- QuantumDiamonds has raised €91 million, with €15 million in equity led by World Fund and €76 million in non-dilutive funding from the EU Chips Act.
- So far, QuantumDiamonds is the only startup to receive manufacturing funding from the Chips Act. Other recipients have been established companies like GlobalFoundries and STMicroelectronics.
- The Munich-based company has tested its diamond inspection technology with nine of the world’s ten largest chipmakers.
Europe makes about 10% of the world’s chips while using 20% of them. That math is why the European Commission just approved public funding for QuantumDiamonds, a three-year-old Munich startup, under a program it has so far reserved for the semiconductor industry’s biggest names.
The company has raised €91 million to scale production of its quantum-based chip inspection technology. €15 million of that is equity, led by World Fund, with participation from Bayern Kapital and existing investors IQ Capital, Earlybird, First Momentum, UnternehmerTUM, Creator Fund, and Onsight Ventures.
The remaining €76 million is non-dilutive funding from the German federal government and the Free State of Bavaria, approved under the European Chips Act on June 23.
“The response from leading chipmakers has been clear: they see our technology as essential for solving yield challenges that today’s systems can’t address,” said Kevin Berghoff, the company’s chief executive and co-founder.
“The response from leading chipmakers has been clear: they see our technology as essential for solving yield challenges that today’s systems can’t address,” says Kevin Berghoff, the company’s chief executive and co-founder.
A funding mechanism usually reserved for industry leaders
So far, all other manufacturing grants under the Chips Act have gone to established companies like GlobalFoundries, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, X-FAB, ams OSRAM, and Diamond Foundry Europe. QuantumDiamonds is the first startup to get funding in this category, according to the Commission’s official list of approved projects.
The semiconductor industry is struggling with yield problems. As chips pack more transistors into smaller, three-dimensional designs, defects are harder to spot. Improving yield by just one per cent can save millions each week for high-volume products. Standard optical and X-ray inspection tools often cannot see past the first layers of advanced chip packages.
Diamonds offer an alternative to light and X-rays
Founded in 2022 by Berghoff and chief technology officer Fleming Bruckmaier as a spin-out of the Technical University of Munich, the company uses atomic-scale defects in synthetic diamonds to detect magnetic fields with high precision. Instead of just imaging a chip’s surface, it can see the electrical currents inside.
Its first commercial system, the QDm.1, enables non-destructive, three-dimensional current imaging at the nanoscale, revealing defect depth and position beyond what standard tools can. For example, a factory can find faults inside stacked chip packages without damaging them. Tasks that used to take weeks in specialised labs can now be done in minutes.
Its closest technical competitor, Swiss diamond-sensing startup Qnami, was acquired by Quantum Design in June. Qnami’s scanning-probe technology is now part of a broader scientific instrumentation portfolio instead of being scaled independently.
Major established players remain focused on traditional optical and electron-beam inspection, including KLA Corporation, which holds approximately 17.5% of the market, Applied Materials, and Onto Innovation. These companies rely on light and electron beams, while QuantumDiamonds’ quantum sensing can reveal what conventional methods cannot.
Strategic considerations behind the funding decision
The global market for semiconductor metrology and inspection is expected to reach $10.9 billion in 2026 and grow to $20.2 billion by 2035, according to Global Market Insights.
“Europe uses around 20% of the world’s semiconductors while producing only 10%, and that gap is exactly where our strategic power leaks away. 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,” says Daria Saharova, managing partner at World Fund.
Mason Sinclair, a partner at IQ Capital, which first invested in the company in late 2023, focused on the company’s achievements: “Since our initial seed investment in late 2023, the pace of technical progress at QD has been exceptional. They’ve executed rapidly, assembled a world-class technical team, and built strong partnerships across the chip ecosystem.”
The company plans to open the first part of a €152 million production facility in eastern Munich in the second half of 2026. This site will make its current and future inspection systems. The main question is whether QuantumDiamonds can turn its nine proof-of-concept partnerships into paid contracts before a bigger competitor buys the technology, as happened when Quantum Design acquired Qnami.
