Australia’s NRF Trebles SQC Stake With $40M Top-Up

Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund has committed another $40 million to Sydney quantum chipmaker Silicon Quantum Computing, tripling its position in the company. SQC confirmed the investment on 11 June 2026, the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation’s (NRFC) first follow-on in any portfolio company. The new money is earmarked for the development and expansion of SQC’s atomic-precision chip manufacturing capability.

Both investments are issued as SAFE notes inside the same ongoing funding round, with the original $20M announced in March 2026 and the new $40M announced on 11 June 2026. SQC is also pursuing an extra $300 million from a US Defense program. The NRF top-up is the smaller half of a national quantum wager: the federal and Queensland governments have also staked $940 million on PsiQuantum, a US photonic-quantum play whose Brisbane build has slipped and is now relocating to Moreton Bay.

How the NRFC Trebled Its SQC Position

SQC’s update on the additional $40M top-up went live on 11 June 2026, confirming the NRFC’s first follow-on in any portfolio company. The Capital Brief first reported the trebling, with the new money issued as a SAFE note. The new SAFE note sits inside the same round that opened with the original $20M in March 2026.

The federal government first became an SQC shareholder in 2017, when it put $25M into the UNSW spinout’s seed round, and has committed additional funding in subsequent rounds. The NRFC’s tripled position is part of an ongoing broader round; the fund is a $15B federal industry investor that deploys capital across seven priority areas including renewables, defence and medical science. Other SQC investors include Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, UNSW, and the NSW Government. The fund’s SQC portfolio entry describes the new money as support for sovereign manufacturing capability and skilled job creation. The new $40 million makes the NRF’s first follow-on in any portfolio company.

Atomic Precision, Weekly Iteration

SQC’s edge is its PAQMan process, which the company calls the most precise semiconductor manufacturing technology in the world. The company places phosphorus atoms inside pure silicon at 0.13 nanometre accuracy, the same scale as the atoms themselves, and runs the entire pipeline in-house at its Sydney lab. Its 14|15 qubit platform, named for the silicon and phosphorus atomic numbers, is the basis for the company’s products. SQC says it can design, produce and test new quantum chips in under one week.

SQC and the NRFC both describe the company as the only one in the world capable of manufacturing quantum chips with atomic precision while shipping quantum-AI products today. The “only company globally” framing is SQC’s own marketing claim, repeated by the NRFC. SQC’s CEO says atomic precision gives the firm a “decisive advantage” in the global race.

SQC employs more than 100 people in Sydney, and the new funding is expected to add staff in sales, chip design, quantum engineering, and hardware engineering. The company says it will lay the foundation for the creation of hundreds more in the near future. Faster iteration is the practical moat: a chip that takes a week to redesign and test in-house can outpace a foundry cycle measured in months. In-house iteration is also what makes the company a domestic chip manufacturer at all, one of only a handful in Australia. The National Quantum Strategy estimates the country’s quantum industry could be worth $6 billion and support 19,400 jobs by 2045.

• NRFC position in SQC, now trebled (11 June 2026)
• 100+ staff at SQC’s Sydney lab
• Under 1 week design-to-test turnaround for new quantum chips
• 11 companies globally in DARPA QBI Stage B, including SQC
• $300M in DARPA funding SQC is pursuing through QBI

Two Products in Market, a Third on the Way

SQC already ships Watermelon, a quantum machine learning system the company says is delivering commercial outcomes across energy, logistics, defence and telecommunications. Telstra, an existing SQC investor, has used Watermelon and reported a “dramatic reduction in model training time.” In August 2025, Australian Defence announced the purchase of a QML processor to be housed on-premises within its data environment.

SQC’s Quantum Twins simulator launch in 2025 detailed a quantum simulator built around 15,000 qubit registers patterned at 0.13 nanometre accuracy, with the scientific foundation published in Nature. Quantum Twins physically encode replicas of the quantum systems a customer wants to analyse, designed for molecule and materials discovery. SQC’s chair Simon Segars, the former ARM CEO, called the launch a “definitive signal of our world leading manufacturing precision and scalability.” SQC said Quantum Twins are now available via direct contract.

SQC is also working on Jalapeño, an error-corrected quantum computing processor. SQC’s 2025 demonstration of Grover’s algorithm, published in Nature Nanotechnology, ran at 98.87% of the theoretical maximum.

SQC’s 14|15 platform, named for the silicon and phosphorus atomic numbers, supports all three product lines. SQC demonstrated a 3D atom transistor in 2019 and an integrated circuit made with atomic precision in 2022. The November 2025 demonstration of 250,000 qubit registers in eight hours, SQC says, de-risked the manufacturing yields needed for commercial-scale fault tolerance. DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative has advanced SQC to Stage B, one of 11 companies globally at that stage. SQC’s products are available via direct contract.

