Amid the startups, panels and speeches at TechCrunch Moscow today has been some emerging news about the Russian scene. For one, there is the move from Russia’s top echelons to address patent law and a robotics investment. But also today has come news of a new fund which takes a very ‘Russian’ – shall we say – approach to the future of computing. Quantum Wave Fund (Qwave) is a new $100 million fund launched today which aims to commercialize breakthrough technologies from quantum physics – one of which will be the development of new quantum technologies, in addition to computers which will run thousands – perhaps millions – of times faster than today’s Silicon-based computers. And they’ll be using Russian scientists to do the due diligence.
Spread between Boston (the HQ), New York and Moscow, Qwave has so far raised $30 million in capital with the target of $100 million, and claims to be the first fund specialised in investing in technologies suitable for quantum technologies. While some of the bigger VCs invest more generally in some of these kinds of areas, Qwave will certainly have some special sauce. It’s drawing on the brightest minds around the world to do due diligence on its investments.
Quantum materials and technologies are almost the stuff of science fiction. The science can be applied to many things, such as technical instruments, but in the realm of computing we’re talking about computers built, perhaps, on a type of engineered graphite, Graphene, at the atomic level, or optical computers which use photons instead of electronics. All of these types of computers will end up being thousands of times faster, more power efficient and even smaller than today’s computers.
Amongst the team will be partner Dr. Serguei Kouzmine, who holds a PhD in physics with over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience; Dr. Serguei Beloussov, venture partner, who holds a PhD in computer science and was the founder of Parallels, Acronis and Acumatica. A member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Qwave will be Dr. Vladimir M. Shalaev, a Scientific Director of Nanophotonics, amongst others.
Sister fund Runa Capital has already been involved in creating the Russian Quantum Center, together with professors from Harvard and MIT, and later realised that there are many teams that develop and sell unique quantum devices but they don’t scale. That’s what Qwave hopes to do.