Quantum Computing Funding: A Quarter-by-Quarter Analysis

All funding deals in the quantum computing market over the last years

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Quantum Computing Market.

Is quantum computing funding actually getting stronger right now?

Quantum computing funding is getting stronger as of now, and Q2 2026 is the first quarter where the improvement looks broad enough to take seriously.

Quarterly funding itself has been chaotic. We tracked $174.1 million of measurable capital in Q2 2025, $2.10 billion in Q3, $495.2 million in Q4, $578.0 million in Q1 2026 and $1.48 billion in Q2. Anyone looking only at that sequence would see a market swinging from boom to bust and back again.

The underlying numbers are cleaner. Deal count rose from six in Q2 2025 to a period-high 20 in Q2 2026. The median measurable round stayed at $22 million through Q3 2025, then climbed to $35 million, $37 million and $40 million over the next three quarters. Capital from rounds of $50 million or less also reached $220.5 million in Q2 2026, its highest level in our five-quarter sample.

Q3 2025 brought a spectacular amount of money. Q2 2026 brought something more convincing: more companies, bigger typical rounds and much more activity below the megaround level.

One limitation is worth keeping in mind. We have exact or reasonably point-estimated amounts for 53 of the 68 financings we identified. Amount disclosure was particularly weak in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, so those two capital totals are more understated than the others.

Quarter	Deals	Measurable capital	Median round	Capital from ≤$50M rounds
Q2 2025	6	$174.1M	$22.0M	$64.1M
Q3 2025	16	$2.098B	$22.0M	$177.5M
Q4 2025	14	$495.2M	$35.0M	$25.2M
Q1 2026	12	$578.0M	$37.0M	$45.0M
Q2 2026	20	$1.481B	$40.0M	$220.5M
Q2 2025 → Q2 2026	+233%	+751%	+82%	+244%

Was the huge Q3 2025 quantum funding boom basically three deals?

Q3 2025 really did bring more quantum deals, but three giant financings explain almost all of the extraordinary $2.10 billion headline.

Deal count jumped from six to 16, so investor activity clearly widened. Yet the median financing stayed flat at $22 million. The twelvefold increase in measurable capital came mainly from PsiQuantum’s $1 billion Series E, Quantinuum’s roughly $600 million raise and IQM’s $320 million financing.

Together, those three companies absorbed 91.5% of measurable capital for the quarter. PsiQuantum alone represented 47.7%. Its financing was almost six times larger than everything we measured across the entire previous quarter.

The use of funds helps explain the scale. PsiQuantum said its capital would help build utility-scale fault-tolerant sites in Brisbane and Chicago, deploy large prototypes and keep developing its photonic chips. Quantinuum said its raise would support quantum computing at scale and the rollout of its next-generation Helios system.

Those are expensive engineering programs. Q3 showed that investors were ready to finance quantum companies at infrastructure scale, while the unchanged median shows that the typical financing had not suddenly become ten times larger.

Did quantum computing funding really crash in Q4 2025?

Quantum computing funding weakened sharply in Q4 2025, although company activity held up far better than the 76% drop in measurable capital suggests.

Funding fell from $2.10 billion to $495.2 million in one quarter. Deal count only slipped from 16 to 14. Once the three giant Q3 financings disappeared from the comparison, the headline naturally came down hard.

There was still genuine weakness underneath. Capital from rounds of $50 million or less fell from $177.5 million to only $25.2 million. The $20 million to $50 million bracket vanished completely. Q4 therefore had fewer large outliers and a thinner middle at the same time.

At the other end of the market, startup activity held up. First financings reached 28.6% of deals, up from 18.8% in Q3, while the median measurable financing actually increased to about $35 million.

Q4 reads more like a reset after Q3’s extraordinary scale-up wave than a market that suddenly stopped funding quantum companies.

Why did Q1 2026 look quiet even though quantum funding went up?

Q1 2026 became a concentrated funding quarter for existing quantum hardware companies, which explains why capital rose while the market itself felt quieter.

