The Venture Codex

Participated · Series B · Oct 2024

Q-CTRL is a leading quantum infrastructure software company that develops and sells software for quantum systems. The company emphasizes that it already builds and sells software products, which it cites as a differentiator in a sector that remains largely research-focused. Q-CTRL has long positioned itself as a player in quantum infrastructure software. It recently secured an $86.3 million Series B extension, bringing the total Series B to $166 million. The company named GP Bullhound as the lead on the extension and noted participation from prior backers and several new investors. The articles frame the funding as growth capital tied to its commercial software activities. Q-CTRL develops quantum control infrastructure and performance-management software that delivers error‑correcting and suppressing techniques for quantum computers and sensors. The company operates a quantum sensing division and offers an edtech platform called Black Opal. Its performance-management software runs natively on IBM quantum computers and Q-CTRL has been an inaugural member of the IBM Quantum Network since 2018. Founded by Michael J. Biercuk in 2017, Q-CTRL lists international headquarters in Sydney, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Oxford. The company has applied its capabilities in logistics and transport with customers including Transport for NSW and the Australian Army. Near-term plans described in the article include delivering quantum-hardware‑optimized algorithmic solvers for train scheduling to UK transport authorities and prototyping solutions with Oxford Quantum Circuits. Q-CTRL builds AI-enhanced quantum infrastructure software that stabilizes quantum hardware and reduces algorithm errors by over 1,000x. The company sells solutions to end-users, researchers, and platform vendors and is deploying performance management software natively on all IBM cloud-connected quantum computers. Q-CTRL is also commercializing "software-ruggedized" quantum sensors, which have been adopted by Australian Defence for GPS-denied navigation. The team entered the year with over $15 million in bookings and closed the first half of 2023 cash-flow positive (ignoring equity investments), while growing to more than 100 staff and adding new offices in the UK and Berlin. Management says it has preserved large cash reserves and plans to use the Series B to fund technical innovation through its quantum research division, expand the product portfolio, and scale operations. Q-CTRL develops quantum-sensing software intended to reduce errors and optimize both hardware and algorithms for quantum computers. Its product suite includes Black Opal, Boulder Opal, Fire Opal and Open Controls; the company launched Black Opal Enterprise in October and released Black Opal for individuals in April 2022. Q-CTRL reported demonstrations achieving up to approximately 9,000 times improvement in the likelihood that a quantum algorithm would give the correct answer. Commercial traction followed those breakthroughs: sales bookings grew threefold to over $15 million in calendar year 2022 and the company has more than 8,000 users. Customers and partners include U.S. government contracts, Australian defense agencies, quantum hardware firms (Rigetti, IonQ, IBM, Atom Computing, Alice & Bob, Nord Quantique, Pasqal), universities, national labs and corporate partners such as EY, KPMG, Capgemini, Quanscient, Xerox PARC and Classiq. Q-CTRL says it will use new funding to continue product engineering, expand sales and marketing capacity, and grow its headcount from about 80 to roughly 120 across Sydney, Los Angeles and Berlin. Q-CTRL builds quantum control infrastructure software that addresses hardware error and instability to improve quantum computing performance. The company is also developing quantum sensing technologies for acceleration, gravity and magnetic fields and working on space‑qualified sensors with a consortium led by Fleet Space Technologies. Clients and partners include Advanced Navigation, the Australian Department of Defense, the Air Force Research Lab and the Australian Space Agency. Recent technical demonstrations using Q-CTRL’s quantum logic gate technology improved quantum algorithm performance on real machines by 2,680%. Q-CTRL has been expanding commercially: revenue in fiscal 2020–2021 was up 3X year‑over‑year and the nascent quantum sensor business generated over $9 million in sales and bookings after launching in late 2020. The company has grown its team from about 20 to 60 since January 2020 and employs more than 30 Ph.D.-level researchers.

Led · Equity · Apr 2024

Datamix offers data science education and corporate training, alongside consulting and data/AI-driven business and product development. The company operates a data science school and corporate training programs and has delivered in-person data-science education to over 10,000 people as of October 2023. Datamix positions itself as a problem-discovery-and-solution-focused business-creation group working with diverse corporate partners. It plans to use newly raised funds to develop higher‑impact curricula and content, raise awareness of its services, and expand hiring and internal training. The company also intends to focus more on consulting services and product development to support client problem solving. Datamix was founded in 2017 and is based in Chiyoda, Tokyo. Its reported capital (including capital reserve) is ¥384,298,800.

