German Photonic Processing Scale-up Q.ANT Secures €62M In Series A Round

The round was co-led by Cherry Ventures, UVC Partners, and imec.xpand, with support from other deeptech investors like L-Bank, Verve Ventures, Grazia Equity, EXF Alpha (Venionaire Capital), LEA Partners, Onsight Ventures, and TRUMPF.

“Q.ANT was founded with a bold vision: to redefine the way the world computes by using light instead of electricity,” said Dr Michael Förtsch, Founder and CEO of Q.ANT. “This investment proves that Europe has both the ambition and the capital to lead – and gives us the strong partners we need to pursue our mission and help shape the future of computing.”

Q.ANT runs its own Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) chip pilot line in partnership with IMS CHIPS and is already shipping its Native Processing Servers to selected partners.

“Q.ANT’s photonic chips stand to radically reduce data centre operating costs while delivering the breakthrough performance demanded by next-generation AI and high-performance computing,” said Christian Meermann, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures. “With early commercial momentum and a world-class team of DeepTech experts, Q.ANT is uniquely positioned to redefine the trillion-dollar data centre semiconductor landscape. We’re proud to back them in building the future of computing.”

As AI infrastructure rapidly expands, traditional CMOS chip technology is hitting its limits—with slower performance gains and skyrocketing power consumption. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), by 2026 data centers could consume more electricity than all of Japan.

Q.ANT offers a radical shift: computing with light instead of electricity. This new approach delivers faster performance and massive energy savings.

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In just five years, Q.ANT claims to have achieved what experts have worked on for decades—the first commercial photonic processor designed for real-world AI and HPC workloads. These processors can handle complex AI tasks faster and with far less energy.

Built on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN), the Q.ANT Native Processing Server plugs directly into existing data centers. Early tests show up to 30x better energy efficiency, 50x faster performance, and 100x more capacity—without the need for energy-hungry cooling systems.

Q.ANT is the first in the industry to combine high performance, precision, and seamless integration into one sustainable photonic processing solution.

“What impressed us about Q.ANT was the clarity of its vision and its ability to consistently deliver on it,” said Andreas Unseld, General Partner at UVC Partners. “Q.ANT is not only pioneering a new computing architecture, but doing so in a way that addresses the urgent need for more sustainable AI infrastructure. That combination of DeepTech capability and long-term relevance made this an easy decision for us.”

The new funding will help Q.ANT scale up production, accelerate the development of next-gen photonic processors, grow its cross-functional team, and expand into the US market to support rising customer demand.

Q.ANT has also strengthened its advisory board by bringing on two semiconductor veterans: Hermann Hauser (founder of ARM) and Hermann Eul (former Infineon board member and ex-CVP & GM at Intel).

“Classical CMOS processors are approaching their physical and architectural limits – where further gains through parallelisation and smaller structures yield only marginal improvements. In contrast, photonic computing represents a fundamentally new paradigm with immense, largely untapped scaling potential. Q.ANT has solved the core challenges of this technology and is well positioned to define the future of high-performance computing,” added Cyril Vancura, Partner at imec.xpand.

By 2030, Q.ANT aims to make its photonic processing technology a core part of global AI infrastructure, driving greater scalability and energy efficiency.

Designed for easy market adoption, the Q.ANT Photonic Native Processing Server (NPS) is now available for early access. It’s built to work seamlessly with existing programming languages and AI software ecosystems.

The Q.ANT NPS uses less energy, produces no on-chip heat, and offers higher compute density, setting a new standard for sustainable, high-performance AI computing.

Berthold Schmidt, CTO at TRUMPF: “DeepTech disruption demands courage, foresight and decisive action. Q.ANT set out to redefine the way we compute and we believed in their vision from day one. We backed Q.ANT’s mission with early investment, robust infrastructure, and technical support enabling Q.ANT to develop its breakthrough photonic chip architecture. Now as Q.ANT enters full commercialisation, their photonic processors are set to transform performance and energy-efficiency for AI and HPC workloads and we are moving forward alongside a world-class group of partners – united with a shared vision to shape the next level of computing.”

About Q.ANT

Founded in 2018 by Dr. Michael Förtsch as a spin-off from TRUMPF, Q.ANT is a DeepTech scale-up developing photonic processors that compute using light instead of transistors. Its LENA (Light Empowered Native Arithmetics) architecture offers analog co-processing for complex tasks, enabling energy-efficient AI and HPC performance.