Why We Backed Algorithmiq
A note on the €18M round we led, on the team building one of the most credible quantum software companies in the world, and on their decision to make Milan its global headquarters
The dominant story in quantum computing has been a hardware story. Who has more qubits, who has cleaner gates, whose architecture will set the standard. That race is real and it is consequential, but it is not the whole picture. A quantum computer is a measuring instrument before it is a useful tool. Without an algorithmic layer that can extract reliable answers from noisy machines, every qubit added to the stack is a qubit waiting for software to catch up.
This is where Algorithmiq has positioned itself, and it is why we led their €18M round. Founded in 2020 by Sabrina Maniscalco, Guillermo García-Pérez, Matteo Rossi, and Boris Sokolov, Algorithmiq builds the algorithms and the middleware that turn today’s noisy quantum hardware into instruments capable of solving real scientific problems. The company has deliberately chosen not to build qubits. It has chosen instead to build the layer above them: error mitigation, hybrid classical-quantum orchestration, and application software for chemistry and life sciences. That choice is a thesis about where the durable value in this industry will accrue.
The thesis has been validated faster than most.
In 2025, Algorithmiq and IBM reported one of the strongest candidates to date for quantum advantage on a scientifically meaningful problem, with results entered into the open Quantum Advantage Tracker and benchmarked against leading classical methods. It is the sole winner of Wellcome Leap’s Q4Bio $2M prize, a major global challenge for quantum applications in biology and health, ahead of teams from Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Nottingham, and Infleqtion. Its noise mitigation product is available through IBM’s Qiskit Functions Catalog for eligible IBM Quantum users. It has signed major commercial agreements with Microsoft, IBM, and Rigetti, and works with leading quantum and research organizations, including Google, AWS, Cleveland Clinic, and CERN.
What makes the company defensible is not any single result, but the integration of the full software stack. Algorithmiq controls the pipeline from quantum state initialization to error mitigation to measurement to chemistry-specific optimization. Each layer was designed with the others in mind. That is what allows the system to extract meaningful computation from hardware that, on its own, would be too noisy to use. It is also what makes the company hardware-agnostic in a sector where backing the wrong machine is an existential risk for investors.
On Sabrina
It is rare to meet a founder whose scientific authority and entrepreneurial ambition align so clearly. Sabrina Maniscalco spent two decades as one of the most-cited researchers in quantum information, holding a full professorship at the University of Helsinki and co-directing the Finnish Center of Excellence for Quantum Technologies. She has published more than 250 scientific papers, many of which focus on quantum noise, the very problem that today defines the gap between theoretical promise and industrial use. The technical direction of Algorithmiq is, in a literal sense, an extension of her research.
What makes Sabrina exceptional, though, is that she has refused to let science live only in the laboratory. She organized the first Quantum Game Jam, helping launch a global movement to make quantum literacy accessible. She co-founded Women 4 Quantum and authored its Manifesto of Values. She has built education platforms, given TED and TEDx talks, and developed cross-disciplinary formats that connect quantum physics to art, music, and the outdoors. She has done all of this while raising over €36M, building a team of more than forty researchers and engineers across four countries, and signing partnerships with the largest names in quantum hardware.
She is now bringing the company she built in Helsinki home to Milan, and that decision is another important reason we led this round.
Bringing a quantum software leader to Italy
Algorithmiq is moving its global headquarters to Milan, and this is not a symbolic relocation. Sabrina and her co-founders have chosen to build the company in Italy because the conditions for doing so have changed. The 2025 National Quantum Strategy, the European Commission’s strategic focus on quantum sovereignty, and the depth of Italian scientific talent in physics and mathematics now combine into something that did not exist a few years ago. A serious quantum company can be headquartered here, access world-class research, public and private capital, and a regulatory environment that supports this industry's success.
Italy has been at the foundations of modern physics for a century, from the Via Panisperna group around Fermi to the contemporary research ecosystem in Trieste, Trento, Pavia, Milan, and Naples. The country has produced quantum talent at scale and exported much of it. Algorithmiq’s decision reverses that flow. The company is bringing senior scientific leadership to Milan and creating a destination for Italian researchers who have spent years abroad and who, for the first time in a generation, have a credible reason to come home.
For United Ventures, this is the kind of company we look for, and rarely find. We invest in European deep tech with global ambition, and we invest with the conviction that European founders can build category leaders without leaving the continent. Algorithmiq is the clearest expression of that thesis we have backed in the quantum space.
What the round enables
The €18M brings Algorithmiq’s total funding to €36M, the largest amount ever raised by a quantum startup in Italy. The capital will be used to scale the team beyond 100 people by 2028, with the immediate priority on senior commercial hires and on accelerating the R&D roadmap toward quantum utility. The end state is a full suite serving the world’s leading hardware platforms and the industrial customers building on top of them.
We are proud to be working with Sabrina, Guillermo, Matteo, Boris, Kirsten, and the entire team. The question in quantum is shifting from who can build the biggest machine to who can make the machines matter. We think Algorithmiq has the clearest answer.
🗞️ Official press release (IT-EN)
🗞️ Read more on Sifted and La Repubblica