This Startup Just Raised $21 Million To Bring Quantum Computing To Enterprise Applications

Zapata Computing, a quantum computing software program startup that spun out of Harvard, introduced Wednesday to raise $21 million in a Series A spherical. The spherical become led via Prelude Ventures and Comcast Ventures and protected participation from Pillar VC, The Engine, BASF Venture Capital, Pitango Ventures, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital. The boost will carry the agency’s general funding to about $26.Forty-five million.

Unique amongst quantum computing startups, Zapata Computing isn’t interested in building quantum computer systems. Instead, it’s building software packages for one’s structures and helping big organizations discover answers wherein quantum computing makes feel, irrespective of what hardware that client is using.

“We’re growing a company-hardened software platform that lets in the domain experts to move as deep as they need, as well as abstract to a sure degree,” Zapata CEO Chris Savoie defined to me. “This isn’t always for the faint of coronary heart. We’re not accessible looking to educate an undergraduate pc science fundamental how to software a quantum laptop. We’re years away from that.”

Zapata’s consciousness proper now’s on packages wherein quantum computing can offer a few advantages over traditional supercomputing, specifically in 3 key areas: simulation of chemical reactions, system gaining knowledge, and optimization troubles, which can be of unique interest in regions like logistics and planning.

The startup was founded in 2017 and spins out of Alán Aspuru-Guzik, who has been operating to apply quantum computing to chemical simulations. There have been four postdocs, physicists Peter Johnson and Jonny Olson; computer scientist Yudong Cao; and chemist Jhonathan Romero Montalvo. All of them have been running on one-of-a-kind applications of quantum computing, and it changed into their paintings in Aspuru-Guzik’s lab that grew into the premise for the organization.

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To run Zapata, the cofounders tapped Savoie as CEO. A serial entrepreneur and tech enterprise govt whose Ph.D. research had focused on molecular simulations. Apart from the businesses he’d previously founded, he’d additionally worked at Verizon and Nissan. His previous startup, OLED materials employer Kyulux, had licensed AI era developed in Aspuru-Guzik’s lab, which began the relationship between the two.

After expressing frustration to Aspuru-Guzik over his two times-month-to-month shuttles from Boston to Japan (“Which my spouse stated turned into not a tenable business plan,” Savoie joked), Aspuru-Guzik invited Savoie to satisfy with the Zapata founding crew.