ZÜRICH, Switzerland, July 30, 2026 – ZuriQ has raised $25.5 million to scale a 2D trapped-ion quantum processor built around Penning micro-traps. The company plans to expand chip fabrication, research and hiring as it works to increase the number of qubits supported by an architecture that uses a static magnetic field to control and move ions.
The seed round follows ZuriQ’s $4.2 million pre-seed raise in 2025. Quantonation led the new round, with participation from Forward.one, Extantia, Firgun Ventures and previous round investors.
ZuriQ’s processor architecture replaces the oscillating fields used in trapped-ion designs with a static magnetic field. Its 2D arrangement allows ions to move in multiple directions without the junction structures that constrain reconfiguration in 1D layouts.
“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.”
ZuriQ has built a working demonstrator with a 3×3 array of nine ions. Developed over 18 months with researchers at ETH Zürich, the demonstrator is the largest 2D array of its kind shown to date.
Infineon fabricated the chips used in the demonstrator. The manufacturing work used established industry processes, providing a production route for the chip design as ZuriQ moves toward systems with more ions.
ZuriQ is now working to increase the number of ions per chip, with the goal of increasing the number of ions on a chip. The new funding will support additional hiring, research and chip fabrication. Since its previous funding round, ZuriQ has grown from four employees to 18, including hires from IonQ, Xanadu and Hamamatsu.
“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.”
Christophe Jurczak, founding partner, Quantonation, said, “A common misconception is that the quantum race is already decided, but that is far from reality. 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.”
Source: ZuriQ
About ZuriQ
ZuriQ develops trapped-ion quantum computing hardware based on microfabricated Penning trap arrays. Founded in 2024, the company is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. Its architecture uses static electric and magnetic fields to confine and control atomic ions. Microfabricated chips contain electrodes that apply static voltages to individual trapped ions. Engineers can adjust these voltages to change ion arrangements in three dimensions above the chip. ZuriQ develops the architecture for quantum computing and simulation workloads using connected qubits. Its research also covers quantum error correction, ion control and electromagnetic field measurement around ion-trap chips. The company works with semiconductor and research organizations, including Infineon Technologies and the ETH Quantum Center. Potential users include research institutions and organizations working in chemistry, pharmaceuticals and logistics.