Who are the top investors in quantum computing?
In our quantum computing market deck, you will find everything you need to understand the market
SUMMARY
Quantonation and DCVC are the top investors in quantum computing today, with Oxford Science Enterprises close behind and Playground Global and NVentures forming the next tier.
The ranking has become harder because quantum financing is no longer mainly an early-stage science problem. The strongest hardware companies increasingly need investors that can bridge specialist venture funding, industrial partnerships and rounds worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Quantonation ranks first because it has repeatedly entered difficult quantum companies early across neutral atoms, photonics, silicon, superconducting systems, control hardware and trapped ions. Its limitation is financial rather than technical: even a €220 million fund cannot independently support the largest hardware rounds now appearing.
DCVC has the strongest broad US venture record. Its early bets on Rigetti and Atom Computing, followed by newer investments such as Quantum Motion, give it unusually long evidence across several competing architectures rather than one fortunate outcome.
Oxford Science Enterprises shows how powerful proprietary university access can be. Its Oxford ecosystem produced early positions in Oxford Ionics, OQC and Quantum Motion, including a $1.075 billion acquisition agreement for Oxford Ionics.
Portfolio breadth matters more in quantum than it would in a mature technology market. No architecture has conclusively won, so investors backing several credible technical approaches are effectively spreading their bets across unresolved engineering questions rather than merely diversifying for its own sake.
Concentrated investors should be judged differently. Playground Global's early PsiQuantum bet could become one of the best quantum investments of the decade even though its portfolio gives us less evidence about repeatability than Quantonation or DCVC.
Corporate capital is becoming much more important. NVentures can invest across competing architectures while benefiting whichever one wins because most useful quantum systems will still rely heavily on NVIDIA's classical computing, simulation and hybrid-computing ecosystem.
Late-stage institutions such as Temasek, BlackRock and Baillie Gifford are increasingly essential without necessarily being the best early quantum pickers. Their advantage appears once a company needs enormous amounts of capital to build fabrication, cryogenic, packaging and full-system infrastructure.
The investor leaderboard is therefore becoming stage-specific. A new quantum spinout should prioritize technical investors such as Quantonation, DCVC or OSE, while a company financing industrial-scale deployment increasingly needs institutions, strategic investors and public capital alongside them.
This market map, featured in our quantum computing market deck, highlights top companies and startups in the quantum computing market
Why has the quantum investor leaderboard changed so quickly?
The quantum-computing investor leaderboard is changing fast because the companies now need far more money than they did a few years ago.
PitchBook counted $3.9 billion of quantum-computing venture investment across 125 deals in 2025, the highest annual total in its dataset. The more revealing change was where the money went: venture-growth rounds jumped from roughly 1% of deal value in 2024 to about 30% in 2025. PitchBook then recorded another $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026.
Recent rounds show what that shift looks like in practice. OQC raised $350 million to expand its superconducting systems. Oratomic came out of stealth and raised a $300 million Series A. Quantum Motion raised $160 million to scale silicon-spin hardware. Quobly raised €115 million for its silicon-based platform. These are unusually large rounds for companies that are still proving which quantum architecture will actually scale.
So the investor question has become harder. A few years ago, we mostly cared about who could understand the science early enough to invest. Today, the strongest investor group also needs access to much larger pools of capital once fabrication, packaging, cryogenics, data centers and full systems enter the picture.
| Recent quantum round | Amount | What the money is funding |
|---|---|---|
| OQC | $350M | Superconducting quantum infrastructure |
| Oratomic | $300M | Neutral-atom fault-tolerant system |
| Quantum Motion | $160M | Silicon-spin quantum computers |
| Quobly | €115M | Silicon quantum hardware |
| Atom Computing | $100M Series C | Neutral-atom scaling |
What should “top quantum investor” actually mean?
For us, a top quantum-computing investor is one that can repeatedly find strong companies early, keep backing them as the technical risk falls, and show good judgment across more than one bet.
