NVenture's second quantum investment in recent weeks
GPU giant Nvidia has invested in quantum computing firm QuEra.
QuEra this week announced an investment from NVentures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm, expanding on the $230 million Series B round first announced in February. The size of Nvidia’s investment wasn’t shared.
Andy Ory, CEO, QuEra Computing, said: “We already work with Nvidia, pairing our scalable neutral‑atom architecture with its accelerated‑computing stack to speed the arrival of useful, fault‑tolerant quantum machines. But the decision to invest in us deepens our collaboration and underscores our shared belief that hybrid quantum-classical systems will unlock meaningful value for customers sooner than many expect.”
QuEra said it will continue to collaborate with Nvidia on go-to-market initiatives and integrating the former’s neutral-atom systems with the latter’s accelerated computing infrastructure and software stack.
In Japan, a QuEra computer is installed next to the ABCI‑Q system in Japan, which is equipped with more than 2,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. Nvidia and QuEra are set to collaborate at the Nvidia Accelerated Quantum Center (NVAQC) in Boston, linking QuEra hardware with GB200 NVL72 GPU clusters.
QuEra previously secured investment from Google in the February investment round via its Google Quantum AI business unit. The round also saw investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Valor Equity Partners, QVT Family Office, and Safar Partners.
Massachusetts-based QuEra was founded in 2018, based on research conducted at Harvard and MIT. The company operates a lab and data center near the Charles River in Boston and offers on-premise quantum systems as well as access to quantum hardware through its own cloud and Amazon Web Services.
This marks at least the second investment Nvidia has made in quantum computing. The firm recently invested in Quantinuum, which was previously spun out of Honeywell.
Both investments mark a contrast to comments about quantum previously made by the GPU firm’s leadership. Earlier this year, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang said useful quantum computers were between 15 and 30 years away, saying, “If you picked 20 [years], I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.”
In June, however, he made an about-face, saying the technology was “reaching an inflection point” and we were “within reach” of being able to apply quantum computers "in areas that can solve some interesting problems in the coming years."
Source: DCD