We counted 12 financings, down from 14 in Q4, while measurable capital increased 16.7% to $578 million. Hardware companies accounted for three quarters of all deals and 94.6% of measurable capital.

Pasqal raised roughly $198 million, while companies including QBoson, Photonic and Equal1 also added meaningful hardware financings. Nearly every deal involved a company that had already raised before: follow-ons made up 91.7% of activity.

New-company financing almost disappeared for the quarter. Only one deal qualified as a first financing, versus four in Q4.

Stage data are less reliable here because one-third of the Q1 deals did not have a stage we could establish confidently. The financing-status and category data are much clearer. Investors spent the quarter putting more money behind an existing hardware cohort rather than funding many new companies.

Was Q2 2026 the real breakout quarter for quantum computing funding?

Q2 2026 looks like the strongest quarter in our period for the underlying quantum funding market, even though Q3 2025 raised more money.

Q2 produced 20 financings versus 16 in Q3 2025. Its top three deals represented 46.4% of measurable capital, compared with 91.5% in the earlier boom. We also counted seven measurable $100 million-plus rounds, up from three in Q3.

The middle came back at the same time. Six companies raised between $20 million and $50 million after that bracket had produced zero measurable rounds in both Q4 and Q1. Capital from rounds of $50 million or less reached $220.5 million, above even Q3’s $177.5 million.

The largest deals also came from several different companies. OQC raised $350 million, QuantWare $178 million, SpinQ roughly $147 million, Sygaldry $105 million and Atom Computing $100 million. We also saw six first financings.

Announcement timing makes Q2 look slightly stronger than the actual closing calendar. Sygaldry disclosed a $34 million Seed and a $105 million Series A together in April, even though the Seed had closed in August 2025 and the Series A in March 2026. Nord Quantique’s $30 million financing was announced in May after closing in March.

Moving those financings back to their closing quarters would reduce Q2 to roughly $1.31 billion and 17 deals. The broader conclusion survives easily: Q2 would still have the strongest mix of deal volume, middle-market financing and diversified large rounds in the period.

Measure	Q3 2025	Q2 2026
Deals	16	20
Measurable capital	$2.098B	$1.481B
Median round	$22.0M	$40.0M
Top-three share	91.5%	46.4%
Capital from ≤$50M rounds	$177.5M	$220.5M
$100M+ rounds	3	7
First financings	3	6

Are quantum investors writing much bigger checks now?

Quantum investors are writing materially bigger checks today than they were at the start of our period.

The median measurable financing rose from $22 million in Q2 2025 to $40 million one year later. After staying flat in Q3, it increased three quarters in a row.

The top end expanded even faster. Q2 2025 had one measurable $100 million-plus financing. Q2 2026 had seven. The $20 million to $50 million range also grew from two financings to six.

The median is especially useful here. A market containing a $1 billion PsiQuantum round can produce a spectacular average without telling us much about what an ordinary company can raise. The median shows that the typical disclosed financing has also moved upward.

Follow-on rounds make the change even clearer. Their measurable median went from $22 million in Q2 2025 to $100 million in Q2 2026, despite a temporary drop in Q1.

Investors are effectively funding a different stage of technical development now. Once companies move toward fabrication, fault tolerance, control hardware, industrial production and deployed systems, tens of millions of dollars can disappear quickly.

Has quantum hardware swallowed the funding market?

Quantum hardware now takes most of the money in private quantum computing funding, and the pattern has lasted long enough to look durable.

Hardware represented only 33.3% of deals and 12.6% of measurable capital in Q2 2025. From Q3 onward, hardware never fell below half of all financings. Its share of measurable capital reached 93.6% in Q3, 62.6% in Q4, 94.6% in Q1 and 84.7% in Q2 2026.

Typical hardware rounds also became much larger. The median measurable hardware financing rose from $22 million in Q2 2025 to $171 million in Q3, then stayed around $100 million in Q4, $130 million in Q1 and roughly $94 million in Q2.

