#qutech

After its €12 million seed fundraising round was oversubscribed, Delft-based Orange Quantum Systems (OrangeQS) has garnered attention. The Netherlands'  quantum computing business received its largest seed funding round with this investment. OrangeQS aims to overcome a major but often overlooked issue in quantum computing: the laborious, expensive, and talent-intensive testing of quantum devices.

Continuing Quantum Chip Testing Challenge

Quantum computers have great potential, but verifying their quantum processors has slowed their development. Quantum devices cannot be mass-tested at ambient temperature like semiconductor chips. They require special settings and methods. This complexity stems from quantum bits, or qubits, which, unlike classical bits, can exist in a superposition of states (both 1 and 0).

Testing quantum chips presents challenges:

Isolating and insulating quantum chips requires high vacuum, extremely low temperatures, and accurate low-power microwave electromagnetic signals.

Resource Drain: Manufacturers spend 30–50% of their R&D teams developing, building, and maintaining internal test sets since testing is so difficult. Due to their high cost and scarcity, these specialists spend less time building quantum chips, computer systems, and algorithms.

Quantum chip testing used to take weeks, making quick iterations and advancements in semiconductor creation challenging. OrangeQS CEO Garrelt Alberts says this slow pace slows iteration and raises testing costs. Many companies test quantum computers on their own, wasting money and slowing progress.

The “quantum testing bottleneck” impedes the development and building of quantum computers by limiting capacity and disrupting present processors.

Product Suite and Innovative Solutions from OrangeQS

OrangeQS, a 2020 spin-off from QuTech and TNO, aims to eliminate this bottleneck and revolutionise quantum computing. Instead of increasing testing capacity, OrangeQS develops tools tailored for “test-time per qubit”. Their strategy reduces testing time from weeks to days to free up talent, money, and time for quantum development.

OrangeQS offers a full array of tools to accelerate quantum chip testing across the value chain:

OrangeQS MAX: This flagship equipment set industry norms for high-volume, standardised quantum-chip testing. It dramatically reduces qubit testing time by assessing quantum processors faster. The top European quantum-computer maker, IQM, will deploy the OrangeQS MAX system in Espoo, Finland, to speed up quantum chip development.

OrangeQS Flex: Industrial and academic R&D teams can customise chip testing with this equipment. It is used by quantum research facilities like the University of Napoli and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

OrangeQS Juice: This open-source operating system simplifies quantum research apparatus control. This operating system is being tested by QuTech (Netherlands), Chalmers Next Labs (Sweden), and Berkeley Lab's Advanced Quantum Testbed (USA).

According to Garrelt Alberts, OrangeQS MAX aims to cut qubit test time in half every two years. This continuous testing process upgrade aims to reduce qubit test time by several orders of magnitude. Interestingly, OrangeQS is the only company offering a reliable, fast, and affordable turnkey quantum testing solution.

Impact of the €12 Million Seed Funding Round

The highly oversubscribed €12 million seed round shows OrangeQS's technology's importance to investors. Icecat Capital led the investment, which included QBeat Ventures and InnovationQuarter Capital. Pre-seed investors QDNL Participations and Cottonwood Technology Fund continued to support.

New funds will be used for strategic investments:

Accelerate scalable quantum chip testing tools.

Create faster testing devices to analyse quantum chips in days rather than weeks.

Promote Orange Quantum Systems' globalisation.

The “Quantum Equivalent of Moore’s Law” is being created. OrangeQS is vital to quantum computing manufacturers' efforts to build the first practical quantum computers. To create the first fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029, companies like IBM Quantum must iterate quickly and test. OrangeQS wants to accelerate testing to enable useable quantum computing and possibly develop a “quantum equivalent of Moore’s Law”.

Moore's Law states that a microchip's transistor count doubles every two years, resulting in exponential processing power and cost reductions. OrangeQS's objective to help leading chip manufacturers double the number of reliable quantum bits (qubits) every few years illustrates a future of constant, predictable quantum computing advancement. This development relies on OrangeQS innovations that simplify and scale up quantum chip testing and validation.

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