Ah, quantum computing… that moonshot technology full of potential, full of promise — and jam-packed with enough jargon to make the average person cry.
Qubits, entanglement, superposition, trapped-ions, Schrödinger’s cat. These terms sound strange because the world of quantum mechanics — where things can exist in multiple states at once — is strange.
And that’s why I want you to bear with me while I relay this latest piece of news from the buzzing quantum computing startup scene.
ZuriQ, a spin-out from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, has raised $4.2mn to commercialise a new chip architecture that could dramatically increase the number of qubits a trapped-ion quantum computer can handle, supercharging its computational power.
“The space for few-qubit devices that act as toy models is already saturated, and devices with 20-40 qubits won’t drive large profits,” said Pavel Hrmo, CEO of ZuriQ. “We need to focus on long-term scalability.”
ZuriQ wants to build a quantum computer with thousands of qubits, powerful enough to solve wickedly complex problems and revolutionise fields from medicine to cryptography.
How can it do that, you ask? Well, it’s got something vaguely to do with aeroplanes, cars, and magnetic fields. But first, a quick science lesson.
Qubits are the basic units of information in a quantum computer. Unlike bits in a regular computer, which can only be 0 or 1, qubits can be 0, 1, or both at the same time. This allows quantum computers to solve many problems simultaneously, making them light-years faster than even the top supercomputers of today.
Now, there are two main kinds of quantum computers in development. The first and most common are superconducting quantum computers, pioneered by the likes of Google and IBM. They use tiny loops of supercooled metal to create qubits. These machines are lightning-fast. However, they must be kept at −273°C at all times and are more error-prone than their main rival, the trapped-ion machine.
Trapped-ion quantum computers use charged atoms (ions) as qubits. Electric and magnetic fields trap these ions in place, and lasers control them to perform calculations. They’re very stable and precise but slower than superconducting quantum computers due to one fatal flaw: ions arranged in a line, like cars in a traffic jam, become overcrowded and inefficient as more qubits are added.
That’s why scaling up the number of qubits in a trapped-ion quantum computer has proved a major roadblock for companies developing them, like IonQ and Quantinium — putting a cap on their abilities. That is, perhaps, until now.
Setting qubits free
ZuriQ has developed a completely new way to design trapped-ion quantum computers by allowing ions (the qubits) to move freely in two dimensions on a quantum chip instead of being restricted to one-dimensional chains. This allows qubits to move in all spatial directions like an aeroplane, instead of like cars driving along roads and through junctions.
If the startup’s technology is all it is cracked up to be, it could enable trapped-ion quantum computers to far exceed the capabilities of their superconducting counterparts.
Fuelled by fresh funding, ZuriQ is on track to demonstrate its first prototype machine by the end of this year. The startup said it aims to become the flagship provider of quantum computing worldwide.
“We have been highly impressed by the speed of execution of ZuriQ’s founding team and the pace of progress towards technical milestones that have been elusive in the community so far,” said Pascal Mathis, partner at Switzerland-based VC Founderful, which led the investment round.
The funding arrives at exciting times for quantum computing. Interest in the field has been abuzz since Google unveiled an experimental machine that was able to solve a mathematical equation in five minutes that a traditional supercomputer could not master in 10 septillion years — that’s older than the universe. The breakthrough brought the dream of quantum computing a step closer to reality. Nevertheless, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang was quick to pour cold water on the hype, cautioning at CES 2025 that practical quantum applications are still 15-30 years away.
