Uncork Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm that focuses on SaaS, consumer, marketplaces, hardware, and new technology startups. The firm currently investing out of two funds: a $200M Seed fund (Fund VII) and a $200M Opportunity fund (Plus III) earmarked for larger investments in mature, existing portfolio companies. Uncork Capital, formerly SoftTech VC was founded in 2004 and is based in Palo Alto, California, United States. Uncork Capital has adopted the Diversity Term Sheet Rider.

Uncork Capital

Khosla Ventures invests in companies that are bold, early and impactful. The firm was started in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, to provide venture assistance to entrepreneurs.  Headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., Khosla Ventures invests in a range of areas including AI, climate, sustainability, enterprise, consumer, fintech, digital health, medtech and diagnostics, therapeutics and frontier technology.

Khosla Ventures

Social Impact Capital specializes in investments that can deliver top decile returns in addition to a positive social impact we focus on the ''essentials of human need energy, water, food, health, environment, education, housing, access to capital, and social justice.

Social Impact Capital

Established in 2016 and based in Silicon Valley, FoundersX is a deep-domain winner with investment focus on deep tech, enterprise AI and digital infrastructure. We outcompete with our deep-dive research capacity. We are an early investor in multiple tech unicorns with several home runs, and have over 20 high growth companies valued at over $100M. We have highly competitive deal flows and high hit rate. Our firm is featured on the WSJ and Business Insider as a pioneering tech VC.

FoundersX Ventures

Y Combinator is a startup accelerator that invests in a large number of startups twice a year. It created a new model for funding startups. Twice a year, the company invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups. The startup accelerator works intensively with the companies for three months, to get them into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors. Each cycle culminates in Demo Day when the startups present their companies to a carefully selected, invite-only audience.

Y Combinator

Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a no-fee/no-equity organization that delivers an objectives-based mentoring program for massively scalable, pre-seed stage, science- and technology-based companies. Its nine-month program allows founders to learn from experienced entrepreneurs, increasing their likelihood of success. Founded in 2012 by Professor Ajay Agrawal at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, the program has expanded to thirteen sites across seven countries: Seattle, Oxford, Paris, Atlanta, Estonia, Wisconsin, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Berlin, Melbourne and Halifax.

Creative Destruction Lab (CDL)

big_bets is a fund that invests exclusively in software-intensive companies, that is, in companies built around code and data. There is a very important belief behind everything we do: we believe that the destiny of every atom is to become an electron. And precisely when an atom is turning into an electron is when the grand investment opportunities emerge.  Think about it, this occurred with media (all the money that once flowed into the atoms of magazines, newspapers, radios, and TVs is now in the electrons of social networks, search engines, e-commerces, etc.), with financial products (in the past, banks had a branch on every corner, but today there's a branch in everyone's pocket), with software (the older generation will recall buying software CDs at newsstands or having numerous servers within companies, today much of this is in the cloud), and with entertainment (no need to mention that books, music, and films have become apps on your phone) and so forth. It's precisely for this reason that our investment thesis is centered on identifying the largest industries currently transitioning from atoms to electrons and investing in and backing the entrepreneurs who are best equipped to accelerate this transformation. Therefore, our investments are highly agnostic, covering areas like financial services (Conta Simples, Ume, and Justos), identity (Unico), pharmaceutical industry (Menten AI and Pepper Bio), diagnostics (Huna), media (Festalab, Prota, and Newtail), primary education (Studdy), energy distribution (Lemon), devtools (Lazy AI, DataMilk, NuMind, Croct), among others.

big_bets

Menten AI

Menten AI designs new protein drugs and enzymes using quantum computers and machine learning. Proteins are large molecules that can twist into many shapes. Discovering the right shape for a protein to be a drug or a biocatalyst among almost endless possibilities is a major challenge. Menten AI solves this problem by using machine learning and quantum computing to find better starting points for discovery and further development. Quantum computing makes it possible to represent multiple states of the protein simultaneously and efficiently find the best designs. The team created the world’s first peptide designed on a quantum computer and is now working on peptide therapeutics for oncology and neurodegeneration, as well as on enzymes for industrial applications.

<div><p>Menten AI is a quantum biotech startup creating the next generation of protein-based drugs and enzymes. It uses a hybrid quantum-classical computing approach to create new proteins and partnered with hardware providers Rigetti and D-Wave.</p></div>

Quantum information processing is slowly becoming a reality, ushering in a new technological era.

