QuiX Quantum secures €15 million to advance first-generation universal photonic quantum computer

QuiX Quantum, a Dutch company focused on photonic quantum computing, announced on 10 July 2025 that it has closed a €15 million Series A round. The investment was co-led by Invest-NL and the European Innovation Council Fund. Existing deep tech investors PhotonVentures, Oost NL, and FORWARD.one also participated. QuiX says the capital will be used to deliver a first-generation, single-photon-based universal quantum computer in 2026 and to develop building blocks for a fault-tolerant machine thereafter.

What QuiX claims and the technology behind it

QuiX positions itself as a full-stack, fabless photonic quantum computing company. Its platform is built around silicon nitride integrated photonic chips. The company highlights three practical advantages compared with the dominant superconducting-qubit approach. First, photonic processors can operate primarily at room temperature which avoids the energy intensive cryogenics used by superconducting systems. Second, QuiX aims for compatibility with data-centre environments by using telecom-grade components and CMOS-compatible manufacturing. Third, photonic systems are intrinsically resistant to certain types of decoherence because photons do not interact with their environment in the same way as material qubits.

Commercial claims, users and partnerships

QuiX points to several commercial and applied milestones. In 2022 it sold 8-qubit and 64-qubit photonic systems to the German Aerospace Center. The company says more than 15 devices are running in the field. Partnerships and selected contracts include work in defence via the Purple NECtar Defence Innovation Challenge, and a 2025 collaboration with Fermioniq and Deltares to explore quantum improvements for hydrodynamic simulations. The Fermioniq-Deltares- QuiX collaboration is funded as a challenge by the Dutch Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Water Management and is scoped to deliver results to the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management and the Ministry of Defence.

QuiX also launched the Bia quantum cloud service in 2024 offering Quantum as a Service targeting hybrid quantum-classical workflows in data centres. The company says its integration-first approach is designed to appeal to early adopters in security, pharma, manufacturing, finance and AI.

Funding round and the role of the EIC

The €15 million Series A is presented as co-led by Invest-NL and the EIC Fund. PhotonVentures, Oost NL and FORWARD.one participated as existing investors. QuiX was an EIC Accelerator beneficiary in 2024 under a blended finance arrangement referenced as the QUQUP project. The EIC Accelerator blends a grant component and equity investment through the EIC Fund to de-risk deep tech scale-up projects and provide Business Acceleration Services.

Ambitions, timelines and why the claims deserve scrutiny

QuiX describes a clear roadmap. The company says the 2026 first-generation system will demonstrate universality by addressing fast feed-forward electronics and single-photon source challenges. The 2027 system is intended to implement error correction as a step toward fault tolerance. Those are substantive technical goals. Measurement-based photonic quantum computing requires high quality single photons, near-deterministic photon sources, very low loss optics, fast and low-latency classical control electronics, and efficient error correction protocols adapted to photonic encodings.

Another common point of confusion is qubit counts. Photonic 'qubits' come in many encodings and the number of physical modes or photons reported does not translate directly to the kind of fault-tolerant logical qubit counts that industry watchers often use to compare platforms. Therefore the 8-qubit and 64-qubit systems sold in 2022 to the German Aerospace Center are noteworthy but not directly comparable to superconducting or trapped-ion systems in performance per qubit or in computational reach.

Context in the European quantum ecosystem

The EIC and national investors such as Invest-NL are increasingly active in channeling patient capital to European deep-tech firms. Photonics has a strong industrial base in Europe and silicon nitride fabrication capabilities align with established photonics supply chains. QuiX's fabless model is consistent with leveraging European foundries and academic ecosystems. The EIC Fund's participation is an example of public instruments attempting to de-risk and signal confidence to follow-on private investors.

Quotes and company statements

QuiX CEO Dr. Ing. Stefan Hengesbach said that the Series A will fuel development of core building blocks for a fault-tolerant universal quantum computer and reiterated the 2026 and 2027 milestones for universality and error correction respectively. Svetoslava Georgieva, Chair of the EIC Fund Board, congratulated QuiX and said the funding reflected confidence in Europe's deep tech ecosystem and QuiX's team and technology.

Takeaway for investors, buyers and policymakers

The €15 million raise is an important commercial validation for QuiX and a signal that public and regional investors are prepared to back photonic approaches. For prospective customers in defence, infrastructure and industry QuiX offers an attractive near-term proposition if the promise of deployable, room-temperature hardware and cloud access is realised. For investors and procurement agencies the correct questions will be about reproducible performance, loss budgets, latency of classical control, supply chain robustness for silicon nitride fabrication, and what constitutes a meaningful comparison between different quantum platforms.

Short checklist buyers should ask QuiX before procurement

1. How are you defining qubit or mode count and how do those metrics relate to application performance? 2. What are the measured system loss budgets end to end and how do they scale with system size? 3. What are the latency and architecture of the feed-forward electronics for measurement-based protocols? 4. What are the interfaces and SLAs for your Bia cloud service in terms of uptime, benchmarking and data security? 5. What is the roadmap, timescale and resource estimate to move from demonstration error suppression to full error correction and logical qubits?

Answering these questions will help procurement officers and corporate buyers distinguish credible near-term offers from promotional claims and to match expectations to realistic technical progress.

Where to follow developments

QuiX publishes news on its website and the Horizon Europe database lists the company where applicable. The EIC Community and EIC Fund communications provide context on the public funding dimension. Watch for technical papers and independent benchmarks that will be required to substantiate claims about universality and error correction performance.

This article preserves the substantive claims made in the company and EIC communications and adds context and caution about timelines and technical hurdles. Readers should treat roadmap dates as company targets rather than proven delivery guarantees.

Further reading and references

Primary sources for the announcements include the QuiX Quantum press releases dated 10 July 2025, earlier QuiX news on Bia QaaS and partnerships, the EIC Community announcement of the Series A and background material on the EIC Accelerator and EIC Fund. Domain experts should consult peer reviewed publications and independent benchmarking reports for deeper technical assessment.