Finland’s leading quantum computing startup IQM Quantum Computers says it’s ready to take the next step and scale up its emerging technology from hundreds of qubits to millions after closing on a bumper $320 million funding round, bringing its total amount raised to $600 million.

Today’s Series B round was led by Ten Eleven Ventures, which became the company’s first U.S. investor. It also saw participation from new and existing investors including the pension funds Elo Mutual Pension Insurance and Varma Mutual Pension Insurance, the sovereign wealth funds EIC and Bayern Kapital, the private equity firm Tesi and others, such as Schwarz Group and Winbound Electronics.

IQM, which is officially known as IQM Finland Oy, is focused on the development of superconducting qubit-based quantum computers, which must be stored at temperatures close to absolute zero, or −459.67 °F. Qubits are unique in that they harness the collective properties of quantum states, such as superposition, interference and entanglement, to perform calculations that are too complex for traditional computers.

IQM’s technology is similar to that being pursued by the likes of IBM Corp. and Google LLC. Qubits, which replace the traditional “bits” found in traditional computers, are what makes quantum computers so incredibly powerful, but they’re incredibly unstable, which is why they need to be stored at such low temperatures.

The startup has developed a number of quantum computing systems. Its flagship platform is IQM Radiance, an on-premises machine that offers a choice of 20, 54 and 150 high-fidelity qubits of quantum power. Priced at €30 million (around $35.7 million) for the most powerful version, it’s aimed at enterprises developing and testing nascent quantum computing applications.

It also sells IQM Spark, which is a five-qubit quantum machine developed for educational and research purposes that costs around €1 million and is aimed at universities. In addition, customers can choose to access a version of the startup’s quantum computers with “dozens of qubits” via the cloud through its IQM Resonance service.

IQM’s quantum machines stand out for their impressive error correction capabilities. Fault tolerance is vital to the development of scalable quantum machines, because the inherent instability of qubits, which are extremely sensitive and can be affected by temperature changes, vibrations and sound, means that errors are all too commonplace. The problem is that the qubits struggle to remain in their correct state, as they are altered every time they interact with the environment thanks to the intricacies of quantum physics.

IQM is trying to fix this instability by identifying qubit errors on the fly and correcting them as soon as they show up. Its quantum chips contain what the company refers to as a “quantum-circuit refrigerator” which has a unique “on/off capability” and can quickly cool individual qubits when a problem is registered and reset its state to zero, so it’s ready to pick up where it left off. This addresses a major bottleneck for quantum computers, which is the slow and imperfect reset of quantum memory.

Co-founder and co-Chief Executive Jan Goetz said the addition of Ten Eleven, its first U.S. investor, is a catalytic event for the company, and has hopes that it can help it to scale its business in that country.

He explained that the startup plans to spend a good chunk of the money from today’s round on building out its cloud data center infrastructure and its manufacturing assembly lines to facilitate this growth. Some of the cash will also go towards its ongoing research, which aims to improve its fault tolerance capabilities and scale its quantum computers up to 1 million qubits by about 2032.

“This funding round will fuel our company growth, with an accelerated tech roadmap toward error-corrected systems from thousands to millions of qubits,” Goetz added. “We are focused on strong business expansion in the U.S. based on our attracting on-premises offerings and the recently announced upgrade of our cloud offering.”

Ten Eleven co-founder and Managing General Partner Alex Doll said his venture capital firm normally focuses on cybersecurity startups, but believes quantum computers will be pivotal to the future of that industry.

“Cybersecurity and quantum share an evolving relationship that’s characterized by common stakeholder communities, and this overlap will enable us to bring high-value counsel, capital and connections to the IQM team,” he said.

Images: IQM Quantum