Germany, 15 September 2022 – Kipu Quantum, a German quantum computing startup based in Karlsruhe and Berlin, closed a EUR 3m funding round. The round was co-led by Quantonation, the world’s leading sector VC focused on quantum technology, as well as US-based deep-tech investor Entrada Ventures and Karlsruhe-based early-stage investor First Momentum Ventures.

Kipu was founded in 2021 and has been working in stealth mode for the past 18 months. It will use the funds to design quantum computing products that fulfil customer needs in different industry verticals such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, optimisation, finance, and logistics. Led by Chief Visionary Officer Prof. Enrique Solano, Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Tobias Grab, and CEO Dr. Daniel Volz as co-founders, Kipu engages in the challenge of providing industrial quantum advantage much sooner than competing approaches. To achieve this, Kipu operates at the intersection between customer use cases with co-designed quantum hardware architectures and tailored application and hardware-specific algorithms which are developed together with customers and turned into enterprise solutions.

Dr. Daniel Volz, founder and CEO of Kipu comments: “We are glad and grateful to be backed by a strong consortium with a stellar track record in quantum tech, product design and scaling to commercialise an exciting technology that builds on more than two decades of scientific breakthroughs.” When building the first quantum teams at global top management consultancy McKinsey and at chemicals giant BASF, Volz gained deep insights into the end users’ needs for quantum computing-based solutions. He added: “There is no doubt about the massive economic potential of quantum to large corporates, but so far the combination of current hardware featuring less than 500 qubits with mainly hardware-agnostic algorithms fails to deliver any meaningful advantage over other solutions. Kipu intends to fundamentally change this soon.”

Prof. Enrique Solano, founder and Chief Visionary Officer pointed out: “We are proud to productise and commercialise the ideas we developed during two decades of quantum research, bringing to the present solutions for the quantum computing markets with disruptive creativity. We look forward to working with a talented, international team to develop products to reach quantum advantage soon. Our vision is to use application-specific quantum computing that builds on today’s and tomorrow’s hardware to start solving real problems since now, rather than in the next decade.”

Investor Quotes

Andreas Fischer, Founding Partner at First Momentum, stated “Kipu Quantum is a great example of engineers at heart bringing research into the market to enable solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our time. Climate technologies, advanced chemistry, pharmaceuticals, and many other fields will see new potentials unlocked by Kipu’s technology. The team has managed to gather some of the brightest minds in quantum computing and we are very happy to enable their journey with our industrial network.”

Dr. Eric Hall, Managing Partner at Entrada Ventures, said “Entrada Ventures is excited by the sizeable economic impact that quantum computing will have in all industries and believes Kipu’s innovative approach is the path to near-term practical commercial applications. We are proud to partner with a team that has the technical and business experience to capitalise on this promising technology.”

Olivier Tonneau, Partner at Quantonation, added “as an investor specialized in quantum technologies, we are totally aligned with Kipu’s vision of the quantum technologies market. We are convinced that the team has the potential to lead the Quantum revolution with groundbreaking software and algorithms that will help industrial clients take advantage of the promises of quantum technologies. Kipu will partner closely with prominent Hardware Quantum Computing manufacturers in Europe and the US and bring their value-adding software philosophy as the hardware platforms mature.”