PsiQuantum raises $1B to build million-qubit optical quantum computers in Australia and Chicago

Summary

PsiQuantum has closed a $1 billion fundraise to build large-scale optical quantum computers, marking one of the largest private raises in quantum computing history. The Bay Area company, co-founded by Pete Shadbolt, is now shifting from years of semiconductor R&D into active construction of commercial-scale systems.

Capital Deployment and Site Commitments

Two major infrastructure deals are already in motion. A roughly $1 billion agreement with the Australian government covers PsiQuantum's first full system, to be built just outside Brisbane. A separate deal positions the company as anchor tenant on a $500 million quantum computing campus on Chicago's South Side, on the former US Steel site. Ground-breaking at the Chicago site is described as imminent.

The Australian deal followed an 18-month technical review led by the country's chief scientist, whose team visited PsiQuantum's labs and independently reproduced the company's claimed measurements. Freedom of Information Act disclosures revealed she was initially highly skeptical, a fact Shadbolt frames as appropriate scientific rigor rather than a red flag.

Technology Approach

PsiQuantum's architecture targets million-qubit optical quantum computers, a scale the company believes is required for fault-tolerant, commercially useful quantum computation. The company spent more than $100 million integrating exotic devices, including single-photon sources and superconducting single-photon detectors, into GlobalFoundries' Fab 8 in Upstate New York, a mature commercial semiconductor foundry. That work is now complete, enabling high-volume wafer manufacturing of the necessary components.

A critical material science challenge, developing a new material for optical switching, required building what Shadbolt describes as the world's largest molecular beam epitaxy tool, a project complicated when the shipping company dropped the machine into Alameda Bay, cracking it during COVID. The company delivered the solution on schedule regardless.

Shadbolt notes the earlier-generation cryogenic chandelier architecture, the kind frequently photographed by politicians, has been abandoned entirely in favor of data-center-style machine designs.

Use Cases and Competitive Positioning

PsiQuantum explicitly does not position itself as a GPU or AI supercomputer replacement. Shadbolt is skeptical of near-term quantum machine learning claims. The target applications are chemistry, materials science, drug discovery, catalysts, fertilizers, and semiconductor simulation, domains where classical computers struggle with simulation accuracy and where insufficient training data limits AI models.

The underlying logic is that quantum computers calculate from first principles rather than approximating from data, allowing them to reach into territory classical systems and current AI cannot. The company's photonics capabilities are also cited as a potential long-term contribution to AI interconnect challenges, where power, space, and cost constraints are tightening.

Energy and Scaling Trajectory

On energy, Shadbolt argues the quantum computing buildout will follow the inverse trajectory of AI infrastructure. Where AI data centers are approaching the end of decades of efficiency gains, quantum systems are at the very beginning of a densification and miniaturization curve. Near-term machines will be large and power-intensive, but the expectation is rapid improvement in power efficiency over time, the opposite dynamic to today's GPU clusters.

The Series D investors include BlackRock, Temasek, and Baillie Gifford. Shadbolt notes the quantum sector now benefits indirectly from a broader cultural shift in Silicon Valley toward willingness to fund large-scale infrastructure builds, a tolerance that did not exist a decade ago when supercomputing pitches were routinely dismissed.