Iceberg Quantum is a quantum architecture company that designs fault-tolerant architectures based on LDPC codes. Its goal is to accelerate quantum computing development and make it possible to use quantum with far less hardware.
The company believes large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing will be transformative—yet realising this potential remains incredibly difficult due to one critical roadblock: the massive hardware overhead required for quantum error correction.
Qubits are inherently far more error-prone than transistors. To perform any useful computation, quantum computers require an architecture that protects programs against these errors using a fault-tolerant encoding—where instructions are carried out on logical qubits rather than physical ones. These logical qubits are created by combining several error-prone physical qubits into error-correcting codes.
Today, the predominant approach to designing fault-tolerant architectures is based on the surface code, which is highly qubit-intensive—requiring at least 1,000 physical qubits to encode a single logical qubit. This overhead is the key reason why the applications we’re all excited about remain frustratingly distant.
But in the last few years, an alternative path has opened up. Breakthroughs in quantum LDPC codes—combined with enabling advances in hardware—point to a dramatically more efficient route to fault tolerance.
Iceberg Quantum
Three recent PhD graduates in fault tolerance founded Iceberg Quantum based on the conviction that LDPC-based architectures are the future of fault-tolerant quantum computing. They believe these architectures will be the critical enabling technology that makes quantum computing practical—unlocking useful applications much sooner and with more than an order of magnitude less overhead. In the long run, they will be essential to making quantum compute abundant.
Iceberg also believes that realising this vision requires a focused, dedicated effort. The need for quantum error correction means that, unlike in classical computing, the first truly useful quantum computers will require complex, sophisticated architectures from the outset. Designing these architectures is a big and still underestimated challenge. The fastest way forward is to tackle this challenge head-on—within a dedicated company, solely focused on developing the best possible fault-tolerant architectures.
Looking forward
The company has raised $2 million pre-seed round led by Blackbird, with participation from LocalGlobe. We’re deeply grateful for their support and will use this capital to build a team of the world’s best quantum architects dedicated to designing the best fault-tolerant architectures and nothing else.
The PsiQuantum team has made a bold bet on photonics—one we deeply respect—while taking a fault-tolerance-first approach from day one, a principle we share. Together, we’ll work towards a more efficient path to useful quantum computing by applying LDPC-based architectures to their photonic platform.
