Israeli neutral atom quantum computing company Q-Factor today announced the completion of a $24 million seed financing round led by NFX and TPY Capital, with participation from Intel Capital, Korea Investment Partners, Deep33, and the Matias family, and a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority. The Technion — Israel Institute of Technology and Weizmann Institute of Science (through Yeda, its technology transfer arm) are also shareholders in the company, which was founded to commercialize foundational research in atomic physics conducted in their labs.
Exceeding a few thousand qubits to the hundreds of thousands or millions required for useful computation demands not incremental improvement, requires a fundamental architectural leap. Q-Factor is tackling this challenge.
The company brings together four physicists whose research spans decades at the forefront of neutral atom science. Three lead labs at the Weizmann Institute and the Technion that have pioneered the building blocks of neutral atom systems, including ultracold atoms, controlled atomic interactions (Rydberg physics), atom transport, and advanced laser techniques; the fourth brings extensive technical leadership building and scaling deep tech ventures The founders closely analyzed the limitations of current neutral atom quantum computing, and have identified the architectural bottlenecks that prevent current platforms from scaling beyond a few thousand qubits. Q-Factor has developed an approach to overcome them and scale to over one million.
«The quantum computing industry needs a revolution, not an evolution,» said Prof. Ofer Firstenberg, co-founder and chief scientist of Q-Factor. «Current systems are too small to deliver on the promise of quantum computing, and incremental improvements alone aren’t going to close that gap. We’ve developed an architecture designed for continuous scalability, a Moore’s Law-like trajectory that can take neutral atom systems from thousands of qubits to millions and beyond.»
Q-Factor was founded by Prof. Nir Davidson, a world-renowned authority in ultracold atoms with 280 published papers and former dean of physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science; Prof. Ofer Firstenberg of the Weizmann Institute, an expert in quantum optics and Rydberg atoms, formerly of Harvard and MIT; Prof. Yoav Sagi of the Technion, a leading authority in neutral-atom manipulation, formerly of JILA and the University of Colorado; and Dr. Guy Raz, a physicist with 20 years of technical leadership for multiple deep tech startups.
Published by Globes, Israel business news — en.globes.co.il — on April 6, 2026.
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