Q.ANT Secures €62 Million to Commercialize Energy-Efficient Photonic Processors for AI

Q.ANT, a pioneer in photonic processing, announced a €62 million Series A financing round to accelerate the commercialization of its energy-efficient photonic processors for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). The round is co-led by Cherry Ventures, UVC Partners and imec.xpand with participation from additional deep tech investors. This investment ranks among Europe’s most significant deep tech funding rounds, laying the foundation for a fundamental shift in how AI is computed.

As AI infrastructure scales globally, traditional chip technology (CMOS) reaches its physical limits, performance stagnates, and electricity demand is reaching untenable levels. A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that by 2026, data center energy use is expected to surpass the entire annual electricity consumption of Japan according to https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6b2fd954-2017-408e-bf08-952fdd62118a/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf. Q.ANT is addressing this issue with a radically different paradigm: computing with light instead of electricity, which opens the door to significantly higher performance and energy savings.

In just five years, Q.ANT has brought to maturity what experts have pursued for decades: the world’s first commercial photonic processor for real-world AI and HPC workloads – executing complex AI operations much faster while saving significant amounts of energy. Built on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN), the Q.ANT Native Processing Server integrates seamlessly into today’s data centers as a plug-in co-processor. Real-world tests promise up to 30 times energy efficiency, 50 times performance improvement, and the potential to increase data center capacity by 100 times – all without the need for complex active cooling systems.

This funding will enable Q.ANT to scale production, advance development of next-generation photonic processors, grow its team across disciplines, and expand to the US to support a growing number of customer deployments. The company also strengthens its advisory board with two semiconductor experts: Hermann Hauser, founder of ARM and Hermann Eul former member of the Infineon Management Board and former CVP & GM of Intel, whose combined expertise in semiconductor scaling, industrialization and global commercialization will be instrumental in Q.ANT’s next phase.

Christian Meermann, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures, stated that Q.ANT's photonic chips stand to radically reduce data center operating costs while delivering the breakthrough performance demanded by next-generation AI and high-performance computing. Andreas Unseld, General Partner at UVC Partners, noted that Q.ANT is not only pioneering a new computing architecture, but doing so in a way that addresses the urgent need for more sustainable AI infrastructure.

By 2030, the company aims to make its photonic processing technology a foundational pillar of global AI systems, radically enhancing scalability and energy efficiency. With a focus on seamless market integration, Q.ANT’s Photonic Native Processing Server (NPS) is now available for early access evaluation and delivered in an easy-to-deploy, industry-standard format that is natively compatible with today’s programming languages and AI software ecosystems.