Qolab Inc., a quantum computing company, said on Monday it has raised more than $16 million in early-stage funding in what the company says is a significant step in its mission to develop utility-scale quantum computing technology.

The company raised the funds in a Series A round led by Octave Ventures with participation from the Development Bank of Japan Inc., Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and Phoenix Venture Partners.

The company uses 300mm semiconductor processes to produce interfaces for superconducting qubits, the quantum equivalent of traditional “bits,” produced by superconducting electronic circuits. Qolab said this technology results in higher-quality qubits and its new on-chip scaling techniques lower the cost of scaling qubits. New technologies developed by the company also include two-qubit gate operations leading to more efficiency.

The company also said by using this technology it can provide low error rates, high reliability and compatibility with existing semiconductor fabrication processes. Qolab added it’s also working on improving the design of other non-qubit parts of the computers to reduce the amount of noise and component crosstalk that affect the quantum processor portions in order to further lower the number of errors.

Errors are a major issue in quantum computing because qubits are extremely sensitive to environmental disturbances. This means that even slight changes in temperature, electromagnetism or interactions with surrounding molecules can cause a qubit to lose its information. That leads to inaccurate calculations if not addressed by error correction techniques.

Qolab said that addressing as much reliability and error rates as possible at the hardware level by reducing noise helps improve scalability overall and the capability of the quantum computing system.

“At Qolab, we are developing a new generation of high-coherence qubits that will overcome the limitations of current technologies,” said Dr. Robert McDermott, head of hardware and cofounder of Qolab. “This funding is a critical step forward in scaling our hardware capabilities and delivering reliable, high-performance quantum processors to meet growing demand.”

Other companies working on superconducting quantum computing include OQC, a London-based startup, Rigetti & Co. Inc., the developer of a multichip quantum computer design, and IBM Corp., which used the technology in its Osprey quantum processor released in 2022.

Qolab said it intends to use the new funds to hire more quantum scientists and engineers to expand its team, thus accelerating its development cycle and scaling its superconducting quantum processor product. The company also said it intends to build upon its partnerships within the semiconductor industry to bring scalable quantum computing technology to the market.

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