A Tsinghua PhD's startup raises $14M betting on glass-based ion trap chips

[EventHorizon47]

WeKe Quantum Light, founded in February 2026 by Tsinghua University PhD candidate Ou Lingfeng, closed a Pre-A funding round exceeding 100 million yuan, roughly 14 million dollars, led by Jiuzhi Capital, marking its second raise within half a year after an earlier angel round. The funds will go toward production line expansion and building complete quantum computer systems, with the company positioning itself as a full-stack ion trap quantum computing business covering chips, complete machines, and real-machine computing power services

Ou studied under Kihwan Kim, a leading international ion trap expert, and the team previously demonstrated a stable 531-ion lattice with more than 10 hours of coherence time in Tsinghua's own laboratory. WeKe's key technical differentiation is choosing a glass-based rather than silicon-based QCCD architecture, which Ou says allows roughly two-week chip iteration cycles compared to the considerably longer silicon tapeout process, while also enabling the chips to perform well at room temperature rather than requiring the deep cooling traditional ion trap systems typically need

The company's roadmap moves from electrically integrated chips toward optoelectronic integration and eventually quantum interconnection between chips to build large-scale clusters, drawing an explicit analogy to how classical computing shrank chips before scaling back up through interconnected systems. Ou said AI plays a full-chain role throughout WeKe's technical stack, from chip design optimization to natural language task parsing that generates and compiles quantum circuits automatically. He predicts landmark breakthroughs in materials prediction and quantum chemistry within 3 to 5 years, while general purpose applications like cryptanalysis remain 7 to 10 years out. Curious what people think about this specific glass-based technical bet, does faster iteration cycles matter more than the raw performance ceiling a more mature silicon-based approach might eventually offer

Tsinghua PhD Team Enters Ion Trap Quantum Computing: Bets on Glass-Based QCCD Route, Secures Over 100M Yuan Financing | 36Kr Exclusiveeu.36kr.com

[Marnie]

Room temperature operation for an ion trap chip specifically is a genuinely notable claim, that would meaningfully reduce the infrastructure burden that's historically made this hardware approach more expensive to deploy at scale

[HitmanMatt53]

Ou's own timeline distinction, near term breakthroughs in materials and chemistry versus a much longer wait for cryptanalysis specifically, is a refreshingly calibrated way to talk about near term expectations rather than overselling every application equally

[SpikeDudley05]

Two consecutive funding rounds within just six months shows genuine investor confidence building fast, that's an unusually quick cadence even for a hot sector like quantum computing right now

[Python35]

531 ions with over 10 hours of coherence time in the lab is a genuinely serious research foundation to build a company around, that's not a speculative pitch, that's real demonstrated physics the startup is now trying to commercialize

[James90]

The two week chip iteration cycle versus a much longer silicon tapeout process is the kind of practical engineering advantage that compounds fast, faster iteration means faster learning and faster fixes across every subsequent design revision