This money is spread across very different technical approaches. PsiQuantum is working on photonics, Quantinuum on trapped ions, Atom Computing on neutral atoms, OQC on superconducting systems and companies such as Quobly and Diraq on semiconductor-based approaches.

What connects them is the cost of scaling physical systems. Investors are increasingly paying for chips, factories, packaging, control electronics, cryogenic infrastructure and complete machines.

Recent developments after the end of our funding window point in the same direction. PsiQuantum subsequently expanded its DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative work through a $125 million agreement and finalized a $100 million U.S. Department of Commerce award. Those awards are outside our fundraising totals, but they show that large-scale hardware programs are still attracting serious institutional backing.

Category	Q2 2025 deal share	Q1 2026 deal share	Q2 2026 deal share	Q2 2026 capital share
Quantum Hardware Systems	33.3%	75.0%	65.0%	84.7%
Quantum Computing Components	50.0%	0%	25.0%	13.6%
Quantum Programming Software	16.7%	8.3%	5.0%	1.4%
Quantum Middleware Tools	0%	16.7%	5.0%	0.2%
Hardware + components	83.3%	75.0%	90.0%	98.3%
Software + middleware	16.7%	25.0%	10.0%	1.6%

Are quantum components suddenly becoming investable again?

Quantum components came back strongly in Q2 2026, with investors funding both young suppliers and companies already moving toward industrial production.

The category disappeared entirely from Q1 2026 and then returned to 25% of all Q2 deals. We found activity across several physical bottlenecks in the quantum stack.

CavilinQ raised $8.8 million to develop photonic interconnect hardware designed to connect separate quantum processors. Groove Quantum raised €10 million of equity within a €16 million financing package while developing germanium spin-qubit processors and industrial-grade semiconductor manufacturing. Smaller companies are tackling areas such as junction precision and other chip-level infrastructure.

QuantWare sits at the other end of the scale. Its $178 million Series B is funding VIO processors and KiloFab, a dedicated open-architecture quantum processor fabrication facility. The company says KiloFab should increase its production capacity twentyfold.

Quobly offers another useful example. Its €115 million Series A included industrial investors such as STMicroelectronics and Air Liquide-related capital, with funding aimed at industrializing silicon quantum processors and bringing its first commercial systems to market.

The component recovery is broader than one exceptional round. QuantWare still heavily influences the dollar total, though, so another quarter would tell us whether the revival has really stuck.

Is quantum software falling behind hardware in funding?

Quantum software is falling behind hardware in funding share, even though a few software companies can still raise very large rounds.

Classiq is the clearest example. Its $110 million Series C drove 63.2% of all measurable quantum capital in Q2 2025. Horizon Quantum later produced another $110 million financing event in Q4.

Between those large transactions, the category has been much quieter. Programming software represented only 1.6% of measurable capital in Q3 2025, 2.4% in Q1 2026 and 1.4% in Q2 2026.

Algorithmiq’s €18 million raise in Q2 shows that investors still care about the software layer, especially tools that can turn quantum hardware into useful scientific workflows. What has changed is the scale of the hardware side around it.

A few large software financings can still move one quarter dramatically, but the repeated nine-figure checks are currently showing up much more consistently around physical systems, processors and infrastructure.

Are early-stage quantum startups getting squeezed out by all these giant rounds?

Early-stage quantum startups are still getting funded, and Q2 2026 actually brought the strongest Seed activity in our five-quarter period.

We counted nine Seed deals in Q2, alongside three Series A financings. At the same time, the quarter contained two Series B rounds, four Series C rounds, one Series D+ and one Growth financing.

That mix is unusual. A market dominated by $100 million-plus hardware stories could easily give the impression that venture money has moved almost entirely toward mature companies. Deal count tells us otherwise.

Q1 had looked much more difficult for young companies, but Q2 reopened the bottom of the funnel while the top kept expanding. Early-stage deals made up 60% of the quarter and later-stage deals 40%.

Some caution is still needed before calling this a lasting early-stage boom. The jump comes after a weak Q1, and one quarter cannot establish a persistent direction.

