QuantumDiamonds raises €91M — €15M equity, €76M non-dilutive — to bring quantum sensing into semiconductor fabs

QuantumDiamonds, a Munich deep tech spinout from the Technical University of Munich founded in 2022 by Kevin Berghoff (CEO) and Dr. Fleming Bruckmaier (CTO), has raised a total of €91 million — broken down as €15 million in equity and €76 million in non-dilutive government funding — to deploy quantum sensing inspection systems in semiconductor fabrication plants globally.

The equity round is led by World Fund, with participation from Bayern Kapital, IQ Capital, Earlybird, First Momentum, UnternehmerTUM, Creator Fund, Onsight Ventures, and a group of unnamed angels. The non-dilutive component draws from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the Free State of Bavaria, and the EU Chips Act framework.

The problem that optical tools can't solve

Modern chip fabs run at defect levels that are approaching the physical limits of what conventional optical inspection can detect. A microscopic particle, a nanometre-scale surface irregularity, or a subsurface crack invisible to light-based tools can cause yields to collapse — sometimes without a clear cause. As transistors shrink and process complexity increases, the gap between what inspection equipment can see and what needs to be seen is widening.

QuantumDiamonds' approach uses quantum sensing — specifically, nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in diamond — to detect magnetic and electric fields at resolutions that optical methods cannot reach. The technology is non-destructive and operates in real time, designed to integrate into existing fab workflows rather than replace them. The pitch to chipmakers: detect the defects you're currently missing before they become yield losses.

The company's validation comes partly from the response it has received from chipmakers themselves. "The response from leading chipmakers has been clear," Berghoff said: "they see our technology as essential for solving yield challenges that today's systems can't address."

Why the government co-invested at five to one

The €76 million non-dilutive component is not incidental to the story. It reflects a specific political and industrial logic: the EU Chips Act was designed to rebuild European semiconductor manufacturing capacity and reduce dependence on Asian fabs. Inspection equipment — the tools that determine whether a chip is defective before it ships — is part of that infrastructure. German federal and state money entering alongside private venture capital, at a ratio of roughly five to one, signals that QuantumDiamonds is being treated as strategic industrial infrastructure, not just a startup.

Daria Saharova, managing partner at World Fund, framed the investment explicitly around ASML: "QD can become Europe's next ASML: a first-of-a-kind technology, built and scaled here, in a $104 billion equipment market that the entire AI economy depends on." World Fund's mandate is European deep tech with a climate angle — semiconductor efficiency and yield improvement reduce the energy and materials wasted on defective chips.

The 18-month test

The capital goes to three things: delivering lab systems to leading chipmakers, advancing wafer-level capabilities for higher-throughput inspection, and more than doubling the engineering team within 12 months.

The ASML comparison is instructive less as a valuation claim and more as a category argument. ASML built a monopoly in a tool the entire semiconductor industry depends on. QuantumDiamonds is attempting something structurally similar: inspection equipment that the chip supply chain cannot afford to route around once it is proven to work. Whether chipmakers who express interest translate that into contracts — and whether those contracts justify the compound non-dilutive obligations implied by the government funding structure — is the question the next year will answer.