That definition changes the ranking immediately. BlackRock can deploy more quantum capital than almost any specialist VC, but most of its visible quantum exposure is tied to a very small number of large companies. Quantonation has much less money, yet it has backed quantum companies across neutral atoms, photonics, silicon, superconducting systems, control electronics and software.
We therefore put more weight on repeatability than raw dollars. We look at how early an investor entered, how many credible quantum companies it has backed, whether it follows those companies into later rounds, whether the portfolio covers several technical approaches, and whether the investor can actually help a difficult hardware company get built.
The ranking also changes by stage. A founder spinning out a new quantum architecture should care much more about Quantonation or DCVC than BlackRock. A company already trying to finance a billion-dollar industrial buildout has almost the opposite problem.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest quantum computing market report.
As this chart shows, and as featured in our quantum computing market deck, search interest in quantum computing has grown significantly
Does writing the biggest quantum checks make you the best quantum investor?
Writing the biggest quantum checks currently says more about access to late-stage winners than about whether an investor can repeatedly pick good quantum companies.
PitchBook's recent investor analysis, reported by Fortune, puts BlackRock and NVIDIA among the largest quantum investors by capital deployed. BlackRock's position comes heavily from PsiQuantum, while NVIDIA has been spreading capital across several companies as its quantum strategy expands.
Those approaches are very different. An investor can make an exceptional return by concentrating on one company before everyone else understands how valuable it could become. Playground Global's early PsiQuantum investment may ultimately prove more valuable than entire diversified portfolios. But one huge winner gives us less evidence about an investor's ability to evaluate the rest of the market.
We would therefore separate “largest quantum investor” from “best quantum investor.” The first can be measured largely in dollars. The second requires a track record across several decisions.
Is Quantonation the best pure-play quantum VC right now?
Quantonation is currently our number-one pure-play quantum investor.
The firm has been investing in quantum and physics-based startups since 2018, well before the recent funding surge. Its first fund was €91 million. It has since closed a €220 million second fund and is actively investing from pre-seed through Series A, with selective participation later.
The portfolio is unusually deep. Quantonation has backed Pasqal in neutral atoms, Quandela and ORCA Computing in photonics, Diraq and Quobly in silicon, Nord Quantique in superconducting systems, Qblox in quantum control, and ZuriQ in trapped ions. That gives the firm exposure to many of the technical arguments that still have no settled answer.
The latest investments show that the activity has not slowed as larger investors entered the market. Quantonation recently led ZuriQ's $25.5 million seed round after the ETH Zurich spinout had built a nine-ion two-dimensional demonstrator. It was also an early investor in Quobly before the French company raised €115 million to industrialize its silicon platform.
We give Quantonation the top specialist spot because the same pattern keeps repeating: it gets into technically difficult companies early, across different architectures, and remains involved as outside capital arrives. Its main weakness is simple. A €220 million fund cannot carry a company alone once a single funding round reaches several hundred million dollars.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest quantum computing market report.
This chart, included in our quantum computing market deck, illustrates yearly VC funding for quantum computing startups
Is DCVC the strongest US quantum investor today?
DCVC is the strongest broad US venture firm in quantum computing today.
Its quantum history goes much further back than the current boom. DCVC first invested in Rigetti in 2014 and Atom Computing in 2018. Those were early bets on two completely different approaches: superconducting qubits at Rigetti and neutral atoms at Atom.
DCVC has kept adding to that portfolio rather than waiting for those first bets to resolve. It recently co-led Quantum Motion's $160 million Series C, backing the company's attempt to build quantum processors with standard silicon manufacturing. It also backs companies working on quantum control and error correction.
A useful external check arrived when the US Department of Commerce selected Atom Computing and Rigetti for planned $100 million incentives each as part of its new quantum program. DCVC had been invested in both companies long before that government support appeared.
The difference with Quantonation is mostly structural. Quantonation lives almost entirely inside quantum and physics-based technology. DCVC invests across deep tech, which gives it a broader industrial network and more experience with larger companies. For a US quantum-hardware founder, we would put DCVC at essentially the same level as Quantonation.
