Quantum computing startup, Strangeworks has announced the completion of a $24 million round of funding.
The Austin-based company previously raised a $4 million seed stage round, bringing the total funds raised to $28 million.
Strangeworks, founded in 2018, reported Hitachi Ventures led the funding round with investment from IBM, and Raytheon Technologies. It also had follow-on investments from seed-stage investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Great Point Ventures, and Ecliptic Capital.
Strangeworks, which has 21 employees, said in a news release that the investment allows Strangewowrks to offer a broader range of technologies beyond quantum computing, including quantum-inspired, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence.
“Today’s announcement represents a significant milestone for Strangeworks,” Will Hurley, known as Whurley, the company’s founder and CEO, said in a news release. “Five years ago, I took the stage at SXSW for our first quantum computing keynote. Since that day, this team has stayed focused on our core mission, continuously beating industry expectations while utilizing only a fraction of the resources compared to the industry. Raising the Series A from these exceptional investors in this challenging economic climate sends a clear message to the market on where enterprise companies are placing their bets in a race to create quantum value.”
The funding comes after Whurley’s keynote speech at the 2023 SXSW conference using all AI-generated text and images.
Hitachi identified quantum computing as a critical technology to advance society and developed its own quantum technologies and quantum-inspired solutions, Norihiro Suzuki, Ph.D. and CTO of Hitachi, said in a news release.
“Quantum computing has the potential to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, from fighting climate change to curing fatal diseases that require far greater computational power than is currently available in classical computers,” Suzuki said. “The Strangeworks platform removes barriers to access quantum and quantum-inspired solutions creating customer value today.”
Raytheon’s investment in Strangeworks aligns with its customers’ interests, Dan Ateya, president and managing director at RTX Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Raytheon Technologies.
“We believe Strangeworks’ platform and their ability to make quantum and high-performance computing more accessible can support a wide range of applications in the aerospace, defense, and commercial sectors.”
‘Quantum computing is here, but exploiting its advantages requires rare know-how and lots of capital,” Ray Lane, managing partner of GreatPoint Ventures, based in San Francisco, said in a statement. “Strangeworks democratizes quantum computing by opening proprietary platforms to consumption-based usage, and this is how large tech markets are unleashed.”
