Quantum photonics company Nu Quantum has raised £2.1 million in Seed funding in a round led by Amadeus Capital Partners. Ahren Innovation Capital, IQ Capital, Cambridge Enterprise and Martlet Capital have also followed-on from the company’s pre-Seed investment round last September, with Seraphim Capital joining as a new investor.
The funding will go towards a state-of-the-art photonics lab in Cambridge and a major recruitment drive for scientists, product team members and business functions as the company approaches the launch of its first commercial technology demonstration.
Nu Quantum brings together a portfolio of intellectual property combining quantum optics, semiconductor photonics, and information theory, spun out of the University of Cambridge after eight years of research at the Cavendish Laboratory.
The company is developing high-performance light-emitting and light-detecting components, which operate at the single-photon level and at ambient temperature.
The company’s first commercial deliverable will use quantum photonic technology and proprietary algorithms to generate random numbers extracted from quantum-level effects, giving the highest confidence in the quality of these numbers which are ubiquitously used as cryptographic keys to secure data.
Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, CEO, Nu Quantum, commented:“Our aim is to enable the potential of quantum mechanics using quantum photonics hardware.
“This funding will allow us to do just that – a world-class multidisciplinary team and our new laboratories will give Nu Quantum the ability to deliver meaningful demonstrations of our technology into the hands of customers and partners for the first time.”
Professor Sir Peter Knight, Chair of the UK Quantum Technology Initiative Strategy Advisory Board added: “I’m delighted to see Nu Quantum, one of the UK’s leading quantum photonics companies, achieve this investment milestone to enable the translation of its founders’ world-class academic research into the commercial world.
“This is further validation of the quality of the UK capability in this critical area of technological innovation.”
Alex van Someren, Managing Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners, said: “Quantum photonics has the potential to transform cyber security through digital cryptography. We’re making another investment in Nu Quantum because we believe in the team and its ability to take its solutions to market.”
Alice Newcombe-Ellis, Founding and Managing Partner, Ahren Innovation Capital said: “We are proud to have backed Carmen, Matthew and their team since the formative idea stage of Nu Quantum.
“We invest in exceptional founders with big visions, applying deep tech in highly disruptive technologies and Nu Quantum is a great example of this, applying fundamental properties of physics to enable secure communication in a quantum future.”
Ed Stacey, Managing Partner at IQ Capital said: “Nu Quantum is one of the foremost companies in the world developing quantum photonics technology and is playing a major role in driving the UK’s capabilities in quantum computing.
“We are proud to invest in this team once again as the company undertakes significant growth and begins to demonstrate the real-world applications of the technology it has developed.”
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