Supported, in part, by a $8.5m seed funding round the company is opening a state-of-the-art research and manufacturing facility in Milan, which will be the world's first dedicated to producing glass-based quantum photonic circuits.
In addition, Ephos has also received funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC) and NATO's Defence Innovation Accelerator (DIANA); being chosen as one of just 10 companies out of a pool exceeding 1,300 applicants.
The seed round was led by Starlight Ventures, a US venture capital firm specialising in deep tech investments, with participation from Collaborative Fund, Exor Ventures, 2100 Ventures, and Unruly Capital, among others, as well as angel investors Joe Zadeh (former Vice President at Airbnb), Diego Piacentini (former Senior Vice President at Amazon), and Simone Severini (General Manager, Quantum Technologies, Amazon Web Services).
The funding has accelerated the launch of its new research and manufacturing facility located in the Milano Innovation District (MIND), a leading European technology hub, which will serve as a central hub for R&D, production, and collaboration.
The new site provides the space and resources necessary to scale the company’s proprietary chip manufacturing technology as it expands its partnerships across the quantum technologies industry. Alongside its Milan headquarters and new manufacturing facility, the funding will also go towards operating and growing its San Francisco team.
Ephos designs and builds glass-based photonic chips which are used to increase the speed and energy efficiency of advanced quantum computing, communications, and sensing devices.
Built on glass substrates, Ephos’s chips reduce signal loss, one of the greatest hurdles to building a quantum computer. This is because in quantum computing, information cannot be duplicated or copied and so, above a certain level of signal loss, creating a new signal to replace a lost one is impossible.
Photonic technologies have a wide range of classical applications beyond quantum computing, including within data centres where photonic chips are increasingly being used to reduce soaring energy footprints.
Energy demands are becoming a major concern as the AI revolution continues to place a strain on data centres, with Goldman Sachs estimating that data centre power usage will grow 160% by 2030.
With its chips being built entirely in-house and the company’s supply chain relying exclusively on US and EU suppliers, Ephos’s technology is helping to reinforce Western security interests. By ensuring that critical quantum infrastructure is being developed within NATO’s emerging tech ecosystem, Ephos is part of a broader effort to safeguard strategic independence in quantum technologies, a vital area for future defence and communications.
As such, in addition to the seed round, Ephos has received €450,000 non-dilutive funding from NATO's Defence Innovation Accelerator (DIANA).
“Securing this funding and opening our Milan facility is a critical milestone for Ephos. Our glass-based photonic chips are set to transform not just quantum computing and AI, but the broader computational infrastructure of the future,” commented Andrea Rocchetto, CEO and co-founder at Ephos. “By addressing energy inefficiencies and enhancing performance across industries, from data centres to secure communications, we’re laying the foundation for the next generation of computing technology.”
