Orange Quantum Systems (OrangeQS), an industry leader in quantum chip testing has announced the second closing of its seed round at €15 million. This follows the first closing in summer 2025, at €12 million. The additional funds come in the form of investment from the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) Fund, which supports European deep tech innovation with venture capital investment. The new funding will be used to accelerate development of key technologies to further enhance the OrangeQS MAX product line, a turn-key, automated, and fast quantum chip testing system. To coincide with the funding, EIC Fund investor Zeina Chebli is joining the OrangeQS board.   Introducing the OrangeQS MAX Partnership Program The new funding news comes as OrangeQS announces a significant new program to enhance the OrangeQS MAX product line and accelerate quantum chip testing across the industry. Quantum computing is a rapidly developing field. As the chips that underpin many of these advances become more complex, a significant challenge has emerged: the need for scalable, precise, and cost-effective quantum chip testing. The new OrangeQS MAX Partnership Program aligns the company’s exponential development roadmap with key quantum chip manufacturers. The first companies to join the program are Rigetti Computing, QuantWare, and Peak Quantum. The program will see each partner company work independently with OrangeQS to influence specific parts of the OrangeQS MAX technology and product roadmaps, depending on their needs and level of commitment. This allows them to keep their IP protected, while ensuring the next generation of test solutions supports their quantum chip architectures and production processes. The program will ensure that the OrangeQS MAX quantum chip testing system remains future-proof and fit-for-purpose. Future upgrades will allow for faster cryogenic quantum chip testing, aligned with the roadmaps of major quantum chip manufacturers. The OrangeQS MAX Partnership Program will initially focus on parallel and non-destructive testing technology developments.   The future of quantum chip production Creating quantum chips efficiently will require approaches that go beyond what is being developed in the OrangeQS MAX partnership program. OrangeQS has pre-published a new white paper ahead of the ISIG Quantum Computing Infra Summit 2026 on 23 April. In this document, the company proposes a visionary framework on utility‑grade quantum chip testing as a key enabler in future ‘dark quantum foundries’, indicating the company’s future direction. Garrelt Alberts, executive director of OrangeQS, said: “OrangeQS MAX already sets new industry benchmarks for high‑volume, automated quantum chip testing. With our new Partnership Program and support of EIC Fund, we are set to consolidate our leading position in one of the most challenging parts of the quantum computing sector as it scales towards commercial production.” Svetoslava Georgieva, Chair of the EIC Fund Board, said: “This investment reflects the EIC Fund’s commitment to backing Europe’s most ambitious deep tech innovators. By advancing quantum chip performance validation, OrangeQS is addressing a key bottleneck in scaling quantum technologies.”   About Orange Quantum Systems: Orange Quantum Systems (OrangeQS) is a leading provider of advanced infrastructure for testing quantum chips. Headquartered in Delft, the company delivers high‑performance systems that enable reliable, scalable, and efficient characterization of qubits and other relevant elements on a quantum chip. With its MAX and FLEX platforms, OrangeQS supports both the global quantum industry and R&D community, while also contributing to open‑source innovation through the OrangeQS Juice operating system.   About EIC Fund: The European Innovation Council Fund from the European Commission is a deep tech investor across all technologies. The EIC Fund aims to fill a critical financing gap, to support companies in the development and commercialisation of disruptive technologies. With its large network of capital providers and strategic partners it shares risk and crowds in market players. More information: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-fund

In a market analysis of 27 quantum hardware providers regarding the market and technological maturity of companies, neQxt GmbH ranks first in Europe and second worldwide The German media outlet heise online reported this week in a detailed background article from c’t computer magazine on an analysis of 27 international developers of quantum computing hardware. The analysis was conducted by financial asset management company DIA, Deutsche Invest & Asset Management GmbH, and highlighted several key points about the current state and potential of this rapidly evolving field. One significant observation is that ion trap-based systems lead in terms of both technology readiness and market maturity. Moreover, it revealed that high market valuations do not necessarily reflect technological superiority or maturity, suggesting that investors in quantum computing should consider more than just financial indicators when evaluating potential investments. The analysis showed that German companies, including neQxt GmbH, possess significant technical substance despite differing market valuations from those of global peers, especially when compared to the U.S., and a generally strong technological foundation in Germany’s quantum computing sector. At neQxt, we are still amazed to have taken 2nd place in the overall ranking behind IonQ in terms of market and technological maturity, and to be ranked as one of the most promising quantum computing companies worldwide. We are delighted by this recognition of our work, and we remain committed to advancing our quantum computing solutions, aiming to achieve not only high valuations but also significant technological advancements. Link to the journal article: https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Marktanalyse-Wertvollste-Quantenfirmen-nicht-zwangslaeufig-die-besten-11258106.html

