Startup Aegiq Raises £1.8m for QKD

Aegiq has announced that it secured seed investment from an investor syndicate led by High-Tech Gründerfonds, with participation of Deepbridge Capital and business angel investors.

Together, with existing funding from Innovate UK, the seed investment brings Aegiq’s total available funding to over £3.5m ($4.8m). Having completed the first closing Aegiq is considering funds to join the second closing. Aegiq is a spin-out of the University of Sheffield, founded by a team consisting of CEO Dr. Max Sich, CTO Dr. Scott Dufferwiel, and CFO Andrii Iamshanov. It had recently won the prestigious Institute of Physics Business Start-Up Award for the development of its breakthrough quantum photonics platform using proprietary deterministic single-photon sources.

Aegiq’s platform technology enables a range of new R&D applications in quantum science, sensing, imaging and others, and is ready to service this market. The technology will be also developed into a new generation of networking with quantum security, including quantum key distribution (QKD), as well as large-scale quantum computing applications.

Aegiq has been awarded funding for several projects supported by Quantum Technologies Challenge at Innovate UK (part of UK Research & Innovation), with total value of the funded consortia exceeding £20m. The funding includes QT Assemble – Integrated Quantum Technology Programme, and Innovate UK’s multi-million grant to develop secure quantum communications for fibre-optic and satellite based applications.