Horizon Computing raises €16.6m in Series A funding round

Irish-founded Horizon Quantum Computing has raised $18.1 million (€16.6 million) in a Series A funding round that will help accelerate the company’s growth.

The company, which is based in Singapore but announced an Irish hub in November last year, raised the money from Sequoia Capital India, Tencent, SGInnovate, Pappas Capital and Expeditions Fund.

The funding will be used to accelerate product development and expand its science and engineering teams and establish its new engineering centre in Europe, for which recruitment is currently under way. The company has raised about $21.3 million to date.

Led by Irish quantum physicist Dr Joe Fitzsimons, Horizon Quantum Computing builds software development tools to unlock the potential of quantum computing hardware.

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Quantum computing uses the theories of quantum mechanics to solve complex problems that might stump classical computers. However, it requires special hardware, which can be difficult to build.

“Quantum computing has the potential to completely change how we think about computing,” says Dr Fitzsimons, who is chief executive officer of the company.

“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.”

Sequoia Capital India and SGInnovate, which led Horizon’s Seed+ and Seed rounds respectively, both 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 today.

“We have been bullish on the developer economy thesis for a long time,” says Pieter Kemps, partner at Surge, an initiative by 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.”