Quantum machine learning company Rahko has announced that it has raised a £1.3m seed round led by Balderton Capital, Europe’s leading Series A tech investor.
Founded last year by Leonard Wossnig, Edward Grant, Miriam Cha and Ian Horobin, Rahko is building ‘quantum discovery’ capabilities for chemical simulation, which could enable groundbreaking advances in batteries, chemicals, advanced materials and drugs.
With the Rahko quantum machine learning software platform and joint research with some of the world’s largest companies, Rahko is building an arsenal of tools that may make quantum computers accessible and commercially usable at an accelerated pace, often through the use of hybrid approaches with classical computers.
Leo Wossnig, CEO, Rahko, said: “Most people find quantum computers mysterious and wonder if they are going to save or break the world as we know it. In reality, quantum computing is going to unlock radical advances in areas of research and technology in which we have found ourselves stuck for some time now.
“Our team is excited to get together every day to work on problems that would have been impossible to solve only a couple of years ago. We are delighted to welcome on board this unique group of investors who truly share our excitement.”
Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, General Partner at Balderton Capital, added: “Rahko is one of the top teams in the world working on a complex space at the very edge of science and computing.
“The application of discoveries within quantum has already been profound and impacted our fundamental understanding of the world around us. The pace and rate of change in this field over the past few years has been astonishing, and we feel incredibly lucky to be supporting this exceptional team as they continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”
Rahko is one of several startups originating from UCL’s Computer Science programme, supported by Conception X, a venture builder for deep tech startups.
Rahko will use its seed funding to grow its team of experts in order to take on bigger and more ambitious work. It expects to recruit from across the globe, since quantum machine learning is an emerging discipline with few practitioners.