Quantum Computing

<div><p>Menten AI designs new protein drugs and enzymes using quantum computers and machine learning. Proteins are large molecules that can twist into many shapes. Discovering the right shape for a protein to be a drug or a biocatalyst among almost endless possibilities is a major challenge. Menten AI solves this problem by using machine learning and quantum computing to find better starting points for discovery and further development. Quantum computing makes it possible to represent multiple states of the protein simultaneously and efficiently find the best designs. The team created the world&rsquo;s first peptide designed on a quantum computer and is now working on peptide therapeutics for oncology and neurodegeneration, as well as on enzymes for industrial applications.</p></div>

Targeting complex diseases with complex molecules

Large-molecule Therapeutics

<div>
  <p>
    Menten AI is a quantum biotech startup creating the next generation of protein-based drugs and enzymes. It uses a hybrid quantum-classical computing approach to create new proteins and partnered with hardware providers Rigetti and D-Wave.
  </p>
  <p>
    The company has developed the first protein design algorithm for current and near-term quantum computers and the world&rsquo;s first protein designed on a quantum computer.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    The UK-based Quantum Motion Technologies is engaged in developing quantum computer architectures based on silicon technology, which are compatible with standard silicon processing (CMOS process). The company believes this approach will enable it to create scalable quantum computers with thousands to millions of qubits.
  </p>
</div>


Quantum Motion Technologies

<div>
  <p>
    SeeQC is a quantum hardware startup spun out from Hypres, a leading developer of superconductor integrated circuits. SeeQC is developing a unique digital system-on-a-chip design that integrates classical and quantum circuits into a hybrid system in order to overcome quantum computers&rsquo; current challenges. The company owns and operates a state-of-the-art superconductive chip fabrication facility and provides foundry services for superconducting devices. It also has facilities in London, UK, and Naples, Italy.
  </p>
  <p>
    Through the hybrid approach, SeeQC believes it can reduce the cost of quantum computers by 1/400th, provide greater control, and reduce energy requirements significantly.
  </p>
</div>


SeeQC

<div>
  <p>
    IonQ develops general-purpose quantum computers using trapped-ion technology. Although the company calls itself a full-stack player, its focus has been on developing hardware. In December 2020, it revealed its quantum roadmap that introduced its new metric, &ldquo;algorithmic qubits (AQ),&rdquo; which represents the largest number of qubits that can be deployed while maintaining high performance and considering error correction. Its latest system IonQ Aria achieved 20 AQ, as of May 2023. In terms of physical qubits, IonQ&rsquo;s latest hardware had 32 qubits, which were expected to hold 22 AQs.
  </p>
  <p>
    Founded in 2015, IonQ&rsquo;s main competitive advantage stems from its approach to designing qubits that allow computers to be operated at room temperature with lower error rates.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    IonQ unveiled the industry&rsquo;s first glass-based trapped ion computing chip called the Reconfigurable Multicore Quantum Architecture (RMQA) technology, in August 2021, which the company believes will significantly expand the longevity of qubits and enable at least triple-digit scalability.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Key customers and partnerships</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    The company secured Samsung&rsquo;s first-ever quantum computing investment (co-led by a UAE wealth fund) of USD 55 million in 2019. IonQ believes it can tap into Samsung&rsquo;s expertise in miniaturization to shrink quantum computing components.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    IonQ secured a strategic partnership with SoftBank Investment Advisers (June 2021) to provide support in deploying the company&rsquo;s quantum systems globally, and with Accenture (September 2021) to accelerate the industrial application of IonQ&rsquo;s quantum systems. It also joined hands with the University of Maryland (UMD) in September 2021 to establish a national quantum lab in Maryland. In October, UMD and IonQ demonstrated a breakthrough cost-effective, error correction approach to enable building a fault-tolerant practical trapped ion-based quantum computer.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    The company offers access to its quantum computer via all major quantum cloud computing platforms including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Marketplace (GCM). It is also integrated with major software development kits (SDK) including IBM Qiskit and Google Cirq. In May 2023, IonQ began offering its IonQ Aria system on Amazon Braket.
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Funding and financials</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker &ldquo;IONQ,&rdquo; in October 2021 via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger. The IPO raised more than USD 650 million and made IonQ the first publicly traded pure-play quantum computing company. 
  </p>
</div>


