TuringQ completes Pre-A Round Financing of Several Hundred Million RMB, Planning First Domestic Photonic Chip Pilot Line

Author:TuringQ，Published:2021.11.10

TuringQ, China's first optical quantum computing company, announced the completion of a Pre-A round of funding of several hundred million RMB, led by Junlian Capital, followed by SMIC Juyuan, Amber Capital and Jiaoda Han Yuan Fund, with Potential Capital acting as the exclusive financial advisor. This round of financing will be mainly used for the development and flow of programmable optical quantum chips, as well as the commercialization of quantum algorithms.

"Founded in February 2021, TuringQ is developing optical quantum chips that can integrate large-scale photonic circuits based on lithium niobate thin film (LNOI) photonic chips and femtosecond laser direct writing technology.

As a cutting-edge technology field, the optical quantum computing track has been favoured by the capital market in recent years. According to third-party data, in the first 10 months of 2021, global quantum technology companies completed a total of 34 financing rounds worth US$2.8 billion (approximately RMB17.9 billion), of which quantum computing companies raised nearly US$2 billion (approximately RMB12.7 billion). In 2020, global quantum technology companies will raise a total of US$1 billion (approximately RMB 6.4 billion).

With Moore's Law slowing down, quantum computing is expected to become a fundamental technology for the next round of industrial change, not only solving problems that are difficult to solve with classical computing, but also having strong advantages in terms of arithmetic power and power consumption, which can be widely used in fields such as financial technology, artificial intelligence, biomedicine, aerospace and advanced manufacturing.

"The founder of TuringQ, Jin Xianmin, said that China has long attached importance to the research and layout of quantum information technology, and has achieved fruitful results. In particular, China has been at the forefront of the world's first-tier photon-based quantum computing and quantum simulation technology.

However, at present, there is no more mature optical quantum chip hardware flow platform in China, many research teams need to go abroad to flow chip after designing the chip, but the flow queue leads to each iteration takes 5 to 10 months, and the "black box" in the process also brings great uncertainty and bottlenecks for technological progress. Therefore, the mastery of independent flow-chip capability has become the key to the rapid iteration of China's optical quantum chips and the realization of a bend in the field of optical quantum computing.

Currently, TuringQ is planning the construction of the first photonic chip pilot line in China, and is expected to build a leading-edge research and industrialisation support platform for photonic chips focusing on the needs of new generation information technology within two years. In terms of technology, based on the advantages of femtosecond laser direct writing technology, the company has also started to conduct research on the application of a new generation of ultra-fast programmable photonic chips represented by lithium niobate thin film many years ago, and has the ability to develop the whole chain from design, flow, packaging, packaging and testing, to system integration and quantum algorithms.

As for the team, Dr. Xianmin Jin graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China and spent 4 years at Oxford University in research and development of optical quantum chips and quantum computing, during which time he was awarded a Marie Curie Scholar by the European Union and a scholar of Wolverhampton College, Oxford University. In addition, the company has a fully closed-loop team from chip design to system integration to algorithm application, including nearly 150 scientists and engineers, all from prestigious universities at home and abroad, such as Oxford University, Imperial College, University of California, Berkeley, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Fudan University, and have more than ten years of experience in the field of optical quantum information and photonic chips.

Globally, companies such as PsiQuantum in the US Silicon Valley and Xanadu in Canada have laid out the field of optical quantum computing. Among them, PsiQuantum received US$450 million (approximately RMB 2.88 billion) in Series B funding this year, while Xanadu completed US$100 million (approximately RMB 640 million) in Series B funding. Capital's enthusiasm for this track has led to 2021 being dubbed the year of optical quantum by the industry.

In the past few months, TuringQ has mainly completed the process of moving from the laboratory to industrialization, forming a complete marketable product system. In terms of development path, TuringQ plans to gradually transition from developing dedicated optical quantum computers to large-scale general-purpose optical quantum computers.

Proffessor Jin XianMin talked about the new generation of computing system with photon as carrier, dedicated optical quantum computers and photonic computers with multiple algorithm cores, which have advantages in accuracy, energy consumption and absolute arithmetic power. Based on this, the company will focus on the rapid implementation in the fields of artificial intelligence, finance, medicine and medical data analysis, with industrial applications and landing as the target orientation, to promote the scale capability of quantum systems, and in the future, with the help of graph state quantum computing theory, can naturally transition to general quantum computing.

Quantum computing will have a profound impact on many industries and even bring about disruptive changes in the future," said Qihui Fan, Managing Director of Junlian Capital. There are already a number of startups and large companies entering the market globally, and with the increasing participation of market-based companies, it will accelerate the process of quantum computing from the lab to market applications. "TuringQ has nearly 20 years of technical accumulation and R&D advantages in the field of optical quantum chips and quantum computing, and Junlian Capital will help TuringQ to continue to expand its leading edge, promote the practicalization and industrialization of optical quantum computing, and contribute to the further enhancement of China's technological competitiveness.