Today, Quantum Circuits Inc. (QCI) joined forces with D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS) in a $550 M acquisition to continue its work on building practical quantum computers. While this moment will understandably be viewed through the lens of an acquisition, its real significance lies elsewhere. It marks the continuation of a technical path set in motion years ago—one grounded in the belief that error correction is not a feature to be layered on later, but the prerequisite that makes quantum computing scalable and capable of solving real-world problems at all.
In 2017, we invested in QCI for two reasons. First, this was an extraordinary team of founders. While this has become trite to say in Venture, Rob Schoelkopf, founding CEO, and his co-founders from Yale invented the basis of superconducting quantum computing – the same approach that the likes of IBM, Amazon, and Google have looked to commercialize. Another co-founder, Michel Devoret, went on to win the Nobel Prize in physics in 2025 for his contributions to the field. The work of this founding team over the decades is instrumental to the efforts of IBM, Google, and Amazon, and we had the chance to invest in the current incarnation of that work.
Second, in venture, it's trite to talk about looking for a founding team’s ‘earned secret’ – what they know and understand about a market that no one else does. In 2017, when we invested, the conversation in quantum was dominated by a narrow set of metrics: qubit counts, system size, and visible demonstrations of progress. None of these metrics matters if you cannot produce a reliable computation. QCI focused on this point, building from the outset to ensure that each calculation performed by the machine would be correct (“fault tolerance”) via innovation on error correction. Error correction is simple in classical computing but becomes much harder in quantum systems – systems that are incredibly sensitive to vibration, temperature, radio interference, and a host of other factors. At the time, this focus on error correction was poo-pooed. One reference call we did with a leading Ivy League quantum researcher said, “Rob needs to move on from always talking about error correction." Now the entire market realizes that error correction is a critical piece to success here, but by focusing on it early, QCI was able to build systems on par with the largest players at a fraction of the budget and spend.
Quantum computing remains a long-arc endeavor. Timelines are measured in years, not quarters. The science is unforgiving. Progress is nonlinear. Meaningful advances require sustained capital, deep technical alignment, and an environment where difficult problems can be pursued without pressure to optimize for short-term optics.
Our decision to invest in QCI in 2017 was not based on predicting when quantum computing would arrive. It was based on understanding what would have to be true for it to arrive at all. Accuracy had to precede scale. Architecture had to precede applications. Systems had to be designed for the realities of physics, not the conveniences of narrative.
Those conditions remain unchanged.
Combining QCI with D-Wave allows the companies to leverage their strengths to achieve the reality of unlocking quantum computing's potential. I’m very proud to have had the chance to partner with Rob over the past 9 years and excited to see what the QCI and D-Wave teams can achieve together.