Quantum Art Aims to Beat Nvidia’s Top Supercomputers With an Israeli Quantum Machine
Quantum Art, a low-profile startup based in the Science Park in Ness Ziona, says it is the only Israeli company building a quantum computer end to end. The company, founded in 2022, has just brought in the U.S. investment firm Bedford Ridge, which led a $140 million round. Its backers now include Bedford Ridge Capital, Battery Ventures, Amiti, Vertex, Enter, Disruptive AI, Poalim Equity, Hudson Bay, Harel and Lumir Ventures, bringing total funding to $164 million and a workforce of 65.
The company says it could launch a powerful machine by the end of next year, with up to 100 logical qubits on a chip. If that happens, it would surpass the maximum computing power of today’s strongest Nvidia and HP supercomputers, according to the article. Quantum computers are expected to solve in seconds or minutes problems that current computers need weeks or years to handle.
Quantum Art’s edge, it says, is a technology that avoids moving trapped ions inside the machine, unlike competing systems. Instead, lasers “pluck” the ions, as CEO Tal David put it, “like plucking a guitar.” The company argues this improves stability and accuracy, while also claiming it can address the main drawbacks of ion-based systems, including high cost, difficulty scaling from prototype to industrial size, slower processing and engineering limits on increasing qubit counts.
The founding team is unusual for the Israeli startup scene, made up of senior PhD-level quantum physicists in their 40s and 50s rather than young 8200 alumni. The central figure is Prof. Roee Ozeri, vice president at the Weizmann Institute, who built Israel’s first scaled-down ion-based quantum computer after his postdoc. He co-founded the company with Tal David and Dr. Amit Ben-Kish, and many employees are former students of Ozeri.
Quantum Art already earns revenue from selling basic quantum computers for experiments, generating several million dollars so far. It expects about $100 million in revenue over the next three years from more advanced systems starting next year. David said the company’s current cloud quantum market is worth about $1.5 billion and is used mainly by large firms such as JPMorgan, BMW and Boeing. He added that future customers could also include cloud providers, and said quantum computers will work alongside classical computers, not replace them.