Has Oxford Science Enterprises quietly built one of the best quantum portfolios?
Oxford Science Enterprises has probably built the strongest university-linked quantum investment record we can see today.
The best proof is Oxford Ionics. OSE backed the company from pre-seed when it spun out of Oxford in 2019 and became its largest shareholder. IonQ later agreed to acquire Oxford Ionics for $1.075 billion, giving OSE one of the clearest billion-dollar outcomes produced by an early quantum investor.
Oxford Ionics was hardly an isolated bet. OSE also backed OQC, which has grown into one of Europe's best-funded private quantum-computing companies, and Quantum Motion, which is pursuing silicon-spin qubits. Its broader Oxford network gives it unusually early access to research before most conventional VCs would even see a company.
The model has a clear limitation: geography. OSE is built around the University of Oxford rather than trying to discover every interesting quantum company globally. Within that ecosystem, though, the advantage is difficult to copy.
We would rank OSE just behind Quantonation and DCVC overall. Few investors can point to both proprietary company formation and a billion-dollar quantum exit.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest quantum computing market report.
This chart, included in our quantum computing market deck, looks at IonQ’s strategy in quantum computing
Was Playground Global's early PsiQuantum bet enough to make it a top investor?
Playground Global deserves a place near the top because its early PsiQuantum investment was one of the best quantum venture bets of the last decade.
Playground describes itself as an early, and frequently first, investor in companies including PsiQuantum. Peter Barrett remains closely involved with the company, and PsiQuantum has since grown into one of the most heavily financed private quantum-computing companies in the world.
Playground did not stop at hardware. It also backed Phasecraft, a quantum-algorithms company that raised a $34 million Series B in 2025, giving Playground exposure to the software layer that would sit on top of useful quantum machines. Its wider portfolio also includes quantum sensing companies.
We still put Playground below Quantonation, DCVC and OSE because there are fewer independent quantum-computing bets to evaluate. Concentration is not necessarily a weakness, though. If PsiQuantum ultimately builds a useful fault-tolerant machine, being one of its earliest investors could outweigh a much broader portfolio of smaller wins.
Is NVentures becoming the most powerful corporate quantum investor?
NVentures is currently the corporate quantum investor gaining influence the fastest.
NVIDIA's venture arm has moved across competing architectures rather than picking one winner. It invested in QuEra's neutral-atom approach, Quantinuum's trapped-ion systems and PsiQuantum's photonic architecture in 2025. More recently, NVentures invested in Alice & Bob, which is pursuing superconducting cat qubits.
The spread looks deliberate. NVIDIA can benefit from quantum computing even if it never builds the winning quantum processor itself, because useful quantum machines will still require enormous amounts of classical computing for control, simulation, error correction and hybrid workloads. Its CUDA-Q ecosystem is already built around that assumption.
Bosch Ventures is the closest corporate comparison we would put in the same conversation. Bosch led Quantum Motion's previous $50 million financing and participated again in its latest round. Its manufacturing and semiconductor experience fits Quantum Motion's plan to build quantum hardware with conventional silicon processes.
NVIDIA has the broader advantage these days. Money is only one part of what NVentures brings; access to the computing stack surrounding a quantum processor could become just as valuable to founders.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest quantum computing market report.
This chart, included in our quantum computing market deck, illustrates yearly funding for quantum computing startups
Are BlackRock, Temasek and Baillie Gifford really top quantum investors?
BlackRock, Temasek and Baillie Gifford belong among the top quantum growth investors, although only Temasek has enough visible breadth for us to push it much higher.
As seen above, all three became major backers of PsiQuantum. BlackRock led the company's $450 million Series D in 2021, then BlackRock, Temasek and Baillie Gifford led its $1 billion Series E at a $7 billion valuation. Those are huge commitments to one technical thesis: that photonics can reach fault-tolerant quantum computing at industrial scale.
