Where Quantum Venture Money Went in 2026: Photonic's $2 Billion Mark, QuantWare's $178 Million and a European Surge
PitchBook's latest quarterly report on quantum computing investment, covering the second quarter of 2026, arrives with a sector in transition: the firm describes global quantum funding as hitting new records on the strength of exits and valuations, even as the cadence of new venture rounds has slowed from last year's frenzy. Underneath the headline, the deal log shows exactly where the smart money concentrated.
The baseline was 2025, which PitchBook tallied at $3.9 billion invested across 127 deals — a record year capped by a $1.5 billion fourth quarter that, by the firm's count, exceeded every annual venture total the sector posted before 2021. Crowdfund Insider, analyzing the same period, put the median deal size at $90 million, with rounds of $25 million or more accounting for roughly $3.5 billion — four times the prior year.
This year's marquee private rounds cluster around hardware platforms with credible scaling stories. Crunchbase News highlighted Vancouver-based Photonic's $200 million raise at a $2 billion valuation, Dutch quantum-chip supplier QuantWare's $178 million Series B, and London silicon-spin developer Quantum Motion's $160 million Series C. Crowdfund Insider added France's Pasqal, which pulled in $236.9 million in February, to the year's largest rounds.
Israel produced one of the more notable follow-ons. Trapped-ion startup Quantum Art extended its Series A by $40 million in late April, bringing the round to $140 million total, with backers including Bedford Ridge Capital, Hudson Bay Capital and Poalim Equity, according to Calcalist. CEO Tal David said the extension reflected investor confidence in the company's road to a 1,000-qubit multi-core system — language that captures how far seed-stage quantum ambitions have escalated.
Who is writing the checks has changed as much as the amounts. PitchBook notes that Nvidia, BlackRock, JPMorgan and sovereign wealth funds now lead the sector's largest rounds, and that venture-growth investors surged from roughly 1% of deal value in 2024 to 27.5% in 2025. The geographic mix is shifting too: Crowdfund Insider's data put North America at 52.5% of 2025 deal value with Europe at 33.6% — and this year's QuantWare, Quantum Motion and Pasqal rounds suggest Europe's share is still climbing.
The pace, though, is unmistakably cooler. Crowdfund Insider counted about $1.2 billion in new commitments in the first quarter of 2026 and said second-quarter activity moderated from there; Crunchbase News similarly reported the year tracking well below 2025's total even as deal counts held up. With Xanadu, Infleqtion, IQM and Quantinuum all having reached public markets, the biggest capital needs are increasingly being met by listings rather than late-stage rounds.
Layer in more than $60 billion in cumulative government commitments worldwide, per Crowdfund Insider, and the sector's funding stack now runs three layers deep: public markets for the leaders, concentrated mega-rounds for the credible challengers, and state capital underwriting the infrastructure beneath both. For the private companies still burning toward fault tolerance, the message from 2026's deal sheet is blunt — the money is there, but it is flowing to fewer names, in bigger checks, on harder questions.
