The former chief quantum architect of Microsoft starts a business and receives over 100 million yuan in angel financing from Shanghai Future Industry Fund and iFlytek | Exclusive from 36Kr
Author: Ou Xue
Editor: Yuan Silai
Yingke learned that Taiyi Quantum Life (Shanghai) Quantum Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Taiyi Quantum Life"), a neutral atom quantum computing enterprise, recently completed an angel - round financing of over 100 million yuan.
This round of financing was jointly led by Shanghai Future Industry Fund and iFlytek Venture Capital, the CVC under iFlytek. Industrial parties such as JinkoSolar Holding, Galaxy General, and YaBen Chemical, as well as many well - known market - oriented investment institutions such as Houxue Investment, participated in the follow - on investment. The funds will be mainly used for product R & D, team expansion, and the development and construction of the company's first quantum computer.
Founded in January 2026, Taiyi Quantum Life is a general quantum computing platform focusing on the neutral atom quantum computing route. Different from the early - established superconducting and ion - trap quantum computing companies in China, Taiyi Quantum Life has chosen a "dark - horse" technology route that has been proven to be highly promising overseas but has just started in China - neutral atoms.
The founding team of Taiyi Quantum Life has a background of in - depth integration of technology, capital, and industry. Dr. Liu Hongbin, the company's chairman and CTO, has more than 12 years of experience in the quantum computing industry. He was formerly the chief quantum architect at Microsoft, led Microsoft's strategic investment in the neutral atom route, and was fully responsible for the cooperation project with Atom Computing (this project achieved the commercial sales of more than 50 logical qubits, marking the birth of the world's first Level 2 logical quantum computer). He is also one of the only two industrial members of the Quantum Frontier Guide Committee of the US National Academy of Sciences (the other is Ryan Babbush of Google Quantum AI). Fang Zhenghao, the company's CEO, was formerly a managing partner at Xiaomiao Langcheng. He has nearly 15 years of experience in cutting - edge technology investment and has invested in China's first optical quantum computer company. The two founders met in high school and are classmates at Fudan University and have been friends for 17 years.
When talking about the choice of the entrepreneurial timing, Fang Zhenghao said that he saw a watershed in the development of the quantum computing industry in 2025 - the simultaneous emergence of four inflection points in technology, industry, policy, and capital. Specifically, at the technical level, in 2024, teams such as Microsoft, Quantinuum, and Atom Computing successively achieved breakthroughs in logical qubits, marking the entry of quantum computing from the "noisy quantum" era to the "error - correctable computing" era. The industry's measurement standard also shifted from "physical qubits" to "logical qubits". At the industrial level, the continuous growth of computing power demand and the change of computing power paradigm have become a definite trend. Currently, the global computing power demand is only 1500 - 2000 EFLOPS, while the demand in ten years may reach 200,000 - 1 million EFLOPS, with hundreds of times of growth space. At present, the performance of classical computing power in single - card performance and multi - card interconnection performance projects has been squeezed close to the physical limit, while the unexpected technological progress of quantum computing technology itself makes it an important solution in the post - Moore era. The reason why NVIDIA revised its judgment and heavily invested in quantum computing in 2025 is based on this.
At the policy level, the 14th Five - Year Plan lists quantum technology as the top of the six future industries. At the capital level, industrial parties and forward - looking capitals have begun to re - enter the market. The four inflection points resonate during this period.
Among many quantum computing technology routes, why did Taiyi Quantum Life firmly choose neutral atoms? Liu Hongbin explained that this decision stems from his in - depth observation of the trends in the quantum computing industry during his work at Microsoft.
Currently, the mainstream superconducting route faces wiring problems and linearly increasing cooling costs, resulting in slow growth of the number of qubits. The ion - trap route is limited by the computing speed. The neutral atom route shows unique advantages: there is almost no increase in cost for upward expansion (trapping one atom only requires milliwatt - level laser, and one - watt laser can support 1000 atoms), and there is no exponential calibration problem.
Specifically in terms of technology segmentation, Taiyi Quantum Life has chosen ytterbium atoms among neutral atoms. Although this brings engineering challenges (ytterbium atoms are more difficult to capture and manipulate), the scientific advantages it brings are generational: faster qubit gates, erasable errors, and the ability to achieve multi - photon interconnection through the communication band.
These are unmatched by other atomic systems, laying a scientific foundation for the company to achieve more complex quantum operations and efficient error correction in the future. "This is a choice of trading engineering for science," Liu Hongbin emphasized. "The engineering risks can be overcome, but the scientific advantages are inherent."
Although the company was established relatively recently, it has made rapid progress. The team has been registered as a key enterprise in Xuhui, Shanghai, and has moved into a nearly 1000 - square - meter Class 10,000 clean experimental site. It has started to build an optical table system and promote key nodes such as atomic array imaging, single - and double - qubit gates, and long - term stable manipulation.
In terms of the commercialization path, Taiyi Quantum Life aims at three strategic scenarios: Cryptography security directly addresses the rigid needs of national defense, information security, and finance. (RSA - 2048, the "toughest ruler" of general quantum computing, has extremely strict requirements for error correction and control of fault - tolerant quantum computing, and is also the best touchstone to verify the superiority of the TaiYi architecture and system overhead). Chemical simulation can shorten drug R & D from several years to several months. In the field of quantum machine learning, it is expected to solve the generalization ability of AI models in high - dimensional data space. Quantum computing power will be the key breakthrough to meet the computing power demand in the post - Moore era.
