Intel and U.S. Intelligence Just Bet $178M on the Open-Architecture Quantum Future

QuantWare is building the world's first quantum computing fabrication facility designed for the open-architecture future — and two of the industry's most strategically motivated investors just signed off on the plan.

The Delft, Netherlands-based company broke ground on KiloFab this week, a production facility scheduled to open in 2026 that will increase its QPU manufacturing capacity by 20 times. The announcement came alongside a $178 million Series B — the largest private round raised by a dedicated quantum processor company — backed by Intel Capital and In-Q-Tel, the U.S. intelligence community's strategic investment arm. It is the first time Intel Capital and IQT have co-invested in a quantum hardware startup.

"The quantum computing race is increasingly less about who builds the best qubit — and more about who controls the integration layer," said Kike Miralles of Intel Capital, in a statement accompanying the round. "QuantWare recognized that early and built VIO to address it."

VIO — Quantum Open Architecture — is QuantWare's proprietary 3D chiplet stacking technology. Rather than building larger monolithic quantum chips, which run into routing and manufacturing bottlenecks as they grow, VIO tiles multiple smaller chiplet modules vertically, connecting them through ultra-high-fidelity chip-to-chip links. The company claims this approach can scale to 10,000 qubits while delivering more compute per Watt than networking many smaller processors together.

The architectural claim comes with an open-architecture business model: VIO is available to any organization working with superconducting qubits, and QuantWare sells chiplet packaging services to third-party designers who want to scale their own qubit geometries without building a full custom processor. NVIDIA's CUDA-Q platform and NVQLink are part of the VIO-40K compatible ecosystem, giving the architecture a connection to hybrid quantum-classical computing workflows.

QuantWare is also building KiloFab to remove a bottleneck the company argues has held the entire field back. While IBM and Google operate their own internal fab lines, and most smaller quantum hardware companies rely on shared university cleanrooms or general-purpose foundries, QuantWare is constructing a dedicated quantum production facility that it describes as the world's largest quantum open-architecture fab — with capacity to produce VIO-based processors at volume for the broader industry, not just its own QPUs.

To date, QuantWare says it has shipped quantum processors to more than 50 customers across 20 countries, including national laboratories and global technology conglomerates. Founded in 2021 as a spinout from QuTech at TU Delft, the company is led by CEO Matt Rijlaarsdam and co-founder Alessandro Bruno. Existing investors FORWARD.one and the Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund also participated.

The VIO-40K processor, QuantWare's flagship architecture targeting 10,000 qubits, is available for reservation now with first devices slated to ship in 2028. The chip's specifications — 40,000 input-output lines, full chiplet integration, vertical signal delivery freeing chip edges from routing constraints — were detailed in a December 2025 announcement, though the architecture has not yet shipped commercially.

What QuantWare is not yet disclosing is which named third-party qubit designers have committed to integrating on VIO. The open-architecture claim is substantive — the company's published technical materials describe a genuine chiplet packaging capability, and the NVIDIA ecosystem connection is documented — but the story of an industry pivoting to horizontal modular standards rests partly on adoption that has not yet been publicly confirmed by major players.

The more immediate story is the investor signal. Intel Capital and IQT do not co-invest in press releases. Their presence in this round means the classical chip industry and the U.S. intelligence community have independently concluded that the bottleneck in quantum scaling has shifted from qubit physics to manufacturing and integration architecture — and that a Dutch startup with an open-architecture model is the right vehicle for that bet.

Whether they are right depends on whether KiloFab opens on schedule, whether VIO-40K ships at the promised specs, and whether IBM or Google respond by opening their own integration layers. The horizontal quantum supply chain QuantWare is building toward does not yet have paying customers at scale. It has $178 million, a construction timeline, and two of the industry's most strategically motivated investors.