In the race for the commercial breakthrough of high-performance quantum computers, companies are pursuing different technological approaches. The use of so-called superconducting circuits, in which quantum chips have to be cooled down at great expense, is considered to be comparatively advanced in development. Big players such as IBM and Google use this technology, which companies such as Planqc from Garching and Quera from Boston want to counter with the so-called neutral atom approach. The providers see various advantages in the method, in which information is stored in individual, electrically neutral atoms, such as operation at room temperature or the arbitrary scalability of the qubits, i.e. the basic arithmetic unit in the computers.

„Currently, all quantum computers still have too few qubits to solve truly industry-relevant problems,“ explains Planqc co-founder and CEO Alexander Glätzle. „The more high-quality qubits a quantum computer has, the more information it can process. We are now building a quantum computer with 1,000 qubits for the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich."

The start-up, which was founded in 2022 as a spin-off from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Munich Quantum Valley, has just secured 50 million euros in a Series A financing round. The leading investors were the Viennese investment company Catron Holding, which is regarded as secretive, and the German government's Deep Tech & Climate Fund (DTCF). Around 10 million euros came from the DTCF. Further financial support was also provided by Bayern Kapital – the venture capital company of the Free State of Bavaria – the Max Planck Foundation, as well as other private investors and existing investors UVC Partners from Munich and Speedinvest from Vienna.

According to Glätzle, the neutral atom approach is „significantly less capital-intensive“ than superconducting circuits. „IBM and Google have already invested billions of dollars in their technologies because they need to produce their qubits in factories,“ he says. „We don't have this need because of our technology. “

Like many other deep tech companies, however, the company does have a need for top talent, particularly in the fields of electrical and mechanical engineering – and is facing difficulties in this area, says Glätzle. There was already a strong allure for the quantum mechanics skills required at the beginning. He believes that the available workforce in this field in Germany needs to be strengthened. „This is a new profession and it is therefore important that there are significantly more graduates," he says. But though quantum computing expertise is traditionally extremely well established in Germany and Europe, the task now is to commercialise this „and turn it into a product“.

Planqc has already landed an order worth 29 million euros for its product in the past year: The start-up is to build a quantum computer based on neutral atoms for the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) by 2026. The computer for the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich is due to be completed a year later.

Glätzle now wants to use the newly raised funds to install a third computer – in the company's laboratory. „We will connect it to the cloud and use it to sell computing capacity to industrial customers,“ says the entrepreneur. The start-up is initially focussing on sectors such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals, manufacturers of air conditioning technologies, automotive manufacturers and the financial industry.