Quarter	Seed	Series A	Series B	Series C	Series D+/Growth	Unknown
Q2 2025	1	3	0	1	0	1
Q3 2025	3	5	5	1	1	1
Q4 2025	4	5	1	1	1	2
Q1 2026	3	2	1	1	1	4
Q2 2026	9	3	2	4	2	0
Change vs Q1	+6	+1	+1	+3	+1	-4

Are brand-new quantum startups still getting their first checks?

Brand-new quantum companies are still getting funded, while the really big checks increasingly go to businesses that have already proved something.

First financings moved from zero in Q2 2025 to three in Q3, four in Q4, one in Q1 2026 and six in Q2. Their Q2 share of 30% was the highest in our period.

Those new companies are raising much smaller amounts. Q2 first financings produced $81.8 million of measurable capital with a median of $10.2 million. Follow-ons produced about $1.40 billion with a median of $100 million.

Company age backs up the same story. The median company receiving its first identified financing was typically zero to two years old. Follow-on companies were generally around four to six years old. Overall median company age stayed close to four years through most of the period.

The pipeline is still replenishing. New companies can enter while a separate cohort founded several years ago is already raising industrial-scale capital.

We treat financing status as directional because private-company funding histories can be incomplete. Even with that limitation, the gap between first-check and follow-on financing is far too large to ignore.

Is Europe becoming the strongest region for quantum computing funding?

Europe currently has the clearest mix of quantum deal volume and large private financings, especially in Q2 2026.

European companies represented 45% of deals and 58.1% of measurable capital in Q2. That is a much more balanced profile than North America’s Q3 2025 surge, when 31.2% of deals captured 79% of capital largely because of a few huge rounds.

OQC’s $350 million Series C was the largest European deal in Q2. QuantWare raised $178 million in the Netherlands, Quobly raised €115 million in France, and companies such as Algorithmiq and Groove Quantum added activity in software and semiconductor hardware.

Europe’s policy environment has also shifted toward scale. The European Commission’s Quantum Europe Strategy focuses explicitly on startups, scaleups, infrastructure, supply chains and industrialization. In the UK, the government announced £121 million of quantum support in 2025, followed by a £670 million long-term quantum computing commitment and then a package of up to £2 billion for quantum innovation in 2026.

We cannot turn that timing into proof that public policy caused the private rounds. It does show that companies raising industrial-scale private capital are doing so while European governments are putting more money behind the same manufacturing, infrastructure and commercialization problems.

Europe’s Q2 position looks meaningful, although one strong quarter is still too little to declare a permanent geographic shift.

What is actually happening with quantum computing funding in Asia-Pacific?

Asia-Pacific has a broad quantum company pipeline, but its funding pattern jumps around much more than Europe’s.

The clearest example came in Q1 2026. APAC generated 66.7% of all deals while capturing only 31% of measurable capital. A lot of companies were getting funded, but most were not raising North American-style megarounds.

Q2 flipped part of that pattern. APAC dropped to 20% of deals and 18.8% of capital, while its measurable median climbed to roughly $87 million.

SpinQ played a large role. The company announced a RMB600 million Series C+ in April, bringing its wider Series C financing close to RMB1 billion, and then completed a RMB1 billion Series D at the end of June. The capital is being directed toward superconducting chips, production capacity, error correction and commercialization.

Other APAC companies are developing silicon-spin, neutral-atom and full-stack systems, so the activity is not confined to one technical approach.

For now, APAC looks consistently active but uneven. Some quarters bring many relatively small or undisclosed financings, while others are lifted by much larger Chinese hardware rounds.

Are corporate investors becoming more important in quantum computing?

Corporate investors matter a lot in large quantum financings, but their share of total deals has actually fallen lately.

Strategic-backed deals represented 16.7% of activity in Q2 2025, rose to 25% in Q3 and 28.6% in Q4, then slipped to 25% in Q1 2026 and 20% in Q2.

The size of those rounds tells the more interesting story. Median measurable strategic-backed financings were $110 million, $460 million, $85 million, $130 million and roughly $147 million across the five quarters.