Participated · Series C · Apr 2023

CropX Technologies provides an Agronomic Farm Management System that synthesizes data from the earth and sky to deliver advanced soil and crop intelligence and digital decision and planning tools on an app capable of tracking multiple farms and fields. Its system supports irrigation planning that helps users conserve water and boost yields, while also optimizing energy and fertilizer use and supporting more sustainable farming practices. CropX is deployed in over 60 countries across all arable continents and now has over 100 employees in the US, the Netherlands, Israel and New Zealand, with a large research and development department. The company closed a $30M Series C round led by Aliaxis. CropX intends to use the proceeds to continue developing innovative capabilities for its agronomic farm management system and to acquire companies with complementary technologies and market reach. Through its partnership with Aliaxis the company will continue close collaboration in the field of data-driven precision irrigation. CropX develops advanced soil sensor technology and a cloud-based agricultural analytics platform that integrates with top irrigation systems and a mobile app to tell farmers where, when and how much to water or fertilize. The company integrates satellite, weather, crop modeling and topographical data with soil intelligence to deliver accurate prediction at scale. CropX’s platform is installed around the globe on the fields of leading farms and used by irrigation, seed and fertilizer companies. The company plans to use the new funding to extend research and development and accelerate penetration of its analytics platform across a broad cross-section of grower environments. CropX is led by CEO Tomer Tzach and recently added John Vikupitz as president to drive global expansion and market adoption. The company is based in San Francisco, CA and Israel. CropX builds an Internet of Soil composed of three wireless soil sensors and a mobile app that measures field variability and prescribes irrigation per zone. The company performs a one-time analysis of each field using publicly available soil and topography data to divide land into irrigation zones and show where to place sensors. Sensors are battery-powered, last up to four years, send soil data to the cloud, and the app calculates the water needed to maximize yield in each zone. CropX is currently deployed to power irrigation on about 5,000 acres across farms in Missouri, Colorado and Kansas, and farmers report water and energy savings of up to 25%. The system helps prevent overwatering and associated chemical run-off. With a $9 million Series A, the company plans to expand its reach across the country and pursue opportunities in the estimated $2.5 trillion crop yield enhancement market, noting that 90% of farmers currently don’t use irrigation-optimization tools.

Participated · Series B · May 2022

Classiq Technologies is a pioneering quantum-software company whose platform allows engineers to design a quantum program once and deploy it on a variety of quantum-computing back-ends. At the core of the product is Qmod, a proprietary language that automates many of the circuit-optimization steps normally performed manually, accelerating development time. The system also supports Python, giving users access to a wide range of open-source libraries, and it includes visualization and debugging tools that reduce reliance on costly simulations and let developers test performance on specific quantum chips. This hardware-agnostic approach addresses the fragmentation of today’s quantum landscape, where architectures range from ion-trap qubits to superconducting transistors. With fresh capital, the company intends to scale its international sales organization and deepen partnerships across the quantum ecosystem. Since the latest extension, Classiq’s Series-C funding now exceeds $200 million, the largest round disclosed for a quantum-software startup. No operating metrics such as revenue or user counts were reported in the article.

Participated · Series C · Jul 2017

Lastline offers an advanced malware defense platform that inspects network traffic, attachments and URLs in an elastic, cloud-centric sandbox analysis environment. Its next-generation sandbox uses full system emulation and cloud-based threat analysis to detect zero-day threats, advanced persistent threats (APTs), advanced targeted attacks (ATAs) and advanced malware that evade signature-based antivirus and first-generation sandboxing. The platform is deployed with Global 2000 enterprises and managed security service providers across North America, Europe and Asia. Lastline emphasizes protection against threats entering networks via web, file and email channels without relying on traditional signature-based approaches. The company plans to continue serving a rapidly growing global enterprise customer base and to advance partnerships to improve information security and threat intelligence worldwide, including expanded reach into Japan and the broader Asia‑Pacific market. Financially, the company has raised capital across prior rounds and announced additional funding to support growth. Lastline develops advanced malware protection and breach-detection solutions, with its flagship product Lastline Enterprise positioned as an industry-leading automated malware analysis platform. The product is used directly by Global 5000 customers, through managed security service providers, and integrated into other vendors' solutions. Independent tests cited in the article (NSS Labs 2016 and The Forrester Wave™) recognize Lastline for high detection effectiveness and strong market standing. The company reports 100% annual growth since Lastline Enterprise was introduced in 2013 and expanded its distribution in 2016 to include direct enterprise sales. Lastline says it will use new capital to accelerate go-to-market efforts, expand sales and marketing, and bolster its development organization to advance its breach-detection vision. The company is headquartered in Redwood City, California, with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. Lastline is a malware protection service offering solutions to protect businesses from persistent threats (APTs), targeted attacks, and zero-day threats in real time. The company uses a "correlation engine" that correlates, aggregates, and prioritizes security events to provide situational awareness and actionable threat intelligence. Founded in 2012 by computer science professors from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Northeastern University, Lastline positions itself as a direct competitor to FireEye. The company announced a $10 million funding round led by Redpoint Ventures and e.ventures and said Redpoint partner John Welecka will join its board. Lastline plans to use the new capital to focus on its sales strategy and to further develop the malware and threat-detection technology at the core of its products. In its announcement the company argued that malware authors are becoming increasingly sophisticated at evading automated analysis and signature-based tools, and that its technology is designed to address those evasion techniques.