Quantum computing is rapidly transitioning from pioneering work in the lab to the era of industrial development. This new benchmark shows that growth not only continues but accelerates. Innsbruck / New York, April 16, 2026 — The European quantum architecture company ParityQC today announced a new record benchmark implementation of the largest Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT), a cornerstone algorithm with applications in cryptography, financial modeling, and materials science. The achievement was realized using an IBM Quantum Heron processor. This latest showcasing of the ParityQC Architecture processed 52 superconducting qubits, nearly doubling the previous benchmark of 27 trapped-ion qubits, set just 24 months earlier. “This milestone was only possible through the synergy of IBM’s latest quantum hardware and the ParityQC Architecture, which unlocked an exponential improvement in efficiency,” say Wolfgang Lechner and Magdalena Hauser, Co-CEOs of ParityQC. “What we are witnessing is European quantum innovation taking a global lead in translating theoretical potential into real-world performance.” Industrialization of a Pioneering Academic Field Until recently, advances in quantum computing were driven by pioneering academic groups. Today’s announcement proves that quantum computing capabilities continue increasing exponentially. The near doubling of the QFT benchmark indicates that quantum computing progress could be following similar early dynamics of Moore’s Law in classical computing, a development that transformed a research discipline into a global industry.  Quantum computing is undergoing the same transition, becoming a standardized and scalable industrial sector. “Just as the doubling of transistor density once brought the era of the integrated circuit, the doubling of quantum computing capacity marks quantum computing’s entry into its own era of exponential scaling,” says Hermann Hauser, ParityQC investor and co-founder of Acorn and ARM. “ParityQC’s demonstration of their Parity Twine application achieving this QFT benchmark — using IBM quantum hardware — is a promising example of how the application could also extend to enabling hardware-aware implementations of algorithms solving complex, industry-useful optimization problems as our hardware improves along our roadmap,” said Scott Crowder, Vice President, IBM Quantum Adoption. “We’re incredibly proud of this achievement due to the excellent work of hardware and architecture team on both sides. Advancements like these show that progress in quantum technologies begins to follow a predictable path,” comment Wolfgang Lechner and Magdalena Hauser, Co-CEOs of ParityQC. What this Means in Practice ParityQC’s Parity Twine architecture can be used for a wide range of quantum applications. It could help accelerate the simulation of molecular interactions critical to drug discovery, and support highly complex portfolio optimization and risk modeling in finance. In materials science, this opens new possibilities for understanding and simulating highly complex physical systems. As quantum technologies transition into real-world deployment, these capabilities could translate into solving problems that would take today’s most powerful supercomputers years – if they could be solved at all. ParityQC takes a unique approach to quantum computing. The company develops blueprints and the enabling software environment based on the ParityQC Architecture for scalable quantum computers. The recent record underpins their goal to build highly performant quantum devices with hardware developers worldwide in a co-design approach. The ParityQC Architecture reduces the complexity of the hardware design, includes error correction, and simplifies the connectivity. By leveraging the benefits of the architecture in combination with different hardware platforms, ParityQC is working actively together with the quantum ecosystem to continue the path of exponential growth. Key innovations Record implementation of QFT on IBM Heron processor: When applied to the QFT on an IBM Heron r3 processor, the teams achieved the highest process fidelity ever reported for the unitary QFT reaching 52 qubits. Crucially, the team also showed that the performance advantage of Parity Twine scales exponentially (exp(N2)) over the best previously known alternatives, where N is the number of qubits. Substantially reduced gate count and circuit depth: Parity Twine is a circuit compilation approach that substantially reduces both gate count and circuit depth when implementing quantum algorithms – critically, without requiring SWAP gates, which are a major source of overhead and error on many hardware platforms. By eliminating this overhead, Parity Twine allows algorithms to run in fewer steps, with less accumulated noise, and at significantly higher fidelity. Impact of QFT as cornerstone subroutine on quantum computing applications: The end-to-end tested algorithm shows significant improvement towards process fidelity compared to previous implementations. The team selected the Quantum Fourier Transform as their benchmark as it is a cornerstone subroutine that underpins a broad range of quantum computing applications, making it a measure of real-world quantum performance. The results are published on arXiv:2604.12465 About ParityQC As quantum architecture company, ParityQC’s focus is on developing blueprints and operating systems for quantum computers. ParityQC solves the challenges in the scalability of quantum devices by a fundamentally new paradigm which allows for fully programmable quantum chips with simplified design and control, as well as integrated error correction. ParityQC collaborates with hardware partners all over the world to jointly build highly scalable quantum computers for applications ranging from solving optimization problems on NISQ devices to general-purpose, error-corrected quantum computing. parityqc.com   Press contact: Gabriel Hining and Thomas Reiter parityqc@reiterpr.com +43 670 1895066