S&S #1: Quantum Diamonds and More

Hey Everyone, 

And by everyone, I mean my parents, my girlfriend, some select friends, and the few lucky randoms that were fortunate enough to somehow stumble upon the first week of the next Morning Brew... (one can hope). 

On a serious note, welcome to the first edition of Seeds and Speculations. As the name suggests, every week, I’ll be providing readers with a list of seed-stage companies in the US and EU that raised money a couple of weeks prior. Along with the list, I’ll note a few companies I think deserve extra attention and highlight one company that I believe is the most interesting out of the bunch.

Let’s get into it. 

Our Companies of the Week

68 companies raised money between November 27th and December 2nd. 60 have disclosed the round size, and eight have not. Of those that disclosed round size, the cash cows are: 

• Harness Therapeutics: A biotech company developing therapeutic RNAs to upregulate protein expression, controlling protein synthesis to treat neurodegenerative diseases. They raised $21.9M on November 28th from Takeda Ventures. 

• Second Circle: Developer of a bioreactor that captures carbon dioxide and ferments it to produce carbon-negative chemicals, which they intend to sell off. They raised $10M from GV, Atlantic Labs, and ACME Capital on November 28th. 

• Aperiam Bio: Another biotech leveraging computer vision algos trained on 3D images of protein chemistry to discover novel gain-of-function mutations and develop therapeutic proteins. They raised $9M on November 29th in a Seed, Seed 1, and Seed Plus combo deal led by OMX Ventures. 

• Kek Entertainment: A game studio focused on creating “AAA games that set off your serotonin and have you coming back for more.” They raised $8M in a deal led by Korea Investment Partners on November 28th. 

• Quantum Diamonds: Developer of atom-sized quantum sensors to be used across a variety of application areas. They raised $7.5M in a deal led by IQ Capital Partners on November 27th. 

You can find the complete list here.

In addition to our biggest raisers, I want to call out a few companies that I think have interesting missions or value props. 

• Amini, who are leveraging AI and space tech to address the environmental data gap in Africa 

• Augment, who are offering an online alternative to an MBA with courses taught by the founders of successful tech companies

• Retrocausal, who are developing AI copilots for manufacturing assembly optimization

• Ultihash, who have developed a proprietary data storage system that they claim can decrease volume-dependent infrastructure needs by up to 50%. 

Featured Seed of the Week: Quantum Diamonds

Of the group, I find Quantum Diamonds to be the most interesting. QD is a German company that has developed a quantum sensor in a diamond’s nitrogen vacancy center (more on this in a second). The design of these sensors results in unmatched sensitivity for magnetic fields, temperature, and pressure, far surpassing measurement capabilities allowed for by classical sensors.

SO???

Glad you asked. Let’s start with what quantum sensors are and why technological advancements can fundamentally change what’s possible across several industries. 

Quantum Sensors 

Most standard sensors in use today operate based on classical physics principles and measurements. They sense changes in inputs from the physical environment and enable machines to react or shift states based on these changes. For example, your A/C unit uses a temperature sensor to “know” when it’s time to cool the house down. 

Quantum sensors utilize the principles of quantum mechanics to measure physical quantities, like position, velocity, magnetic fields, electric fields, and temperature, with higher precision and sensitivity than standard technologies. As compared to traditional sensors, quantum sensors separate in the following ways: 

• Sensitivity: Quantum sensors can achieve higher sensitivity than classical sensors. They can detect and measure tiny signals or changes in physical quantities with greater precision. This heightened sensitivity enables the detection of subtle variations that may go unnoticed by conventional sensors.

• Dynamic Range: Quantum sensors often have a wide dynamic range, allowing them to measure a broad spectrum of values. They can detect extremely weak and strong signals without saturation, providing versatility across various applications

• Standard Quantum Limit (SQL): Classical measurement techniques are fundamentally limited by the physical extent of their sensors. As precision measurement improves, quantum mechanics of entanglement and squeezing can be used to surpass the SQL, enabling quantum sensors to achieve far better accuracy.

• Correlated Noise: Quantum sensors with entangled particles enjoy higher resolution in measuring environmental effects. With entanglement, noise becomes correlated rather than random, allowing quantum sensors to achieve higher resolution in measuring environmental effects.

Imagine a sensor so sensitive that it can detect the faintest changes around it, much like how a high-precision thermometer can detect minor temperature fluctuations. Quantum sensors operate on this principle but at a quantum level, allowing them to perceive subtle changes that regular sensors would miss. This is made possible by combining traditional sensor tech with quantum mechanics properties like quantum entanglement, quantum interference, and quantum state, gathering and storing information in the states of photons, ions, and neutral ions. 