IonQ

<div>
  <p>
    Rigetti is an end-to-end provider of general-purpose quantum computers. The company&rsquo;s approach to developing computers is based on superconducting qubit technology, similar to Google and IBM. Since 2017, the company has operated a cloud-based quantum platform that allows developers to either create applications or use Rigetti&rsquo;s virtual machine.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    Rigetti is well-positioned to compete with incumbents as well as startups because of its advancements in hardware, which is currently used by 14 other companies (mostly other quantum software startups). Rigetti introduced the world&rsquo;s first multi-chip quantum processor, in June 2021, that physically connects multiple chips with their own qubits in a single functional processor, which is expected to improve scalability. It also launched its first commercially available 80-qubit quantum system in February 2022, which exceeds the qubit count of any other startup, but is lower than that of IBM.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    In June 2022, the company expanded its geographical presence with the launch of its 32-qubit, cloud-based 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11308">
      Aspen system in the UK
    </a>
     market. It also strengthened its position in the software segment via the acquisition of QxBranch (a Washington-based quantum computing software company) in 2019. In December 2023, the company launched its first 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24731">
      Quantum Processing Unit (QPU)
    </a>
    , Novera, which is based on its fourth-gen Ankaa-class architecture. The price of the QPU starts from USD 900,000.
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Key customers and partnerships</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    In July 2021, the company partnered with Astex Pharmaceuticals to apply quantum technology to drug discovery. This partnership was a stepping stone for Rigetti to commercially apply quantum computing to the pharmaceutical industry. Additionally, as part of an InnovateUK grant, the company partnered with 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11334">
      Riverlane
    </a>
     in June 2022 to explore and develop error correction solutions. In October 2023, the company was awarded with a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22419">
      (DARPA) 
    </a>
    contract as part of the Imagining Practical Applications for a Quantum Tomorrow (IMPAQT) program to advance quantum algorithms for solving combinatorial optimization problems. In January 2024, the company collaborated with 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25242">
      Moody&rsquo;s Analytics
    </a>
     to enhance machine-learning methods for the financial sector using quantum computing abilities. In February 2024, Rigetti Computing and Riverlane joined a project led by the 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27062">
      Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
    </a>
    , a part of the US Department of Energy (DOE), to explore the possibility of integrating a quantum computer and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Funding and financials</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    Rigetti 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8880">
      went public
    </a>
     on Nasdaq under the ticker &ldquo;RGTI,&rdquo; in March 2022 via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger. The IPO raised USD 261.8 million and made Rigetti the second publicly traded pure-play quantum computing company, following IonQ. 
  </p>
</div>


Rigetti Computing

<div>
  <p>
    PsiQuantum develops general-purpose quantum computers based on the silicon photonic approach, a relatively new method which is capable of using the existing silicon supply chain of conventional electronics. This will help the company keep production costs low and provide scalability, allowing PsiQuantum to focus on building a commercially viable quantum computer with one million qubits, the company&rsquo;s primary development goal.
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Key customers and partnerships</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    Working towards its goal, in May 2021 PsiQuantum entered into a partnership with global chip manufacturer 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/2245">
      <u>GlobalFoundries</u>
    </a>
     (GF) to build an integrated, silicon photonics-based quantum system called the &ldquo;Q1 system&rdquo; by manufacturing quantum chips in GF&rsquo;s semiconductor foundry. This partnership also received US federal funding of 
    <a href="https://www.schumer.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/schumer-announces-25-million-for-globalfoundries-and-psiquantum-to-develop-the-next-generation-of-quantum-computers-at-rome-air-force-research-lab-and-malta-campus-fed-funding-will-strengthen-national-security-supercharge-us-technological-competitiveness_ensure-upstate-new-york-continues-to-lead-quantum-technology">
      <u>USD 25 million</u>
    </a>
     in April 2022. The company partnered with Japanese quantum software company 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7246">
      <u>QunaSys</u>
    </a>
     in December 2021 to research quantum-based industrial chemistry and material science solutions and partnered with the UK-based Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22518">
      <u>Hartree Centre</u>
    </a>
     in October 2023 to develop Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC) applications in the UK. In January 2024, PsiQuantum and 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25972">
      <u>Mitsubishi UFJ </u>
    </a>
    Financial Group (MUFG) entered PsiQuantum's Qlimate initiative project with Mitsubishi Chemical to research energy-efficient materials to promote a low-carbon economy.
  </p>
  <p>
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Funding and financials</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    Founded in 2016, the company has remained relatively quiet about its silicon photonic approach but gained wider attention after attracting the two largest funding rounds in industry history with GBP 179 (USD 230 million) in 2019 and USD 150 million in April 2020. In July 2021, the company surpassed its own record with a Series D funding round of up to USD 450 million, making PsiQuantum the highest privately funded quantum startup at the time. The proceeds were earmarked for building the 1 million-qubit computer and expanding its team of experts. 
  </p>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