Temasek has gone further outside that one company. It also led Pasqal's €100 million Series B, giving the Singapore investor meaningful exposure to neutral atoms as well as photonics. That second major architecture makes its quantum record easier to judge.
BlackRock could still end up with the best financial result of all of them. We simply have less evidence that its quantum investment process works across many separate companies. Baillie Gifford falls into a similar category: impressive patience and access, but a much more concentrated public record.
So we would call these firms top providers of quantum scale capital rather than the strongest quantum pickers.
Is 55 North already a serious challenger to Quantonation?
55 North is the most credible new specialist challenger, but its track record is still too young to put beside Quantonation.
The Copenhagen-based fund was launched with a €300 million target and reached a €134 million first close backed by Novo Holdings and Denmark's EIFO. If it reaches the full target, the fund would be larger than Quantonation II and would have enough capital to participate across a wider range of stages.
The portfolio is already taking shape. Novo Holdings reported that 55 North first backed IQM and cryogenics company Kiutra. A later Danish ecosystem report counted five investments, adding QMatter, Groove Quantum and Monarch Quantum. That is already more than a token allocation to the sector.
Still, ranking a new fund on ambition alone would be premature. Quantonation has investment decisions dating back to 2018, companies that have already raised major follow-on rounds, and years of evidence across different architectures. 55 North has capital, specialist talent and a clear mandate, but we need to see what its first portfolio becomes.
For a founder raising now, though, 55 North is already one of the names we would call.
This chart, included in our quantum computing market deck, compares the main business model options for quantum computing hardware startups
Are big generalist VCs finally taking quantum computing seriously?
Generalist VCs are now willing to underwrite quantum companies from the start, and Oratomic's $300 million Series A is the clearest recent example.
Oratomic emerged from Caltech research around a neutral-atom architecture and raised $300 million almost immediately. ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Khosla Ventures co-led the round, with Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Lowercarbon Capital, Bain Capital and Bezos Expeditions also participating.
That syndicate looks very different from the specialist-heavy quantum rounds of a few years ago. Khosla Ventures' Vinod Khosla even described the Oratomic deal as his firm's largest initial investment yet.
The technical claim was strong enough to support that size. Oratomic's researchers argue that a useful fault-tolerant machine may be possible with roughly 10,000 to 20,000 physical qubits under their approach, far below many earlier assumptions. The company is skipping intermediate commercial products and going directly after fault tolerance.
One $300 million deal does not suddenly make Khosla, ARCH or Spark top quantum investors. It does show that specialist funds no longer have the field to themselves. If these generalists make another two or three serious quantum bets, our ranking could look very different.
Do governments now count as major quantum investors?
Governments now deploy enough capital into quantum computing that leaving them out gives a misleading picture of who can actually finance the industry.
The biggest recent example came from the US Department of Commerce, which announced letters of intent for $2.013 billion of planned incentives across nine quantum companies and foundries. IBM was allocated $1 billion for quantum-grade superconducting wafer manufacturing and GlobalFoundries $375 million for a multi-modality quantum foundry. Atom Computing, Diraq, D-Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum and Rigetti were also selected, with the government taking minority equity stakes as part of the proposed arrangements.
The UK is using the British Business Bank in a similar way. As seen above, OQC raised a $350 million round; the British Business Bank supplied £100 million of it, its largest direct investment into a British quantum company. The bank also committed £40 million to Quantum Motion's financing.
Those programs change the private-investor landscape. Quantum hardware companies can now combine specialist VC money, institutional capital, corporate investors and state funding inside the same financing journey.
We would not rank a government beside Quantonation as if the two were doing the same job. But once hardware funding reaches hundreds of millions or billions, public capital can determine which private investment theses have enough runway to survive.
This chart, featured in our quantum computing market deck, illustrates how revenue is divided among customer segments in the quantum computing market
Which quantum investors have actually produced big exits?
Oxford Science Enterprises and Honeywell currently have the clearest large quantum outcomes, although the dataset is still too small to build the whole ranking around exits.
