Eight Months, RMB 1 Billion: Capital Bets on Neutral-Atom Quantum Computing
Funding news from quantum computing companies is usually unremarkable. This one is different, because it reports two companies in two countries at once—and the numbers line up with engineering metrics.
On October 10, Taiyi Liangsheng (Shanghai) Quantum Technology announced a new funding round. The company was founded in January 2026, and its cumulative financing has exceeded RMB 1 billion—less than four months after its previous RMB 300 million Pre-A round.
Around the same time, the US neutral-atom quantum computing startup Oratomic completed a $475 million Series B at a $5.4 billion valuation.
Both investments point in the same direction. They are about the same thing.
🔬 Why Ytterbium Atoms
The selling point of the neutral-atom route is written in physics: atoms carry no charge, so unlike ion traps, the equipment doesn't need to move into an ultra-low-temperature vacuum chamber. Atomic arrays can be rearranged, leaving more room for scaling. Players on this route globally include Atom Computing, QuEra, and Pasqal; Google also added a neutral-atom research team this year.
More than twenty Chinese companies are already on the same route. Buchou Quantum, also in Shanghai and also pursuing neutral atoms, completed a several-hundred-million-yuan A round in August.
Taiyi Liangsheng's technology base is ytterbium (Yb) neutral atoms; its founding team calls itself the pioneer of China's ytterbium neutral-atom route.
🔧 The Three Most Concrete Numbers in Three Weeks of News
Funding figures can be packaged; engineering metrics cannot. The three pieces of progress Taiyi disclosed in this round are exactly the kind that can be checked.
Full prototype integration took six months. Atomic manipulation, vacuum, lasers, optics, measurement and control, real-time control, and software—previously separate modules and software layers—were integrated into one system.
Real-time control latency was pushed to the 10-microsecond level. Images captured by cameras are processed to drive atomic rearrangement; this feedback loop has initially been closed. The significance of this number is that subsequent capabilities—continuous loading, quantum control, automatic error correction—all depend on this loop.
The quantum compiler LUOSHU was open-sourced, compiling typical 20-qubit circuits in under 2 milliseconds.
Three personnel and organizational details are also worth noting. Founder and CTO Liu Hongbin is a former chief architect of Microsoft Quantum who participated in the world's first end-to-end chemical simulation combining HPC, quantum computing, and AI. Founder and CEO Fang Zhenghao holds a chemistry bachelor's degree from Fudan University and an EMBA from CEIBS; public reports say he managed assets for overseas institutional investors including the Gates family fund. The two were classmates at Fudan. The team is nearly 100 strong, with core members from MIT, Cambridge, the University of Pennsylvania, Tsinghua, Peking University, JILA, and the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore.
💰 The Structure of the Money Says More Than the Amount
Taiyi's investor list falls into three categories: market-oriented professional funds (Jinqiu Fund, Yunbo Capital, Hongruida Investment), state-owned and local platforms (Chengdu Gaoxin Vision Fund, Lingang Frontier Investment), and industrial capital. Existing shareholder Tsinghua Holdings Capital (Huakong) led the round, while Hengxu Capital, Boyuan Capital, Yarui Capital, and Gaomai Capital over-subscribed.
According to Photon Box statistics, domestic quantum computing financing in the first half of this year reached about $1.263 billion—more than the US and all other countries combined. Over the previous three rounds, shareholders also included IDG Capital, Gaorong Capital, iFlytek Ventures, JinkoSolar, Yaben Chemical, and the Shanghai Future Industry Fund.
The industrial capital list hints at the shape of the customer list. Taiyi's publicly stated focus is five industries: nuclear industry, energy and chemicals, new energy and new materials, biopharma, and finance. It has established cooperation with more than a dozen industrial clients, all in joint research, scenario exploration, and proof-of-concept work.
| Item | Taiyi Liangsheng | Oratomic | |---|---|---| | Founded | January 2026 | Not verified | | This round | Undisclosed; cumulative RMB 1B+ | $475M Series B | | Valuation | Unicorn scale, undisclosed | $5.4B | | Technical route | Ytterbium (Yb) neutral atoms | Neutral atoms | | Public engineering metrics | 6-month integration, 10 μs latency, 2 ms compile | Not verified | | Previous round | RMB 300M Pre-A, less than four months ago | Not verified |
🧭 From Physical Qubits to System Capability
Both press releases put the same sentence in a prominent place: the focus of competition is shifting from physical qubit counts toward quantum error correction, system reliability, and large-scale fault-tolerant computing capability.
Liu Hongbin is more specific. He defines fault-tolerant computing as "a complete systems engineering effort," aiming to convert ever-growing physical scale into correctable, scalable, computable system capability.
He also positions the relationship between quantum computing and AI: future general-purpose fault-tolerant quantum computing will not replace GPUs but will become a new type of computing resource within the AI computing system—the goal being to connect quantum computers into the AI stack so CPU, GPU, and QPU work together.
These are industry self-descriptions, not third-party validation. A company eight months old claiming to have reached world-class standards has only itself and the press releases repeating it saying so.
🔍 Sources and Caveats
- Funding and engineering figures come from multiple Chinese press releases dated October 11–12 (Dazhong Caijing, C114, A5站长网, Photon Box retellings); the company's official press release was not obtained
- The exact amount of this round is undisclosed; RMB 1 billion is a cumulative figure; "unicorn scale" comes without a valuation number
- Oratomic's $475M and $5.4B valuation are cited via Wall Street Journal retellings; the WSJ original was not verified
- The 10-microsecond latency and 2-millisecond compile time are company self-tests, with no third-party replication seen
- "More than twenty domestic neutral-atom companies" and "$1.263 billion domestic financing in H1" are cited from Photon Box statistics; methodology unverified
- The company's claim of "reaching world-class standards" is a self-assessment