pi Ventures leads $2 Mn seed round in Quanfluence

Photonic quantum technology startup Quanfluence has raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by pi Ventures, along with participation from Golden Sparrow, Reena Dayal, and others.

The proceeds will be deployed towards scaling its near-term products, bringing them to market, and advancing research and development for its flagship quantum computer, Quanfluence said in a press release.

Co-founded in 2021 by Sujoy Chakravarty, Ravi Mehta, Biman Chattopadhyay, Anil Prabhakar, Aditi Vaidya, and Sandeep Goyal, Quanfluence is a photonic quantum technology startup with a hardware-based optimization solution that complements AI to improve decision-making ability. The company aims to develop a fault-tolerant, general-purpose quantum computer within the next five to six years.

According to the Bengaluru-based company, it integrates optics and computational technology and offers a solution that overcomes limitations such as hardware instability, noise, scaling, complexity, and high-dimensional problems, delivering scalability and energy efficiency without the drawbacks of conventional approaches.

Quanfluence states that it has 100x faster optimization technology and is powered by its optical Ising machine, which leverages light waves as computational units. These waves are manipulated through advanced photonic circuits and paired with high-speed field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), enabling the system to process hundreds of interconnected variables simultaneously. Their current system is capable of handling 128 interconnected variables (~10,000 permutations).

Quanfluence looks to test a more advanced version capable of processing 10-25 million permutations, scheduled for release next quarter, to address complex real-world optimization challenges such as financial optimization and risk management, logistics, workforce scheduling, and optimizing delivery routes.