The American quantum computing provider may have paid an eight-point amount for the startup founded in 2021. You can read the background of the deal here.
Founded in Bad Homburg near Frankfurt, now part of a company in Austin, Texas: The American Quantum Computing specialist Strangeworks has taken over the German startup Quantagonia. The two co-founders Dirk Zechiel and Philipp Hannemann stay on board and switch to the global management team of Stran Geschorks.
The US software company is expanding its portfolio with the products of Quantagonia and has not really bought a competitor, but a startup with which it has already worked in the past.
Eight -shop purchase price
The founders of the startup founded only in 2021 are silent about the exact purchase. If you wanted to speculate, you could use the company's evaluation of the 2023 finance round. This was around 13 million euros. At that time, the investors included Voima Ventures from Helsinki, Tensor Ventures from Prague and the Fraunhofer Technology Transfer Fund.
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The purchase price was conservatively estimated at 1.2 to 1.5 times the last rating. In the area of quantum computing (innovation, future technology, deep tech, a little hype), however, one is probably more likely to calculate with a factor of 1.5 to 2.3. This would result in a possible purchase price of 20 to 30 million euros.
Quantagonia does not build quantum computers. But the company develops software that translates the existing program code so that it can also be run on quantum computers.
Bridge between old and new technology
Quantagonia's technology thus addresses a fundamental-in large parts-problem of the quantum computing industry: conventional software in which companies often invest for years cannot be carried out on the most powerful computers. Because quantum computers do not work with classic bits that either take up 0 or 1, but with so -called qubits, which can have several states at the same time.
“Problems are modeled on quantum computers totally different,” said Quantagonia co-founder Sabina Jeschke, previously digital director at Deutsche Bahn and AI professor at RWTH Aachen and TU Berlin, in an earlier interview with start-up scene.
The startup acts as a translator between the two worlds. The platform automatically decides which computer system – whether classic computer, high -performance computer or quantum calculator – can be solved the most efficient.
Expansion to Europe by takeover
For strane warkers, the takeover means a strategic expansion to Europe. The company from Austin, Texas, claims to operate the world's largest catalog of quantum and quantum-inspired computing resources. With the takeover of Quantagonia, Strangework's locations in Munich and Frankfurt gets.
A market with potential
Quantum computing is considered one of the next billion dollar markets. The technology promises to solve computing tasks in seconds that would take hours or years with today's computers.
Tasks that quantum computers could master well can be found in a wide variety of industries: pharmaceutical and healthcare, air conditioning technology and in the area of renewable energies. But there are also potential possible uses in industry, logistics and in banking and finance.
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The industry is young and accordingly many companies are on the move, takeovers and exits such as Quantagonia that could be seen more often in the future. There were already examples in the hardware area: At the beginning of 2022, the French Quantum hardware company Pasqal took over the Dutch Quantum algorithm specialist Qu & Co. The aim was to merge hardware and algorithms in order to better serve large European industrial customers such as BMW or Airbus. It was one of the first major M&A transactions in the European Quantum environment-Quantagonia is preparing the way in the software area.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/technologie/millionen-exit-quantagonia-an-us-unternehmen-strangeworks-verkauft/
