Quanfluence, a Bengaluru startup building quantum computers with light instead of silicon circuits, has raised USD 10 million. That is about Rs 92 crore. Chiratae Ventures led the round. Rainmatter by Zerodha joined as a new investor, along with existing backer Pi Ventures.
The money is meant for one product: a full-stack photonic quantum computer. It ties together indigenously designed photonic chips, control electronics and software in a single architecture.
What the money will build
Quanfluence is working towards early processors by 2027, and larger, scalable machines by 2029. The company has told Inc42 that it plans to launch a four-qubit quantum computer in the near term. A prototype with around 100 qubits is targeted by 2029.
The startup was founded in 2021 by Sujoy Chakravarty, Ravi Mehta, Biman Chattopadhyay, Aditi Vaidya, Anil Prabhaka and Sandeep Goyal. It is incubated at IIT Madras.
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Its pitch rests on photonics. Instead of building qubits from superconducting circuits, Quanfluence uses light. The bet is that the approach can eventually scale from a prototype to systems with millions of qubits.
The machine it already sells
Quanfluence is not waiting for the quantum computer to earn. It has built a quantum-inspired optical Ising machine, which uses light waves as computational units. The system can process hundreds of interconnected variables at once. According to the company, that makes it about 100 times faster than traditional optimisation methods.
That machine is already commercial. Quanfluence has sold around three units and offers remote access on a usage-based model. It also runs paid pilots with 10 to 15 corporations. The revenue buys time while the team works on the harder problem.
Why the timing matters, and what stands in the way
India’s National Quantum Mission has been pulling startups, researchers and government-backed quantum hubs closer together. In September, quantum cybersecurity startup QNu Labs raised Rs 200 crore in a Series A1 round co-led by the mission and Speciale Invest.
Quanfluence’s own progress is visible in its chips. Since a USD 2 million seed round in December 2024, it has designed and fabricated multiple photonic integrated circuits and electronic integrated circuits. It has also demonstrated the generation of quantum light states.
The harder work is integration. The company has to bring its components together, scale manufacturing and live with long chip-production and hardware-delivery cycles. Quantum computing is still an experimental field, and no company has reached the scale needed for mainstream workloads.
Quanfluence currently employs 25 people and expects to reach a team of 40 over the next year.