$1B of New Capital to Build the World's First Useful Quantum Computer
One of the privileges of working in venture capital is glimpsing and, if you’re lucky, partnering with, founders building the future. In deep tech, you get to do this even further out, often with companies turning science fiction into reality. By that measure, quantum computing is as “deep tech” as it gets.
Atomico has been championing deep tech in Europe since the early 2010s, with a frontier tech team set up by Siraj Khaliq, a former Atomico-backed founder and CTO. When our friends at Blueyard invited us to their quantum computing forum in 2017, the significance of this emerging field became immediately clear.
What followed was a year-long deep dive into the world of quantum computing. We spoke with every startup we could find—some not yet incorporated. Many brilliant teams were working on the problem, but one group stood out: PsiQuantum. They combined ambition with realism, recognizing the vast gap between a proof of concept and a truly useful quantum computer.
Jeremy, Pete, Terry, and Mark were UK-based academics who had spent their careers in quantum. They knew that to realize their vision, they had to build a company, and do so at scale. Academic founders often struggle to shift from research to product, but this team embraced the challenge from day one. They drafted a detailed “plan of record” mapping the path from vision to production. That plan, though refined over time, still guides the company more than a decade later.
Our conviction deepened when an academic we hired for due diligence asked if he could join PsiQuantum. And it didn’t hurt that co-founder Terry is the grandson of the legendary Erwin Schrödinger! We led PsiQuantum’s Series C and have been board members and close supporters ever since.
Last week, PsiQuantum reached a major milestone: closing a $1bn Series E at a $7bn valuation, the largest round ever for a quantum startup. This remains an attractive entry point into one of the strongest contenders to lead what will likely become a multi-hundred-billion-dollar quantum computing industry within the next decade. The round attracted both private and public capital, from BlackRock and Nvidia to the governments of Australia and Illinois.
Much has been written about how quantum computing works, so we won’t repeat it here. What matters is its potential: solving optimization and simulation problems that are fundamentally beyond the reach of classical computers, even projected thousands of years ahead. These breakthroughs could transform drug discovery, battery technology, carbon capture, finance, cryptography, and more. Some even suggest that Artificial General Intelligence may ultimately depend on quantum effects.
So why PsiQuantum? From the outset, the team recognized two key truths. First, quantum computing must be fully error-corrected to be useful, requiring millions of qubits. Second, the only viable way to build such machines was to leverage the decades of refinement in semiconductor manufacturing. While others built small, noisy systems that were impressive demos but dead ends for scaling, PsiQuantum focused on building every component, photon sources, detectors, gates, interconnects, for scalable integration. It wasn’t the easy investor story, but it was the right one, saving years while staying true to their vision.
Fundraising was never simple, but the company consistently secured the right kind of investors, building one of the most multi-disciplinary and complementary boards we’ve been part of.
This is also a European success story. Though founded in Palo Alto, two of the four founders have since returned to the UK, where PsiQuantum has a growing research facility in Daresbury. Expansion continues across Europe, with strong support from both the public and private sectors.
At Atomico, we couldn’t be prouder, not only of the founders, whose laser focus has kept them on course, but also of the extraordinary talent they’ve attracted. Raising $1bn in today’s climate is an extraordinary validation of their technical progress and long-term vision.
Our conviction in PsiQuantum has never been stronger and we remain committed to helping them deliver the world’s first truly useful quantum computer. And while the journey so far has been remarkable, we believe the most exciting chapters still lie ahead.
