Integrating quantum computing into real-world computer applications is an ongoing challenge because the platform designs are fundamentally different. BlueQubit, a San Francisco-based quantum software startup founded by Stanford University graduates, thinks it may have the answer.
The company's Quantum Software as a Service (QSaaS) platform seeks to address the above issues by providing end users with access to so-called “Quantum Processing Units” (QPUs) and quantum computing emulators.
To further its mission, the company has now raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Nyca Partners. The idea is to combine enterprise applications with advanced quantum hardware.
Fields such as finance, pharmaceuticals, and materials science are starting to feel the limits of what is possible with classical computing, which is why quantum computing has received so much attention recently.
Quantum has the potential to unlock new solutions to many difficult problems. The recent announcement of Google's latest quantum computing chip, Willow, offered a glimpse of a world in which computers could perform calculations in less than 5 minutes that would take 1 billion years on one of today's fastest supercomputers. , followed by many hours) zero).
BlueQubit's QSaaS framework supports use cases such as financial modeling, drug development, and visualization.
Hrant Ghairbyan, CEO and co-founder of BlueQubit, told TechCrunch that the company leverages large-scale classical computing resources, particularly GPUs, to develop and develop quantum algorithms before deploying them to actual quantum processors. He said he was testing it.
“This approach allows us to scale effectively and pioneer new algorithms for quantum machine learning and quantum optimization,” he said.
The company's software stack combines quantum emulators with “a set of algorithms developed by our team to run up to 100 times faster than commonly available alternatives,” he added.
Gharibian, an MIT graduate, co-created a groundbreaking “wormhole teleportation” algorithm that was later implemented by the Google Quantum AI team on superconducting processors.
Hayk Tepanyan, CTO of BlueQubit, attended Stanford University and later worked on Google's infrastructure team. Gharibian and Tepanian met at Stanford.
“We decided to start the company in the spring of 2022 while sitting on our surfboards in Santa Monica, California,” Gharibian said. “We just heard new announcements from the IBM Quantum team about advances in superconducting qubits. It was clear that the quantum landscape is advancing at an incredible pace.”
“We were looking for an investment team that wants to help financial services companies take off once quantum technologies become widespread,” Tom Brown, a partner at Nyca, said in a statement. “Frant and Huyck have the background, skills and drive to put into practice what until recently was largely a theory.”
Also participating in the round were Restive, Chaac Ventures, NKM Capital, Presto Tech Horizons, BigStory, Untapped Ventures, Formula VC, and Granatus.