Most investments start with a pitch. This one started in basic training. I’ve known Dr. Asif Sinay, QEDMA’s CEO, for nearly 25 years. Watching his evolution from a fellow Talpiot cadet, always curious and questioning the status quo, into a leading physicist and tech executive—now running one of the most promising startups in quantum computing—has been a privilege. Our latest Glilot+ investment in QEDMA is the result of this front-row seat to the company’s journey since day one.

When Asif and I caught up a few years ago and I learned about the founding of QEDMA, I could not have been more impressed with his co-founders. The name of Prof. Dorit Aharonov, a world-renowned pioneer in the field of quantum fault tolerance from the Hebrew University, immediately caught my ear, having studied several of her papers back in my university days. If Dorit was on board, Asif was likely onto something huge. Rounding out the founding team was Prof. Netanel Lindner from the Technion, one of the leading minds today in quantum computing systems. The three independently realized that understanding the unique noise profile of each quantum device could unlock practical error-mitigated quantum computers and propel the industry forward. Asif brought the team together, and thus QEDMA was born.

The Quantum Bottleneck: Why Errors Matter

Quantum computing holds extraordinary promise—from simulating complex molecules with pharmaceutical applications to solving exponentially complex optimization problems, and perhaps most importantly (at least to us at Glilot Capital)—undermining the fundamental cryptographic principles on which the entire cybersecurity industry was built decades ago. But there’s one major problem holding it all back: errors, the “noise” inherent in quantum systems.

Quantum bits (qubits) are incredibly fragile. As systems grow in size and calculations become more complex, error rates quickly compound, overwhelming useful output with noise. While quantum error correction offers a theoretical solution, the cost is enormous—up to 1,000 physical qubits to reliably encode a single logical one. That’s simply not viable with today’s hardware.

This is where QEDMA comes in. QEDMA is bridging the gap between today’s noisy quantum devices and tomorrow’s scalable quantum computing. Their approach is entirely software-based and hardware-agnostic—making it both powerful and practical from a market reach standpoint. By learning the specific noise characteristics of each quantum processor, QEDMA can tailor quantum algorithms to suppress and mitigate errors during the algorithm’s execution on that processor. The result: significantly larger and deeper quantum circuits can run successfully on today’s available hardware. Importantly, QEDMA is already developing proprietary methods that will combine error mitigation with error correction, building a unified stack that scales with quantum hardware improvements.

Real-World Validation from IBM and Beyond

When we started our due diligence of QEDMA, we quickly realized that the solution was not just promising in theory—QEDMA’s approach has already been validated by the industry. In September 2024, IBM selected QEDMA as one of only three companies whose technology would be embedded directly in its Qiskit platform, the leading open-source SDK for quantum computing. After benchmarking QEDMA’s performance, IBM found that it enabled up to 1,000x increases in quantum circuit volume—a dramatic improvement in what has been computationally possible on IBM’s own hardware till that point. It was only natural, then, to bring IBM Ventures into the Series A round, alongside leading Asian fund Korea Investment Partners (KIP), existing investors TPY Capital, and several other quantum expert funds and angels.

This strategic partnership, alongside several yet-unannounced similar ones with the world’s leading quantum hardware vendors, served as a strong signal to us that QEDMA was not just a transitory tool in the burgeoning quantum computing industry—it was well-positioned to become a critical layer in the quantum software stack, enabled for every quantum hardware out there.

Why Glilot+? Why Now?

At Glilot+, our core focus has always been cybersecurity and enterprise software, built on Israeli deep-tech cutting-edge technologies. We believe that the rise of quantum computing is set to redefine the cybersecurity landscape itself. Once quantum computers reach scale and computational advantage over classic systems, they’ll potentially have the power to break today’s cryptographic protocols—forcing a total rethinking of how we secure digital systems.

We have been tracking this space closely for several years. While many startups are chasing new ways to build qubits, we made a clear decision: we would invest only in software-layer solutions, where we could leverage our experience and conviction, while avoiding the ongoing battle over quantum hardware technologies being waged by some of the world’s largest and most well-funded companies, including IBM, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. We met many teams—but QEDMA stood out, both from a standpoint of its practicality in today’s market (evidenced by QEDMA’s early commercial traction), and from its promise for future quantum systems. QEDMA is exactly the kind of company we set up Glilot+ to support, and we are proud to lead this Series A round and back Asif, Dorit, Netanel, and the whole team in building a critical foundation for the quantum era.