Corporate money shows up disproportionately where quantum starts touching existing industrial supply chains. Intel Capital joined QuantWare’s $178 million Series B. Air Liquide’s venture arm invested in Quobly as the company moves silicon quantum processors toward industrial manufacturing. Quantinuum’s 2025 round included Quanta Computer and NVentures alongside existing industrial shareholders.

Corporates are clustering around companies that already have expensive manufacturing, semiconductor, HPC or deployment problems to solve. Their participation remains important even though they are currently backing a smaller percentage of all deals than at the Q4 peak.

Are the same VCs leading every quantum computing round?

Quantum computing funding is still coming from a surprisingly wide group of lead investors rather than a small club showing up every quarter.

No disclosed lead in our research appeared more than once within the same quarter. Across the full five-quarter period, only Bedford Ridge Capital showed up as a disclosed lead in more than one quarter, both times for Quantum Art.

That is quite striking given how much larger quantum rounds have become. Q2 2026 included traditional venture funds, deep-tech specialists, public investment institutions and corporate investors.

The fragmentation also makes sense technically. A photonic computer, a neutral-atom system, a silicon-spin processor and quantum interconnect hardware can appeal to very different pools of investors.

Lead disclosure is imperfect. Depending on the quarter, we could identify a lead in roughly two-thirds to four-fifths of deals, so an investor missing from this analysis should never be read as an investor leaving the market.

Still, we see no sign so far of the funding market consolidating around a handful of repeat lead firms.

Why is quantum computing suddenly so expensive to fund?

Quantum computing has become expensive to fund because many leading companies are now trying to build factories, complete machines and fault-tolerant infrastructure rather than simply prove that their core technology works.

PsiQuantum’s $1 billion financing was tied to utility-scale sites, prototype systems, chip development and fault-tolerant architecture. QuantWare is building KiloFab while scaling processor manufacturing. OQC said its $350 million round would expand deployed quantum infrastructure internationally. Atom Computing’s $100 million Series C is aimed at commercial-scale fault-tolerant neutral-atom systems.

Quobly is pushing semiconductor-based processors toward industrial production. SpinQ is spending on higher-qubit superconducting chips, production lines and error correction. Groove Quantum is already talking about manufacturing at semiconductor foundries despite still being a young company.

Traditional stage labels can get weird in quantum computing. A Series A or Series B hardware company may need an amount of capital that would look like late-stage money in software.

The trend continued after our June 30 funding cutoff. PsiQuantum’s subsequent DARPA agreement and U.S. Commerce award both focus on testing, infrastructure, manufacturing and utility-scale systems. The private funding boom is increasingly connected to the physical work of turning quantum architectures into machines that can actually be built and deployed.

What is the quantum computing funding trend actually telling us?

Quantum computing funding looks healthier today than it did at the start of our period, but the strongest evidence comes from the shape of the market rather than the total number of dollars raised.

Typical financings have become larger. The middle of the market came back strongly in Q2 2026. Several companies can now raise $100 million or more in the same quarter, reducing dependence on one exceptional deal.

Hardware is where the clearest long-term momentum sits. Components are starting to benefit as well, particularly around processors, interconnects and semiconductor manufacturing. Software still attracts serious money, but its large rounds are much less consistent.

The company pipeline has also stayed open. New startups are receiving first checks while older companies move into nine-figure follow-ons. As seen above, those two groups operate at very different funding scales, but they are currently coexisting.

Europe has recently produced the best balance between deal breadth and capital, while APAC continues to generate a large and more volatile pipeline of companies. North America remains capable of producing enormous rounds, although its biggest quarter in our period was unusually concentrated.

The easiest mistake is still to treat quarterly capital as a direct measure of market health. Q3 2025 raised much more money than Q2 2026, yet Q2 had the wider financing base. Looking at deal count, median round size, financing below $50 million, startup formation and concentration together gives a much better picture.

Quantum funding is moving deeper into industrial scale-up while still creating new companies underneath. Q2 2026 is the clearest evidence so far that the financing base itself is widening.