ZuriQ raises $25.5m for trapped-ion quantum computer development - Electronics Weekly

AsicsDSPsRaspberry PiRF & MicrowaveAsicsDSPsRaspberry PiRF & MicrowaveZuriQ, a Swiss quantum computing company spun out of ETH Zürich, has raised $25.5 million in seed funding to scale its trapped-ion quantum processors.The round builds on the company’s $4.2 million pre-seed round in 2025 and is led by Quantonation, with participation from Forward.one, Extantia, Firgun Ventures, and all previous round investors.ZuriQ will use the new capital to expand its team and R&D effort as it works to significantly increase the number of qubits its architecture can support.Most trapped-ion quantum computers are built on an architecture first proposed more than two decades ago, in which ions are held in essentially one-dimensional chains stitched together into larger grids using complex junction structures.ZuriQ has taken a fundamentally different route with processors that are natively two-dimensional.Using Penning micro-traps, the company uses a static magnetic field in place of the rapidly oscillating fields most legacy architectures rely on, replaces the oscillating fields of conventional designs with a static magnetic field, allowing ions to move freely in any direction without the junctions that constrain reconfiguration.“What makes this approach powerful is geometry,” said Professor Jonathan Home of ETH Zürich, and a scientific adviser to ZuriQ. “Hold ions in a line and the count grows one at a time; hold them in two dimensions, and it grows with the area of the chip — on a standard chip, that is the difference between tens of ions and many thousands. Just as important, the ions can be moved freely in three dimensions, so they can be connected together far more flexibly, and that connectivity is what ultimately makes a quantum computer more capable. Reaching the scale and connectivity that real applications will need has been the central challenge for the whole field.”ZuriQ is proving out its native two-dimensional architecture with a working demonstrator – successfully developed in just 18 months.The demonstrator comprises a 3×3 array of nine individually controlled ions, the largest two-dimensional array of its kind demonstrated to date, built in collaboration with researchers at ETH Zürich.The chips behind it were fabricated with ZuriQ’s manufacturing partner, Infineon, showing the design can be produced with established industry processes.With the architecture and its manufacturing route established, the company’s focus now turns to scale: rapidly increasing the number of ions on a chip to enable powerful, commercially useful machines.Since its last investment, ZuriQ has grown from four people to eighteen. The company has attracted world-class talent with backgrounds from leading quantum and photonics organizations, including IonQ, Xanadu, and Hamamatsu.The new capital will go toward further hiring, expanding the company’s research program, and scaling up chip fabrication – the groundwork for putting hundreds of qubits on a chip. David Manners has more than forty-years experience writing about the electronics industry, its major trends and leading players. As well as writing business, components and research news, he is the author of the site's most popular blog, Mannerisms. This features series of posts such as Fables, Markets, Shenanigans, and Memory Lanes, across a wide range of topics. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Email * ΔGet our news, blogs and comments straight to your inbox! Sign up for the Electronics Weekly newsletters: Mannerisms, Gadget Master and the Daily and Weekly roundups. 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