OSE's Oxford Ionics investment is the cleaner venture example. OSE backed the spinout from the beginning, remained its largest shareholder and then saw IonQ agree to acquire the company for $1.075 billion. That gives us a full path from university research to a billion-dollar transaction.
Honeywell's Quantinuum story is even larger, although it looks more like corporate creation than traditional venture investing. Honeywell combined its own quantum business with Cambridge Quantum to form Quantinuum, financed the company through its private years and retained a 48% ownership interest after Quantinuum went public. The IPO raised $1.68 billion.
DCVC also has public-market evidence through Rigetti, which it first backed in 2014. Other quantum companies have now reached public markets too, but most of today's private-market leaders remain several years away from giving their earliest investors a clean exit.
That is why we use exits as confirmation rather than the primary ranking method. Quantum investing is finally producing outcomes, but there are still too few of them to tell us who has the best long-term batting average.
Does backing several quantum architectures actually matter?
Backing several architectures still matters because nobody has proved which quantum-computing approach will dominate at useful scale.
We would be suspicious of treating diversification as an automatic virtue in a mature market. Quantum is different for now. Neutral atoms, trapped ions, superconducting qubits, silicon spins and photonics still make competing claims around error rates, manufacturability, connectivity, cooling, control and the number of physical qubits needed for fault tolerance.
That makes the portfolios of Quantonation, DCVC and NVentures especially useful to study. They are effectively running several technical experiments at once. If one architecture loses ground, their quantum thesis does not disappear with it.
The table also shows why we rank concentrated growth investors differently. A large PsiQuantum position can become an outstanding investment while telling us much less about the investor's ability to judge neutral atoms, trapped ions or silicon.
| Investor | Examples of architectures backed | What we learn from the portfolio |
|---|---|---|
| Quantonation | Neutral atoms, photonics, silicon, superconducting, trapped ions | Broadest specialist test of technical judgment |
| DCVC | Superconducting, neutral atoms, silicon spin, quantum control | Long US track record across hardware and infrastructure |
| NVentures | Neutral atoms, trapped ions, photonics, cat qubits | Fast-growing cross-architecture corporate strategy |
| OSE | Trapped ions, superconducting, silicon spin, photonics | Deep access to Oxford-originated quantum science |
| Playground Global | Photonic hardware, quantum algorithms | More concentrated, with very high upside if PsiQuantum wins |
This chart, included in our quantum computing market deck, shows how cloud quantum computing access technology has evolved over time
Who are the top investors in quantum computing right now?
Quantonation and DCVC are the two best overall quantum-computing investors today, with Oxford Science Enterprises close behind.
We put Quantonation first because no other investor combines the same level of specialization, portfolio breadth, early-stage activity and current deployment. DCVC is almost tied with it, particularly in the US, where its history with Rigetti and Atom Computing gives it a track record going back more than a decade. OSE comes third because its Oxford access has already produced both a strong portfolio and a billion-dollar exit.
Playground Global sits in the next group. Its portfolio is narrower, but being extremely early in PsiQuantum could prove to be one of the defining venture bets in quantum computing. NVentures now belongs in that same group because NVIDIA has quickly built exposure across several competing architectures while offering founders something most financial investors cannot: direct access to the classical computing infrastructure surrounding quantum machines.
55 North is the specialist we would watch most closely from here. It has enough capital to become a major European player, but we want several more years of company-level evidence before ranking it with Quantonation. Temasek is our strongest institutional growth investor because its exposure goes beyond one architecture. BlackRock and Baillie Gifford remain extremely important sources of scale capital.
Honeywell sits in its own category. Its Quantinuum investment has already created enormous strategic value, but Honeywell built one major quantum company rather than repeatedly selecting startups from the market.