In the short term, the company has formulated a clear technology roadmap: it plans to achieve logical qubits by the end of 2026, benchmarking the R & D progress of international first - class quantum computing whole - machine, and strive to become a commercial company with large - scale logical qubits in China.
In the future technology evolution path, the company has established three R & D directions: faster qubit gates, more complex multi - qubit gates, and more efficient quantum error - correction schemes.
Liu Hongbin explained that currently, all quantum computers implement single - and double - qubit gate operations, corresponding to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in classical computing. More complex operations such as square root, logarithm, and factorial correspond to three - qubit and four - qubit gate operations. Operations like the Tofolli gate are the most common gate operations in real - world quantum circuits. Such multi - qubit gates have no possibility or meaning of implementation in the superconducting system due to limited qubit connectivity, but they can be implemented in the neutral atom system, and can bring great benefits to the execution of quantum circuits in terms of both running speed and fidelity. This is the key breakthrough direction for the company in the future. Moreover, in terms of quantum error correction, the company plans to use the "erasable error" feature to explore lower - cost quantum error - correction schemes and accelerate the practical process of fault - tolerant quantum computing.
"In the next few years, the company plans to capture 50,000 atoms (physical qubits) on a single platform and efficiently convert them into 300 logical qubits, thus demonstrating real quantum advantages in specific problems such as cryptography security and chemical simulation and solving problems that classical computers cannot handle," Liu Hongbin said.
Views of investors:
Shanghai Future Industry Fund said: Neutral atom quantum computing is one of the quantum computing technology routes that Shanghai Future Industry Fund focuses on. We value Taiyi Quantum Life's comprehensive capabilities in researching and exploring differentiated technology paths, commercial delivery, and organizing and attracting overseas talents. We highly focus on the aggregation and organization of talents. We hope that by investing in Taiyi Quantum Life, we can further enhance Shanghai's attractiveness to global quantum computing talents and consolidate its core competitiveness as an innovation origin and industrial high - ground.
Zhu Yong, a partner of iFlytek Venture Capital, said: We invested in Taiyi Quantum Life mainly for three reasons:
First, the neutral atom quantum computing track has broad prospects and is emerging as a new force. It is a highly potential technology route at present.
Second, we highly recognize the strong complementary advantages formed by Dr. Liu and Mr. Fang, the founders, in technology, engineering, capital, and business.
Third, the founding team has outstanding resource - integration capabilities. In just two months, they have integrated the top - notch scientific research and industrialization teams in the domestic ytterbium (Yb) atom technology route.
We believe that with the support of a high - quality external environment and an industry - leading team, the company will surely add luster to the domestic neutral atom quantum computing cause.
Du Wei, the investment general manager of JinkoSolar Holding, said: "Currently, quantum computing is moving from the laboratory to engineering and practical application. Key technologies such as quantum error correction are advancing rapidly, and the industry has entered a new stage of system implementation. Neutral atom quantum computing has become one of the global mainstream technology routes due to its excellent scalability and architectural advantages. We invested in Taiyi Quantum Life precisely because we are optimistic about its team's core technology and engineering capabilities in neutral atom quantum computing. In the future, quantum computing can strongly empower the R & D of perovskite materials, the simulation and efficiency optimization of energy storage systems, and accelerate the breakthrough of new materials and new energy technologies. JinkoSolar Holding adheres to technological innovation and forward - looking layout, and looks forward to working with Taiyi Quantum Life to jointly promote the engineering and industrial application of quantum computing in the new energy field."
Cai Tong, the chairman of YaBen Chemical, said: YaBen's strategic investment in Taiyi Quantum Life is mainly based on its long - term optimism about the huge potential of quantum computing in the future chemical R & D field. Taiyi Quantum Life focuses on the neutral atom technology route and has important advantages in scalability and complex system simulation. It is expected to make breakthroughs in fields such as molecular simulation, drug design, and new material discovery. The two founders of the company have profound scientific research and engineering experience in quantum technology R & D, and have mature capabilities in industrialization promotion, capital operation, and strategic cooperation, which can effectively promote the commercialization of cutting - edge technologies. Through this cooperation, the two sides will carry out forward - looking layout in the field of quantum computing - empowered chemical and biomedical R & D, explore the application potential of next - generation computing technology in the fields of innovative drugs and advanced materials, and form long - term strategic synergy.
Hou Haoxiang, the founding partner of Houxue Capital, said: "The neutral atom route chosen by Taiyi Quantum Life has good potential in qubit scale expansion, system architecture design, and supply - chain system construction.
We are optimistic about the founding team of Taiyi Quantum Life: Dr. Liu Hongbin has an international perspective and full - stack engineering capabilities in the quantum field, while Mr. Fang Zhenghao has a keen sense of hard - technology industrialization. Such a complementary combination of 'technology + business' is very rare in the field.
We look forward to this excellent and pragmatic team seizing the historical opportunity of the resonance of technology, industry, policy, and capital, truly turning cutting - edge technology into an industry, and helping the country build its own quantum computing future."