Haiqu Raises $11M for Quantum Operating System
US-based Haiqu, a quantum computing software spinout, has raised $11 million in a seed round. The company is developing a new operating system to enable near-term quantum use cases, highlighting investor interest in the software layer of the quantum stack.
- The seed round was led by Primary Venture Partners, with participation from Qudit Investments, Alumni Ventures, Collaborative Fund, and Silicon Roundabout Ventures, as well as returning investors Toyota Ventures and MaC Venture Capital. - Haiqu was co-founded in 2022 by Richard Givhan, a Stanford-trained engineer, and Mykola Maksymenko, who previously conducted quantum research at the Max Planck Society and the Weizmann Institute of Science. - This investment follows a $4 million pre-seed round in June 2023, led by MaC Venture Capital with participation from Toyota Ventures and others. - The company's technology is a hardware-aware middleware layer that uses circuit optimization and error shielding to reduce the computational cost of running applications on current noisy quantum processors by a factor of up to 100. - Haiqu is targeting commercial use cases in finance, healthcare, and aviation before the advent of fully fault-tolerant quantum computers. - The company has already demonstrated a practical application in a 2025 collaboration with IBM and the Bank of Montreal, where they worked on financial anomaly detection using a 128-qubit IBM processor. - To accelerate its product launch, Haiqu has hired Antonio Mei, a former Principal Technical Product Manager from Microsoft Quantum, as its new Lead Product Manager. - The investment highlights a broader trend in quantum computing, where venture capital is increasingly focusing on the software layer as a critical component for bridging the gap between current hardware capabilities and practical, commercial applications.
