Prof. Jeremy OBrien from PsiQuantum has announced that the company has raised $1 billion to build the world’s first commercially useful, fault‑tolerant quantum computers at a million‑qubit scale, leveraging a high‑volume manufacturing process for integrated photonic chips and 300 mm wafers of Barium Titanate that enable ultra‑high‑performance optical switches, with production taking place at GlobalFoundries Fab 8 in New York.
PsiQuantum Secures One Billion Series E to Build Million Qubit Fault Tolerant Quantum Computers
PsiQuantum announced the closing of a $1 billion Series E round in Palo Alto, California, valuing the company at $7 billion and enabling the construction of utility‑scale quantum sites in Brisbane, Australia, and Chicago, United States. The funding, led by affiliates of BlackRock and backed by Temasek, Baillie Gifford, Macquarie Capital, Ribbit Capital, NVentures, Adage Capital Management, the Qatar Investment Authority, Type One Ventures, Counterpoint Global, 1789 Capital and S Ventures, with increased stakes from existing backers Blackbird, Third Point Ventures and T. Rowe Price Associates, will finance prototype deployments and optimisation of the company’s fault‑tolerant architecture.
PsiQuantum’s premise is that error correction requires on the order of a million physical qubits, and it proposes photonic qubits fabricated in high‑volume semiconductor foundries to overcome manufacturability, cooling and networking hurdles. Integrated photonic chipsets are produced at GlobalFoundries Fab 8 in New York and at PsiQuantum’s own 300‑mm wafer facilities in California. The company has incorporated barium titanate (BTO) into the photonic flow to enable ultra‑high‑speed optical switches; BTO wafers are produced in California and bonded to GlobalFoundries wafers, scaling switch production to utility‑scale volumes and offering promise for next‑generation AI supercomputers. Photonic qubits obviate cryogenic infrastructure; PsiQuantum has engineered a rack‑style cooling system that can maintain the required temperatures for several hundred chips in a single cabinet, and it has demonstrated high‑fidelity quantum networking between distant cabinets using standard telecom fibre.
According to CEO Prof. Jeremy O’Brien, the next decisive steps will bring the full potential of fault‑tolerant quantum computing to market, reshaping industries such as cryptography and materials science.
NVIDIA and GlobalFoundries Collaborate to Accelerate Photonic Chip Manufacturing and Quantum Software Development
NVIDIA’s venture arm NVentures has invested in PsiQuantum and is providing expertise in quantum algorithms, software development and GPU integration. The partnership, led by CEO Prof. Jeremy O’Brien and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Pete Shadbolt, couples NVIDIA’s GPU‑accelerated software stack with PsiQuantum’s silicon photonics platform to reduce latency in real‑time error‑correction routines, a critical requirement for fault‑tolerant quantum computing.
PsiQuantum has secured a production partnership with GlobalFoundries, which manufactures the company’s integrated photonic chipset at Fab 8 in New York. The facility, capable of 300‑mm wafer processing, produces waveguides, modulators and detectors that constitute the photonic qubit architecture. BTO is incorporated into the photonic flow; California‑based wafer lines produce 300‑mm BTO wafers that are bonded to GlobalFoundries silicon photonics wafers, delivering the ultra‑fast switching speed and reliability needed to interconnect the vast network of photonic qubits. Together, GPU‑accelerated control software, high‑density cooling and standard telecom‑fibre networking bring the company closer to deploying utility‑scale prototypes in Brisbane and Chicago.
High Volume Barium Titanate Production Enables Ultra Fast Optical Switches for Quantum and AI Supercomputing
PsiQuantum’s 300‑mm wafer line in California produces barium titanate (BTO) substrates at volumes commensurate with a million‑qubit platform. BTO’s high electro‑optic coefficient allows modulators that switch optical signals in picoseconds while preserving low insertion loss. When bonded to GlobalFoundries‑fabricated silicon photonics wafers, the resulting hybrid devices route quantum information across a dense network of waveguides with the speed and fidelity required for fault‑tolerant error‑correction cycles. The same high‑speed optical links are attractive for next‑generation AI supercomputers, where low‑power, high‑throughput optical pathways can complement GPU‑accelerated inference engines and potentially reduce latency and energy consumption.
Utility Scale Cooling and Networking Solutions Replace Cryostats and Enable Dense Quantum Chip Integration
Photonic qubits eliminate the need for cryogenic “chandelier” enclosures; PsiQuantum has engineered a rack‑style cooling system that can maintain the required temperatures for several hundred chips in a single cabinet, integrating liquid‑cooling channels directly into the cabinet structure. The system, built to high‑volume semiconductor fabrication specifications, was commissioned in California and will be deployed at the planned Brisbane and Chicago sites. Parallel to the thermal solution, the company has demonstrated quantum‑state transfer across separate cabinets using standard telecom fibre, achieving high‑fidelity links that satisfy the stringent thresholds required for fault‑tolerant quantum computing.
Strategic Investment from BlackRock Temasek and Qatar Investment Authority Signals Market Confidence in Trillion Dollar Quantum Industry
On the day of the announcement, BlackRock’s Tony Kim, head of the Fundamental Equities Technology Group, characterised quantum computing as a new paradigm that could surpass classical AI, while Baillie Gifford’s Luke Ward noted that PsiQuantum had been supported for over six years and had consistently met technical milestones. The broad investor base—spanning sovereign wealth funds, venture capital and institutional asset managers—highlights a growing consensus that quantum technology is moving beyond laboratory demonstrations toward commercial viability. The participation of Qatar Investment Authority and Temasek signals confidence from Asian and Middle Eastern markets, and the inclusion of NVentures reflects the convergence of quantum and GPU‑accelerated computing, suggesting that the quantum sector is poised to become a trillion‑dollar industry.
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