Canadian startup Agnostiq secures $2m seed round to further develop SaaS-based quantum solutions

Agnostiq, Inc., the quantum computing SaaS startup, has raised $2 million in seed funding to support the continued development of its software platform. The growth financing is led by Differential Ventures, with follow-on participation from Scout Ventures, Tensility Venture Partners, Boost VC, and Green Egg Ventures. The company previously raised $830 thousand in pre-Seed funding, with the majority coming from current investors Differential Ventures and Boost VC.

David Magerman, Managing Partner, Differential Ventures: "Quantum computers are inevitable, and their game-changing nature makes it imperative that businesses invest in developing in-house expertise. Agnostiq's tools address key challenges when it comes to developing proprietary research in the space, which is ultimately what led us to invest."

Co-founded by CEO Oktay Goktas and COO Elliot MacGowan in 2018, the duo aims to build a company at the forefront of enterprise quantum computing. Goktas, a physicist by training, received his PhD from the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart, Germany where he worked under the supervision of Nobel laureate Klaus von Klitzing. Prior to founding Agnostiq, Goktas was a postdoctoral researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and a visiting researcher at the University of Toronto. Prior to Agnostiq, MacGowan worked at Bell Canada in various operational and strategic roles. He received his MBA from the University of Toronto.

"We are extremely excited to further strengthen our relationship with David and officially have him on our board. With this new funding and our new partners, we are going to bring our products to the next level," says Goktas.

Quantum computing is poised to have a transformative impact in the coming years, much like machine learning. But, it remains largely inaccessible to the enterprise, due mainly to the novelty of the technology and the high level of expertise required to build applications. In addition, quantum computing is entirely cloud based and vulnerable to traditional security threats, requiring new methods for data security.

One of only a handful of available SaaS-based quantum solutions hosted on the cloud, Agnostiq's platform is comprised of three main technologies that make it easier for enterprises to build their own quantum computing applications:

• Workflow management tools that make it simple for non-experts to access, submit  and scale jobs on hybrid quantum computers
• Privacy and quantum obfuscation tools that keep workloads private while they are run over the cloud; a necessity given that all quantum computers today are cloud-based
• Pre-built applications such as Portfolio Optimization and Options Pricing and their underlying algorithms that can be used by beginners and experts (with different levels of functionality for each)

"Our goal is to help clients build quantum computing into their workflows sooner by making it more practical, more accessible, and more secure," says MacGowan. "We're solving many of the biggest challenges that machine learning companies faced in the past ten years and that we all take for granted today."

agnostiq.ai