Airbus Ventures congratulates Qunnect, the leader in quantum internet technologies, on announcing its Series A financing of over $8M. The round was led by Airbus Ventures, with additional participation from Quantonation, SandboxAQ, NY Ventures, Impact Science Ventures, and Motus Ventures.
Spearheaded by CEO Dr. Noel Goddard and founders Dr. Mehdi Namazi and Mael Flament, Qunnect is developing quantum-secure networking technology designed for scalable deployment on existing telecom fiber infrastructure. These new funds will be used to further develop their product suite, scale manufacturing, and launch a multi-node R&D quantum network testbed to demonstrate entanglement distribution protocols. This network, connected to existing fiber optic cable in New York City, will be the first of its kind in the US.
Qunnect’s products, including an entangled photon source with unrivaled compatibility to atomic-based devices and a high fidelity quantum memory, are key enablers for applications in quantum sensing and computing. Qunnect’s true value will be in the integration of these technologies, into a holistic suite to realize long distance quantum communication protocols. These protocols eliminate the vulnerabilities of first-generation Quantum Key Distribution systems, which are fundamentally limited in distance and require relay nodes to scale, resulting in security risks.
The majority of quantum networking technologies seen in the research community require extreme cooling and/or high vacuum support infrastructure. In contrast, Qunnect’s first-in-class solutions support real-world deployment and scalability, designed to be operational at room temperature - rather than fragile, climate-controlled laboratory settings.
In September 2021, the company commercialized the world’s first Quantum Memory, a critical component in enabling long-distance quantum-secure communication protocols. Building on this achievement, once its first generation product suite is complete in mid-2023, Qunnect will be poised to provide the first distributed entanglement network on the commercial market.
CEO Dr. Noel Goddard
We are very proud to announce the establishment of our state-of-the-art testbed in the US, especially significant news, given the announcement of the Nobel Prize for the elegant physics enabling quantum communication. This testbed will open the door for customers in financial services, critical infrastructure, and telecom to test our technologies in the New York metropolitan area. This project allows us to showcase our first-of-their-kind quantum memory and entanglement sources, as well as our quantum network support hardware for precise timing and qubit stabilization. On this journey, we are thrilled to have the support of Airbus Ventures, a leading quantum investor who shares our vision of developing quantum technologies to lead the next wave of ultra-secure communications.
Dr. Mehdi Namazi, Qunnect Co-Founder and CSO
We have spent the last several years tailoring every one of our quantum devices to meet the requirements of large-scale, telecom-integrated quantum networking. Now that we have the team and the support, with special thanks to the Airbus Ventures team, we are now ready to start our next phase with a concentrated focus on scalability and field-deployment.
