The Pune-based company plans to utilise the funds to scale its near-term products and advance research and development for its flagship quantum computer.
Founded in 2021 by Sujoy Chakravarty, Ravi Mehta, Biman Chattopadhyay, Anil Prabhakar, Aditi Vaidya and Sandeep Goyal, Quanfluence specialises in photonic quantum technology. It focuses on developing scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing systems and was incubated at the IIT Madras incubation centre.
Quanfluence’s current technological capability includes an optical Ising machine that leverages light waves as computational units. The startup aims to tackle complex challenges including financial optimisation, risk management, logistics, workforce scheduling and optimising delivery routes.
“This funding is a significant milestone for us, reinforcing our vision to pioneer quantum computing from India. It enables us to enhance our photonic-based technologies, scale the optimiser, and accelerate the development of our general-purpose quantum computer,” said Chakravarty, cofounder and CEO of Quanfluence.
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Before founding Quanfluence, Chakravarty cofounded Silicon and Beyond, a deep-tech startup specialising in high-speed serialiser/deserialiser technology. The company was acquired by Synopsys, a Silicon Valley-based chip design software firm, in 2018.Currently, Quanfluence’s system can handle 128 interconnected variables, processing approximately 10,000 permutations. It has piloted this technology with select customers for small-scale problems and is now testing a more advanced version capable of processing 10-25 million permutations, scheduled for release next quarter.
Further, the startup noted that the rising adoption of data-driven decision-making has created significant demand for robust optimisation tools, while classical computers increasingly struggle with high-dimensional and complex problems.
According to Chakravarthy, the company generated around $400,000 in revenue last year.
“Quanfluence represents the ideal fusion of cutting-edge innovation, bold vision and near-term commercialisation in quantum computing. Their photonic-based technology, already available today, holds the potential to transform industries by addressing complex optimisation challenges where classical computing falls short,” said Shubham Sandeep, managing director at Pi Ventures.
This investment aligns with the central government’s push to leverage quantum computing technology across sectors. In January, ET reported that the union government plans to allocate up to Rs 10,000 crore to establish supercomputing and quantum computing hubs in collaboration with the private sector under public-private partnerships.
