Dublin quantum computing IDE boost from $18m round
Horizon Quantum Computing has raised $18.1m in its latest round of funding which will see a new software development centre in Dublin, Ireland, for its integrated development environment (IDE).
The company, based in Singapore, is building software development tools for quantum computing hardware. It is setting up an engineering centre in Dublin and is currently recruiting a software engineering team of ten to boost worldwide operations, inincluding product managers as well as a director of engineering.
Horizon Quantum Computing also plans to partner with local Universities to provide internship opportunities.
“We are excited to set up our European office in Ireland, a country with a substantial pool of technical talent,” said Joe Fitzsimons, CEO of Horizon Quantum Computing. “Our growth highlights the strength of the quantum computing ecosystem at a time when major tech players are struggling. We’re looking forward to calling Dublin our second home and rolling out further recruitment to boost worldwide operations.”
In December the company showed its IDE and announced an early access program this year. It also joined Singapore’s National Quantum-Safe Network and has recently seen the first data transmission from its node.
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The $18.1m Series A investment round was led by Sequoia Capital India with Chinese cloud giant Tencent, SGInnovate, Pappas Capital and Expeditions Fund.
“Quantum computing has the potential to completely change how we think about computing,” said Fitzsimons. “While getting to large scale quantum computing is a daunting challenge, it is undeniable that progress towards that goal is being made.”
“At Horizon, we focus on unlocking the power of future quantum computers, and have made significant headway towards our goal of enabling conventional software developers to take advantage of the technology through abstraction and automated algorithm synthesis. The new investment will support our effort to break through the barriers to useful quantum computation,” he said.
Sequoia Capital India and SGInnovate led Horizon’s Seed+ and Seed rounds respectively and reconfirmed support of the company’s ambition to provide tools to make programming of quantum computers as accessible and efficient as it is for conventional computers.
“We have been bullish on the developer economy thesis for a long time,” says Pieter Kemps, Partner, Surge at Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia.
“At the same time, we believe that a tectonic shift will be driven by advancements in quantum hardware. But unlocking quantum computing for the millions of developers is no small feat. Wouldn’t it be amazing if any developer could develop quantum algorithms with little to no prior quantum experience? This is the future that Horizon is enabling. We believe in Joe’s product vision around abstracting the underlying quantum physics to enable developers to create quantum software with ease, and we have been hugely impressed by the technological breakthroughs that the team has achieved in a short period of time.”
