The investment will support the ETH Zürich spin-out as it scales its novel trapped-ion architecture, expands its team and accelerates the development of processors capable of supporting hundreds and ultimately thousands of qubits.

Paris/Zürich, 28 July 2026 — Quantonation, the world’s leading early-stage investment fund dedicated to quantum technologies, today announced it has led a $25.5 million seed round in ZuriQ, the Swiss quantum computing company pioneering a fundamentally new architecture for trapped-ion quantum processors.

The round, which follows ZuriQ’s $4.2 million pre-seed financing in 2025, also includes participation from Forward.one, Extantia, Firgun Ventures and all previous investors.

Quantonation’s investment in ZuriQ reflects its conviction that the architecture of quantum computers remains an open frontier and that fundamental advances in physics and engineering can still reshape how the industry approaches scale.

“A common misconception is that the quantum race is already decided, but that is far from reality,” said Christophe Jurczak, Founding Partner at Quantonation. “ZuriQ is demonstrating that there remain significant and transformational physics breakthroughs still to be made in Quantum architectures. The scientific caliber of the team is world-class, which is why ZuriQ has been phenomenally successful in attracting global talent to join them and build 2D-native quantum computers where trapped-ion qubits finally have the freedom to move and connect.”

Most trapped-ion quantum computers rely on decades-old designs that hold ions in one-dimensional chains connected through complex junctions. ZuriQ instead uses Penning micro-traps and a static magnetic field to create natively two-dimensional processors where ions can move freely without these constraints.
“What makes this approach powerful is geometry,” said Professor Jonathan Home of ETH Zürich, and a scientific adviser to ZuriQ. “Hold ions in a line and the count grows one at a time; hold them in two dimensions, and it grows with the area of the chip — on a standard chip, that is the difference between tens of ions and many thousands. Just as important, the ions can be moved freely in three dimensions, so they can be connected together far more flexibly, and that connectivity is what ultimately makes a quantum computer more capable. Reaching the scale and connectivity that real applications will need has been the central challenge for the whole field.”

Since Quantonation’s initial investment, ZuriQ has translated that architectural thesis into significant technical progress. In fewer than 18 months, the company has worked with ETH researchers to develop a working demonstrator comprising a 3×3 array of nine individually controlled ions, which is the largest two-dimensional array of its kind demonstrated to date.

The underlying chips were fabricated with manufacturing partner Infineon, demonstrating that the architecture can be produced using established industrial processes. ZuriQ has also grown from four people to eighteen, attracting talent from leading quantum and photonics organisations including IonQ, Xanadu and Hamamatsu.

The new funding will enable ZuriQ to move into its next phase, which is scaling the number of ions its processors can support. The team will also expand its team and research programme while accelerating chip fabrication. They plan to reach hundreds of qubits on a single chip and ultimately the thousands required for industrially useful quantum computing.

“The trapped-ion companies that started the race began with one-dimensional designs that were useful stepping-stones, but the real challenge is whether they can successfully pivot to two dimensions as they attempt to scale,” said Dr. Pavel Hrmo, co-founder and CEO of ZuriQ. “We spent longer in the lab, and that time allowed us to identify an alternative route that is inherently easier to scale. Our architecture is two-dimensional from the ground up, so the number of qubits we can place on a chip will grow far more readily than in systems built on a legacy blueprint. This funding lets us turn our technical momentum into commercial scale with more people, more research, and an accelerated path to industrial applications.”

For Quantonation, the investment underscores a core principle behind its approach to quantum investing: the technologies that ultimately define the industry are not necessarily predetermined by today’s dominant architectures.

As quantum computing moves from demonstrating increasingly capable systems toward building machines at commercially relevant scale, fundamental questions around architecture, connectivity and manufacturability remain unresolved. ZuriQ’s progress demonstrates the potential for new approaches rooted in fundamental physics to redefine those constraints rather than simply optimise within them.

About Quantonation

Quantonation is the first early-stage venture capital fund dedicated to deep physics and quantum technologies. Through its investments, Quantonation supports companies developing breakthrough technologies across quantum computing, sensing, communications and enabling technologies, working with scientific founders to translate fundamental advances into globally significant companies.

About ZuriQ

ZuriQ is a quantum computing company based in Zürich, Switzerland. Spun out of the ETH Zürich laboratory of Professor Jonathan Home by founders Dr Pavel Hrmo, Dr Tobias Sägesser and Dr Shreyans Jain, the company has developed a new approach for trapped-ion qubits that combines electric and magnetic fields to create natively two-dimensional arrays to break through the scaling limits of conventional systems. ZuriQ is rapidly solving the most challenging aspects of quantum computing processor design to develop architectures that support the thousands of qubits required for industrially useful quantum computing.