• Watermelon: a quantum machine learning system already in commercial use, with Telstra and Australian Defence as customers
• Quantum Twins: a 15,000-qubit-register quantum simulator for molecule and materials discovery, detailed in Nature
• Jalapeño: an error-corrected quantum computing processor, SQC’s longer-horizon bet on fault tolerance

The $940M PsiQuantum Bet Sitting Beside SQC

SQC’s NRFC investment is one piece of Australia’s national quantum funding. The federal and Queensland governments jointly invested $940 million in PsiQuantum in 2024, the largest Australian quantum commitment to date. PsiQuantum plans to build the world’s first utility-scale quantum computer in Brisbane, originally at the Brisbane Airport Industrial Park. PsiQuantum’s Moreton Bay site announcement confirmed the relocation, with a formal groundbreaking scheduled for June 2026 after months of public consultation delays at the airport site.

The two bets are not the same kind of bet. SQC builds silicon spin qubits at atomic precision in Sydney, a smaller and faster-iterating model that mirrors Quobly’s €115M Series A for silicon quantum chips in Europe. PsiQuantum is a photonic-quantum play, with a different architecture and a different build. PsiQuantum’s September 2025 Series E raised $1.5B at a $10.5B valuation.

PsiQuantum’s Brisbane build was flagged to start in mid-2025, and the additional delays could put the project up to 12 months behind schedule. PsiQuantum co-founder Jeremy O’Brien stepped down as CEO in February 2026, with AMD alumnus Victor Peng named interim CEO. PsiQuantum’s Australian headcount currently sits at around 15, per LinkedIn data. The SQC top-up arrives in the middle of that gap, with the fund’s smaller bet growing while the larger one relocates, in a global funding wave that also includes OQC’s £260M Series C funding round in Europe.

From Atomic Qubits to a 2033 Commercial Machine

SQC has set 2033 as the target year for a commercial-scale silicon quantum computer, a goal set out in the company’s own literature. The path runs through DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which SQC is in Stage B of and from which it is chasing an extra $300M in US funding. Founder and CEO Michelle Simmons said the NRFC’s continued investment “is a strong endorsement of SQC and the globally unique semiconductor manufacturing capability we have developed here in Australia.”

Australia leads the world in quantum computing, and SQC’s in-house manufacturing allows the company to iterate significantly faster, and with greater accuracy, than its competitors. This gives SQC a critical edge in forging the fastest and most cost-effective path to a commercial-scale quantum computer.

The words are David Gall’s, the CEO of the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, speaking in the NRFC’s official materials accompanying the SQC top-up. Gall frames SQC’s in-house iteration as a national strategic asset, with the NRFC’s doubling-down as a follow-on commitment. SQC was founded in 2017 at UNSW by Simmons, the 2018 Australian of the Year, and the 25 years of UNSW research behind the company is the foundation for the new bet. The Australian National Quantum Strategy estimates the domestic quantum industry could be worth $6 billion and support 19,400 jobs by 2045.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much has the NRF invested in SQC?

The NRFC has committed $40M to SQC on 11 June 2026, on top of the $20M it announced in March 2026, tripling its position in the company. Both tranches sit inside the same ongoing funding round and are issued as SAFE notes.

What does SQC actually do?

SQC designs, manufactures and tests silicon-based quantum chips in-house at its Sydney lab, placing phosphorus atoms inside pure silicon at 0.13 nanometre accuracy. The company ships Watermelon, a quantum machine learning system, and Quantum Twins, a 15,000-qubit-register quantum simulator, and is working on Jalapeño, an error-corrected processor.

How is SQC different from PsiQuantum?

SQC builds silicon spin qubits at atomic precision, in-house in Sydney, with a design-to-test cycle of under one week. PsiQuantum builds photonic quantum computers, a different architecture, backed by $940M from the Australian federal and Queensland governments for a utility-scale machine originally planned for Brisbane Airport and now relocating to Moreton Bay.

What is DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative?

The DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) is a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program that identifies quantum computing architectures with the highest potential for utility-scale performance. SQC is one of 11 companies globally to reach Stage B, and is pursuing $300M in additional US funding through the program.

Who else has invested in SQC?

Existing SQC investors include Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, the University of New South Wales, the NSW Government, and the Commonwealth Government of Australia, alongside the NRFC. SQC was founded in 2017 at UNSW by Michelle Simmons, a former Australian of the Year and now a Companion of the Order of Australia.