Honeywell Dives into Quantum Computing with Investment in $5 Billion Company
January 19, 2024
News
Honeywell has joined a $300 million equity fundraise for Quantinuum, an integrated quantum computing company, at a pre-money valuation of $5 billion. The technology giant was joined by JPMorgan Chase, Mitsui & Co., and Amgen, though Honeywell remains the company's majority shareholder. This investment brings Quantinuum to about $625 million in investments, according to the release.
This was the first funding round for Quantinuum since Cambridge Quantum Computing and Honeywell Quantum Solutions merged in November 2021 to form the company. According to the announcement, the money will be used to pursue the company’s goal of building the world's first universal fault-tolerant quantum computers.
JPMorgan Chase has been a supporter and advisor since the beginning and reportedly was one of the earliest experimental users of Quantinuum's H-Series quantum processor and one of the most active corporate partners using Quantinuum's SDK, “TKET.”
“Financial services has been identified as one of the first industries that will benefit from quantum technologies,” said Lori Beer, Global Chief Information Officer, JPMorgan Chase. “We look forward to continuing to work together to positively impact our businesses, customers and the industry at large.”
Quantinuum's technologies reportedly are in use at many companies, including Airbus, BMW Group, Honeywell, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Mitsui and Thales. These organizations are exploring how to engineer and scale quantum capabilities to help solve some of world's most challenging problems – from designing and manufacturing hydrogen cell batteries for transportation, to developing materials to sequester carbon safely from the atmosphere to support the world's energy transition. Quantinuum is also at the forefront of developing Quantum Natural Language Processing, which will help enable the next generation of AI to be scalable and fit for purpose.
“The successful completion of this investment round is a testament to Quantinuum's evolution and maturation in the quantum space,” said Darius Adamczyk, Executive Chairman of Honeywell and Chairman of the Board of Quantinuum.
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as exclusive placement agent to Quantinuum in connection with the financing. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer US acted as external legal counsel.
“The confidence in our business demonstrated through this investment by our longstanding strategic partners and industry leaders is a clear indication of the value we will continue to create with the world's highest performing quantum computers, groundbreaking middleware to accelerate the developer ecosystem and innovative application software to revolutionize fields like cryptography, computational chemistry, and AI," said Rajeeb Hazra, CEO of Quantinuum.
Ken Briodagh is a writer and editor with two decades of experience under his belt. He is in love with technology and if he had his druthers, he would beta test everything from shoe phones to flying cars. In previous lives, he’s been a short order cook, telemarketer, medical supply technician, mover of the bodies at a funeral home, pirate, poet, partial alliterist, parent, partner and pretender to various thrones. Most of his exploits are either exaggerated or blatantly false.
