OrangeQS, a Delft-based startup specializing in quantum chip testing, spun out of QuTech and TNO, has secured an additional €3 million for its seed round from the European Innovation Council Fund, bringing total funding to €15 million. This fund, an investment arm of the EU’s EIC supporting deep-tech in Europe, saw Zeina Chebli join the OrangeQS board. The company had previously raised €12 million in June 2025, with contributions from Icecat Capital, Cottonwood Technology Fund, QBeat Ventures, QDNL Participations, and InnovationQuarter Capital, marking the largest seed round in the Dutch quantum sector.
Along with this funding, OrangeQS is launching the MAX Partnership Programme, allowing quantum chip manufacturers to influence the development of OrangeQS’s test equipment through structured collaboration. Founding members include Rigetti Computing, QuantWare, and Peak Quantum. Each operates independently with OrangeQS, keeping intellectual properties separate, while collectively guiding a test platform that remains compatible with various hardware architectures.
OrangeQS addresses a critical, yet overlooked, issue: quantum chips, needing millikelvin cryogenic environments, involve complex testing that currently takes weeks per chip, consuming expensive resources. As production scales from academia to manufacturing, this bottleneck in testing becomes a major hurdle. OrangeQS’s high-throughput MAX equipment reduces testing time to days and is deployed at IQM in Espoo, Finland. Their FLEX system, for R&D purposes, is used at several institutions including Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and QuTech in Delft.
The partnership focuses on parallel and non-destructive testing technologies, enabling simultaneous, damage-free chip characterization to tackle throughput and yield issues. With a white paper detailing their technical roadmap, OrangeQS positions itself not as a quantum computer maker but as a provider of essential equipment for all quantum computer manufacturers. The company, with around 30 employees from experimental physics and engineering fields, plans to expand production capacity, grow its team, and enhance the MAX to handle complex multi-qubit chips with the new funding.