PsiQuantum

Startups in this space offer solutions for building enterprise-specific applications and automations

Developers of quantum algorithms and software programs for specific industries such as pharmaceuticals or finance.

<div>
  <p>
    Menten AI designs new protein drugs and enzymes using quantum computers and machine learning. Proteins are large molecules that can twist into many shapes. Discovering the right shape for a protein to be a drug or a biocatalyst among almost endless possibilities is a major challenge. Menten AI solves this problem by using machine learning and quantum computing to find better starting points for discovery and further development. Quantum computing makes it possible to represent multiple states of the protein simultaneously and efficiently find the best designs. The team created the world&rsquo;s first peptide designed on a quantum computer and is now working on peptide therapeutics for oncology and neurodegeneration, as well as on enzymes for industrial applications.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    Innovent Biologics, Inc. is a privately held biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing and manufacturing monoclonal antibodies to be marketed in China and elsewhere around the world. Innovent is funded by Fidelity's venture arm, a prominent investment firm in the US, Lilly Ventures, and Suzhou bioBay. The registered capital is 30 million US Dollars. The founders and senior management team of Innovent have over 70 years of combined work experience in the discovery, development, and manufacture of biologics in the US, Europe, and worldwide and were involved in the launch of such products as Bexxar, Conbercept, Natrecor, Oncorine, Recombivax HB, and others.
  </p>
</div>


Innovent Biologics

<div>
  <p>
    ADC Therapeutics is a clinical-stage oncology drug discovery and development company focused on advancing highly potent and targeted antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of hematological cancers and solid tumors. Their ADCs are developed using the latest-generation pyrrolobenzodiazepine (PBD) dimer technology providing a superior therapeutic index compared to first-generation PBD ADCs in preclinical studies. PBD dimers are very potent toxins that actively kill cancer cells and have a differentiated mechanism of action than warheads commonly used in other ADCs.
  </p>
</div>


ADC Therapeutics

<div>
  <p>
    Sirnaomics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics for critical human diseases by using RNA interference (RNAi) technology. The RNAi technology is used to discover and develop novel therapeutics with a focus on oncology, anti-fibrotic therapeutics, and viral infection. Its proprietary Polypeptide Nano-Particle (PNP) technology is used for small interfering RNA (siRNA) drug delivery. This technology allows accessing the tumor microenvironment (TME), as well as various cell types in the liver. Sirnaomics was founded by Patrick Y. Lu and David M. Evans in 2007 and is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
  </p>
</div>


Sirnaomics

<div>
  <p>
    Sesen Bio is a late clinical-stage company advancing a broad pipeline of novel anti-cancer agents based on their Targeted Protein Therapeutics (TPTs) platform. Their TPTs genetically combine targeting antibody fragments with cytotoxic protein payloads to create a single fusion protein through Eleven's proprietary one-step manufacturing process.
  </p>
</div>


Sesen Bio

<div>
  <p>
    ACELYRIN is a biopharma company focused on providing patients life-changing new treatment options by identifying, acquiring, and accelerating the development and commercialization of promising drug candidates and by leveraging its expertise to rapidly advance these medicines to patients.
  </p>
</div>


ACELYRIN

AL/ML used to identify potential drug targets, and support protein engineering and optimization

Companies that develop large molecules that can be used to replace or supplement deficient or malfunctioning proteins in the body

Menten AI

Quantum Computing

Key stats

EDGE Insights

The LEGO of life: Building new organisms with generative biology

Company Brief

Funding

Investors

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless