Q-CTRL raised US$290 million (A$425m per Startup Daily) in a Series C led by existing backer Salesforce Ventures, with Australia's National Reconstruction Fund chipping in $70m alongside AMD's venture arm, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, SPARX Asset Management, and returning investors including Alpha Edison, Bullhound Capital, DCVC, In-Q-Tel, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Main Sequence and Square Peg.

Startup Daily reports the round was expanded twice to meet investor demand and calls it a record private raise for a quantum software business; mlq.ai notes it is more than double the $133 million Q-CTRL had raised in total through October 2024.

The company calls itself the newest quantum unicorn, though mlq.ai reports it gave no valuation figure, while Startup Daily values it at more than US$1 billion (A$1.4 billion headline).

Founded in 2017 by University of Sydney quantum physicist Michael Biercuk, the company attacks a core problem with quantum computers — they are so sensitive to interference that errors creep into a calculation before it finishes — using AI to suppress those errors.

Developers can use its software on IBM quantum computers to simulate how electrons behave in materials, and Salesforce Ventures partner Robert Keith pointed to a materials simulation on IBM hardware that any developer can call directly from the IBM Quantum Platform.

"The hard problem in quantum is not building the machine, it is getting useful output from it," Keith said.

Bullhound Capital founding partner and board member Per Roman said Q-CTRL is "one of the few quantum companies with real customers and real revenue," per Startup Daily.

Its second product, the Ironstone Opal navigation system, measures tiny variations in Earth's magnetic field and matches them to a map, letting pilots work out where they are when GPS is jammed or unavailable.

Startup Daily reports the company landed two DARPA contracts worth a combined $38 million under the US defence research agency's quantum sensors program, working with Lockheed Martin, and that Airbus is testing the tech.

mlq.ai adds Q-CTRL's claim that the system has been deployed on commercial aircraft with Airbus, on autonomous platforms with Lockheed Martin and on drones, and that its sensors perform 100 times better in the field than the best alternative.

Startup Daily reports the funds will help Q-CTRL sell its computing software to finance and energy companies and get its navigation tech into more aircraft and autonomous vehicles.

mlq.ai says the money will go into its AI-driven software, wider deployment of navigation systems, finance and energy programs, and autonomy and aerospace contracts, with Japanese backer MPower Partners planning to help it expand in Japan.

Q-CTRL cited revenue growth but gave no revenue figures, per mlq.ai. Keith framed the stakes plainly: "That software layer will decide whether quantum shows up in enterprise data centers this decade."

The raise caps a long build rather than an overnight sprint.

Per Startup Daily, Salesforce Ventures first backed Q-CTRL in February 2023 leading a $39m Series B extension, part of a $166m round that took nearly three years to close, kicking off with $35 million in late 2021 and closing in October 2024 when the UK's Bullhound led an $88 million top-up, following a $22m Series A in 2019.

New York-born Biercuk moved to Australia in 2010 and remains a US citizen. Q-CTRL is headquartered in Sydney with offices in several US cities as well as Japan, Germany and the UK.

Q-CTRL's milestone lands amid a wider funding wave that included two other nine-figure rounds in the same source pack.

Market data platform Databento raised $100 million in a Series C at a $1.1 billion valuation, led by Fifth Down Capital with strategic investment from Fitch Ventures, with Ventureburn reporting the company runs on just 39 staff and serves five of the six leading frontier AI labs.

The pattern: investors are paying unicorn prices for capital-efficient infrastructure software with paying customers.