There are two common approaches to quantum sensing: 

1. Atoms and ions are trapped in a vacuum chamber and cooled to significantly low temperatures. Lasers can then manipulate these particles to measure their properties while controlling their internal states. 

2. Individual photons are used to measure physical quantities

Many like to say there are two “generations” of quantum sensors. The first generation includes technologies like MRI, which uses nuclear magnetic resonance to image bodily tissues. The next generation, which is still emerging, includes gravity sensors, nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers (wait for it…), and other innovations. 

These emerging technologies are expected to have vast implications across several high-importance application areas, many of which still need an alternative technology in place at the moment. See the diagram below from our friends at McKinsey for a visual. 

Why NV centers?... 

The Nitrogen Vacancy center is a point defect in the diamond’s lattice structure, which manifests as a single nitrogen atom adjacent to an atom-sized “gap” in the carbon lattice (missing carbon atoms). This natural defect creates a localized electronic state with three defined spin states that can be manipulated and read out optically. Envision of a single nitrogen atom suspended in space, surrounded by the rest of the carbon atoms that make up a diamond’s structure.

Unlike other quantum sensing technologies, which rely on incredibly cool temperatures, NV centers can maintain quantum states for long periods at room temperature, which is crucial for precise measurements and implementation in application areas where freezing temperatures are not feasible or easy to achieve. 

NV centers are also biocompatible (safe for use in biological environments), have very high spatial resolutions (senses at the nanoscale), and are capable of sensing various physical quantities such as magnetic fields, electric fields, temperature, pressure and strain, radio-frequency and microwave fields, and changes to chemical environments. This makes them viable for a number of different application areas across industries. 

This is all well and good, but until now, creating and controlling NV centers with precision has been a challenge. Creating NV centers requires precise control to ensure the nitrogen atom and the vacancy are adjacent to each other and requires a very pure diamond substrate, as impurities or defects in the rest of the diamond can interfere with the properties of NV centers. 

Introducing vacancies in the diamond requires high-energy processes like ion implantation or electron irradiation - processes which must be carefully controlled to create vacancies without damaging the diamond lattice. In addition, NV centers must be spatially localized within nanometers (one BILLIONTH of a meter) to be viable for high-resolution sensing. 

So, let’s recap. 

1. Quantum Sensing is recognized as being incredibly important for next-gen sensing capabilities.

2. NV centers will bring on a new generation of quantum sensing that can radically change and improve sensing capabilities across industries in high-importance application areas

3. Creating NV centers is hard. 

4. Doing it at scale is harder. 

Enter Quantum Diamonds 

Quantum Diamond’s approach to addressing current challenges facing the NV quantum sensor market is the reason I’ve chosen to highlight them. Here’s a breakdown of what they’re doing. 

1. High-Quality Diamonds: QD offers diamonds with 99.99% purity, and an implanted or non-implanted 1 µm thick layer of 12C, an isotope of carbon not active for quantum sensing techniques, that helps to reduce background noise and improves coherence properties of NV centers. This results in a quieter quantum environment that allows for higher accuracy sensing. 

2. NV Center Creation: Quantum Diamonds possesses technology capable of not only creating NV centers with precision but custom tailoring them to control the depth, concentration, and spacing of the NV centers, allowing them to cater to a range of applications and customer requirements. 

3. Sensing Capabilities: Their sensors work at room temperature, do not require shielding from the Earth’s magnetic field, and far surpass current barriers in terms of spatial resolution and sensitivity. 

4. Approach to Challenges: Quantum Diamonds understands and publicly addresses common issues facing NV diamond production, including cost and lead time-based complexities of diamond procurement, maintaining cleanroom environments, handling of customs, and issues with low-pressure high-temperature annealing (the process needed to pair vacancies with Nitrogen atoms to create the NV center). 

QD’s team consists of individuals with 20+ years of experience in quantum research, and their recent $7M raise will allow them to expand their team and work on scaling production. Initial application focus areas include semiconductor manufacturing, medical diagnostics, battery development, chemical analysis, and quantum computing. 

This is a rapidly growing, changing market, with several challenges to face on the path to long-term adoption. That said, QD is in an interesting spot and is one of few companies that claim to be able to produce NV diamonds at scale with precision.

Final Thoughts 

Appreciate your reading, and I'm glad to start this journey with you all. If you liked this first edition, please share it with your friends so we can reach more tech-interested people. If you didn’t, let me know why! I want this to be a weekly form of education for both parties, and all feedback is welcome and appreciated. 

See you next week, and good luck to the QD team!