantages offered by the novel thin-film material, which is already a very well understood and widely deployed material in its bulk optical format.

Source: optics.org