BlueQubit raises $10M to take Quantum software into real-world applications

Integrating quantum computing into real-world computing applications is an ongoing problem, as the platforms are designed fundamentally differently. BlueQubit, a San Francisco-based quantum software startup founded by Stanford alumni, thinks it may have an answer.

Its Quantum Software as a Service (QSaaS) platform attempts to address the above problem by giving end users access to what are known as ‘Quantum Processing Units’ (QPUs) and quantum computing emulators.

To further its mission, it has now raised $10 million in a Seed funding round led by Nyca Partners. The idea is to marry enterprise systems, and advanced quantum hardware.

Fields such as finance, medicine, and material science are beginning to feel the limits of what is possible with classical computing, which is why Quantum computing is getting so much attention lately.

Quantum holds the promise of unlocking new solutions to many intractable problems. Google’s recent announcement of Willow, its latest quantum computing chip, showed a glimpse of a world where computers can do a computation, in less than five minutes, that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years (that’s the first number followed by the lot zero).

BlueQubit’s QSaaS framework supports use cases such as financial modeling, pharmaceutical development and visualization.

Hrant Ghairbyan, CEO and Founder of BlueQubit, told TechCrunch that the company uses large-scale classical computer resources – in particular, an array of GPUs – to develop and test quantum algorithms before sending them to real quantum processors.

“This approach enables us to efficiently scale and pioneer novel algorithms for quantum machine learning and quantum optimization,” he said.

Its software stack uses quantum emulators that are “up to 100 times faster than commonly available alternatives, combined with a set of algorithms developed by our team,” he added.

MIT graduate Gharibyan co-wrote the groundbreaking ‘wormhole teleportation’ algorithm, which the Google Quantum AI team later implemented in their superconducting processor.

BlueQubit’s CTO, Hayk Tepanyan, attended Stanford University, and later worked on Google’s infrastructure team. Gharibyan and Tepanyan met at Stanford.

“We decided to start a company sitting on surfboards in Santa Monica, CA, in the spring of 2022,” Gharibyan said. “We just heard a new announcement from the IBM Quantum team about progress in superconducting qubits, and it was clear that the quantum landscape is evolving at an incredible pace.”

“We were looking for a team to invest in that is looking to help finance companies get off the ground when quantum hits,” said Tom Brown, a partner at Nyca, in a statement. “Hrant and Hayk have the background, skills, and motivation to implement something that until recently has been a theory.”

Also participating in this round were Restive, Chaac Ventures, NKM Capital, Presto Tech Horizons, BigStory, Untapped Ventures, Formula VC and Granatus.