At a glance
- Universal Quantum calls the round the largest Series A ever raised by a quantum company headquartered in the United Kingdom.
- For a family office weighing a direct deep-tech check, the structural diligence question is whether it can hold through a long development cycle and fund follow-on rounds.
- The Series A will pay for continued development and commercialization, a research and development center in Singapore that will be the company's first outside Europe, and expansion in the United States, Japan and Hamburg.
Artal, the Wittouck family's Luxembourg holding, is among the investors in Universal Quantum's Series A of more than $100 million, co-led by DCVC and Firgun Ventures, Family Office Hub reported on Oct. 8.
Universal Quantum calls the round the largest Series A ever raised by a quantum company headquartered in the United Kingdom. Family Office Hub did not disclose Artal's commitment or the ownership stake.
For a family office weighing a direct deep-tech check, the structural diligence question is whether it can hold through a long development cycle and fund follow-on rounds. Family Office Hub says deep technology at Series A is one of the hardest places for a family office to participate well; Artal invests with the help of Invus, an evergreen group that advises it and manages more than $10 billion, holding positions for decades rather than fund cycles.
The Series A will pay for continued development and commercialization, a research and development center in Singapore that will be the company's first outside Europe, and expansion in the United States, Japan and Hamburg. Universal Quantum builds trapped-ion machines on a modular architecture, linking many small chips rather than scaling one large one. The company was founded by Sebastian Weidt and Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex, and traces its design to a blueprint paper the two published in 2017.
Reported by the Direct & Co-Investments desk from Family Office Hub. Published . Corrections