The answer depends slightly on what a founder wants. For early quantum company formation, we would call Quantonation, DCVC and OSE first. For industrial partnerships, NVentures becomes unusually attractive. For late-stage financing, institutions such as Temasek, BlackRock and Baillie Gifford become much more important. The quantum market now needs all three layers.
| Investor | Our current view | Why it stands out | Main caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quantonation | #1 overall | Deepest pure-play quantum portfolio and strong early access | Cannot finance the largest rounds alone |
| DCVC | #2 overall / #1 broad US VC | Quantum track record since 2014 across several architectures | Quantum is one part of a broader deep-tech strategy |
| Oxford Science Enterprises | #3 overall | Exceptional Oxford deal flow and $1B+ Oxford Ionics exit | Concentrated around one university ecosystem |
| Playground Global | Top-tier early investor | Extremely early PsiQuantum bet plus Phasecraft | Fewer independent computing bets |
| NVentures | Top corporate investor | Cross-architecture portfolio plus NVIDIA ecosystem | Quantum investment history is relatively recent |
| 55 North | Strongest emerging specialist | Pure quantum mandate and large targeted fund | First portfolio is still young |
| Temasek | Best institutional growth investor | Major capital plus exposure to multiple architectures | Less early-stage evidence |
| Bosch Ventures | Strong strategic specialist | Repeated backing plus industrial manufacturing expertise | Narrow portfolio |
| BlackRock | Major scale-capital investor | Access to the industry's largest private financings | Quantum record is highly concentrated |
| Baillie Gifford | Major patient-capital investor | Long-duration backing of major private quantum companies | Limited visible portfolio breadth |
| Honeywell | Strategic special case | Built Quantinuum and retained a major stake through IPO | One-company track record rather than repeatable VC selection |
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest quantum computing market report.
OUR METHODOLOGY
There is no single metric that identifies the top quantum-computing investors, so we treated this as a multi-dimensional investment analysis rather than ranking firms by capital deployed. We looked at when investors entered, the strength and breadth of their quantum portfolios, follow-on activity, exposure across technical architectures, access to later-stage capital, strategic capabilities and evidence from major financing outcomes or exits.
We separated early-stage venture selection from growth, corporate and public-sector capital because they solve different problems. An investor capable of identifying a university spinout before the technology is proven is demonstrating a different skill from an institution capable of financing a several-hundred-million-dollar industrial buildout.
Repeatability carries more weight in the overall ranking than one exceptionally large investment. A major PsiQuantum position can produce an outstanding return, for example, but a portfolio spanning several credible quantum companies and architectures gives us more evidence about an investor's ability to repeatedly evaluate technical risk.
We also give architecture breadth more weight than we would in a mature technology market. Neutral atoms, trapped ions, superconducting qubits, silicon spins and photonics are still competing on manufacturability, error rates, connectivity, control and fault-tolerance requirements, so investors with credible bets across several approaches provide more evidence to evaluate.
Recent evidence matters heavily because the financing environment has changed quickly. The large OQC, Oratomic and Quantum Motion rounds, Quantonation's €220 million second fund, 55 North's first close and the arrival of investors such as NVentures all materially change what a current quantum investor leaderboard looks like.
We prioritized primary sources wherever possible, including company funding announcements, investor disclosures, government institutions, development banks and regulatory filings. Key sources include OQC's Series C announcement, Oratomic's $300 million Series A announcement, Quantum Motion's $160 million Series C announcement, and Quantonation's €220 million Fund II announcement.
For portfolio history and outcomes, important sources include Oxford Science Enterprises on Oxford Ionics, IonQ's confirmation of the $1.075 billion Oxford Ionics transaction, PsiQuantum's $1 billion Series E announcement, PsiQuantum's earlier Series D announcement, and Phasecraft's Series B announcement.
For newer specialist and strategic investors, we used sources including Novo Holdings on 55 North's €134 million first close, Bosch Ventures on its repeated backing of Quantum Motion, the British Business Bank on its £100 million OQC investment, and the British Business Bank on its £40 million Quantum Motion investment.
The final ranking is a structured synthesis rather than a mechanical score. We assessed each investor across the same dimensions, looked for evidence that repeated across several companies or rounds, and then ranked investors according to the strength of that combined record rather than reputation alone.
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