The New Quantum Era
Funding the Quantum Middle: Series A/B Capital with Kris Naudts and Zeynep Koruturk of Firgun Ventures
Why It Matters
Understanding the financing bottleneck at the Series A/B stage is crucial for accelerating quantum breakthroughs that could transform drug discovery, materials science, and finance. By highlighting how targeted capital and disciplined diligence can de‑risk early‑stage quantum ventures, the episode offers investors and founders a roadmap for sustaining momentum beyond hype‑driven valuations.
Key Takeaways
- •Quantinuum IPO signals quantum market maturity.
- •Series A/B funding gap hampers mid‑stage quantum startups.
- •Firgun Ventures raises $70 M first close, targeting $250 M fund.
- •Sovereign capital, like Qatar, backs quantum computing, sensing, communications.
- •Diverse qubit modalities need specialist diligence beyond engineering risk.
Pulse Analysis
The recent Quantinuum IPO marks a watershed for quantum technology, moving the sector from speculative SPAC hype to a disciplined, revenue‑backed public offering. Investors finally see a company with real customers and a balanced sheet, proving that quantum hardware and software can coexist in a commercially viable model. This transition validates years of research and signals that capital markets are ready to price genuine progress rather than narrative‑driven spikes, setting a new benchmark for future quantum enterprises.
Despite the IPO milestone, a pronounced financing gap persists between seed rounds and later‑stage Series A/B investments. Early‑stage funds and family offices flood the market with small tickets, yet many promising startups stall when they need capital to scale from lab proof‑of‑concept to deployable systems. Firgun Ventures was created to bridge this chasm, launching in late 2025 with a $70 million first close and a $250 million target fund anchored by the Qatar Investment Authority. By concentrating on quantum computing, sensing, and communications, the firm provides the liquidity and strategic oversight that institutional investors typically avoid at this stage, unlocking growth pathways for companies poised to become the next generation of quantum leaders.
Evaluating mid‑stage quantum ventures demands more than engineering due diligence; it requires deep scientific insight across a fragmented stack of qubit technologies. Firgun’s team combines a neuroscience‑rooted founder with a former Goldman Sachs deep‑tech strategist and a Cambridge physicist, enabling them to assess both the technical feasibility and the broader market implications, including dual‑use considerations. Their diversified approach—backing multiple qubit modalities and emphasizing governance, customer pipelines, and execution risk—offers a template for investors seeking to navigate the complex, high‑risk landscape of quantum innovation while mitigating the pitfalls of short‑term market pressure.
Episode Description
Why This Episode Matters
Firgun Ventures launched in late 2025 with a $70M first close anchored by the Qatar Investment Authority and a mandate that doesn't exist anywhere else in the market: lead Series A and B rounds in quantum scale-ups globally. Kris Naudts is a neuroscientist and former Culture Trip founder whose path to quantum runs through a near-fatal medical misdiagnosis. Zeynep Koruturk spent over a decade building the Goldman Sachs Tech Initiative and meeting more than a thousand founders. Both were early angels in what became Quantinuum.
If you're trying to understand how quantum companies actually get financed between the lab and the IPO window — or why a specialist fund needed to exist at all — this conversation is one of the clearest views available. It's also a useful frame for founders thinking about what an informed institutional investor actually does in a round.
Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Outshift, Cisco's incubation engine. The need for computational power is rapidly increasing in every sector. From drug discovery to material innovation to complex financial modeling, classical systems are reaching their absolute limits. It's time for a paradigm shift. The answer is a scalable quantum network, built on open standards and vendor-agnostic architecture. By uniting distributed quantum devices, you unlock limitless computational power.
Learn more about the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch at Outshift.com.
Go deeper with the blog post The switch that quantum networking has been waiting for.
What We Get Into
Why Kris's ALS misdiagnosis became the conviction event that pulled him from media entrepreneurship into quantum investing
How Zeynep's decade at Goldman Sachs Tech Initiative shaped her pattern-matching for deep tech, and where that pattern-matching breaks down in quantum
The structural reason Series A/B is the real bottleneck in quantum financing — and why precede and seed capital is no longer the gap people assume it is
How Firgun underwrites engineering and execution risk after the scientific risk is largely retired
Why a quantum-specialist fund unlocks soft commitments from larger institutions that otherwise stay on the sidelines
The role of Firgun's "scientific co-founder" Professor Mete Atatüre and the need for sub-specialist diligence across modalities
How Firgun thinks about portfolio construction across silicon-spin/photonic (Photonic Inc.), silicon CMOS (Quantum Motion), and other architectures without picking a qubit winner
Why a truly global mandate is a feature, not a focus problem, given how concentrated quantum talent is in roughly a dozen ecosystems
How sovereign capital, US equity-stake announcements, and geopolitical fragmentation are starting to reshape who can invest in what
Why the binary "fault-tolerant or bust" framing of quantum investing misses the gradient of capability that drives near-term value
Resources & Links
Guest & Firm
Firgun Ventures — The fund's homepage, with the team and "Time to Talk Quantum" podcast featuring the founders' own framing of the market.
Firgun Ventures on Crunchbase — Confirms London HQ, global mandate, and Series A/B focus.
Fund Launch & Thesis
Firgun Ventures Launches $250M VC Fund to Invest in Quantum — The Quantum Insider — Launch details, QIA anchor commitment, and founder backgrounds.
Firgun Ventures Launches With $70M for Quantum Tech Innovation — TechFundingNews — Deeper breakdown of the LP roster and market rationale.
Firgun Ventures: Scaling Quantum Beyond the Early Stages — Future of Computing — Extended interview with Kris and Zeynep on the Series A/B bottleneck.
Portfolio Companies Mentioned
Firgun Invests in Photonic Inc. — The Quantum Insider — Firgun's first portfolio investment in DARPA-validated Photonic Inc.
Photonic Inc.'s World-First Quantum Teleportation — QC Report — Technical context on the "Entanglement First" silicon-spin/photonic architecture.
Photonic Inc. Closes $200M+ Round — The Quantum Insider — Final close at a $2B valuation.
Quantum Motion Raises $160M Series C — The Quantum Insider — Firgun's first European investment in silicon CMOS quantum computing.
Quantum Motion's Silicon CMOS Approach — Technologies.org — Technical analysis of the CMOS scalability thesis.
Key Quotes & Insights
Kris on the conviction event: "If you're expecting to die and then you're told you're going to live, you have to rethink it yet again… You can go in the direction of enjoy every day, or you can go in the direction of let's try to do something meaningful with whatever time I have left."
Zeynep on the real bottleneck: Pre-seed and seed capital in quantum is no longer the gap — the A and B rounds are. Roughly 40% of companies in the space need that bridge to unlock larger institutional capital, and almost no one is set up to lead it.
Kris on diligence limits: No one person can underwrite the full quantum stack. Firgun pairs a "scientific co-founder" with sub-specialists for each modality, because in quantum "no propositions sound stupid" — and that's exactly the problem.
Zeynep on the asymmetric bet: Quantum is one of the few areas where geopolitical reality creates a floor under the downside. The West can't afford to lose, which means funding will be there long enough for the right companies to mature.
Kris on willing the timeline: "You cannot will it into being. The space will evolve at the pace it is set to evolve with the capital and the talent in it." A useful corrective for anyone pitching a five-year cure-for-Parkinson's roadmap.
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