Zurich-based ZuriQ raises €22.4 million to scale its 2D trapped-ion quantum processors

ZuriQ, a Zurich-based quantum computing company building utility-scale quantum computers with a native two-dimensional trap architecture, announced today it has raised €22.4 million ($25.5 million) in seed funding to scale its trapped-ion quantum processors. The round was led by Quantonation, with participation from Forward.one, Extantia, Firgun Ventures, and all previous round investors. This follows the company’s €4 million pre-seed round in 2025.

Founded in 2024, ZuriQ was spun out of Professor Jonathan Home’s ETH Zurich laboratory by founders Dr. Pavel Hrmo, Dr. Tobias Sägesser, and Dr. Shreyans Jain. The company is developing a new approach for trapped-ion qubits that combines electric and magnetic fields to create natively two-dimensional arrays, breaking through the scaling limits of conventional systems.

Most trapped-ion quantum computers are built on an architecture first proposed more than two decades ago, in which ions are held in essentially one-dimensional chains stitched together into larger grids using complex junction structures. ZuriQ has taken a fundamentally different route with processors that are natively two-dimensional. The company uses Penning micro-traps to apply a static magnetic field instead of the rapidly oscillating fields that most legacy architectures rely on, allowing ions to move freely in any direction without the junctions that constrain reconfiguration.

The company has proven its architecture with a working demonstrator developed in just 18 months. The demonstrator comprises a 3×3 array of nine individually controlled ions, which the company claims is the largest two-dimensional array of its kind demonstrated to date, built in collaboration with researchers at ETH Zurich. The chips were fabricated with manufacturing partner Infineon.

With the architecture and manufacturing route established, ZuriQ now focuses on scale: rapidly increasing the number of ions on a chip to enable powerful, commercially useful machines. Since its last investment, ZuriQ has grown from four to eighteen people. The new capital will go toward further hiring, expanding the company’s research program, and scaling up chip fabrication – the groundwork for putting hundreds of qubits on a chip.