The quantum computing world tends to obsess over qubit counts. So when a two-year-old Dutch startup emerged from stealth this spring with an 18-qubit processor, the number itself wasn't what turned heads—it was what those qubits were made of, and where they might eventually be built.
Groove Quantum, spun out of the powerhouse QuTech lab at TU Delft, announced a €16 million seed round on April 30. The financing—€10 million in equity co-led by Innovation Industries and 55 North, with Verve Ventures and the European Innovation Council Fund joining, plus €6 million in grants from the EIC Accelerator and EU Chips JU programs—arrived alongside the public unveiling of what the company claims is the largest semiconductor spin-qubit processor demonstrated to date.
The processor uses germanium hole-spin qubits, a platform that's gotten less attention than its silicon cousin but offers a tantalizing proposition: compatibility with the same CMOS manufacturing processes that churn out billions of conventional chips. That means Groove could, in theory, skip the custom fabrication headaches and tap into existing 300-millimeter foundry infrastructure. Whether that theory survives contact with industrial reality is the €16 million question.
Fast Gates, High Fidelity, Familiar Tools
According to an early April preprint posted to arXiv, Groove's 18-qubit device clocked average single-qubit gate fidelities of 99.8 percent—with a median nudging 99.9 percent. Those are numbers that matter. Quantum error correction, the holy grail that could make these machines actually useful, demands fidelities hovering near or above 99.9 percent to function efficiently.
The architecture is modular, a 2×N design intended for parallel operation of what the company calls "unit cells." It's the kind of building-block approach that sounds straightforward on paper but tends to reveal its complications at scale.
Germanium brings certain advantages to the table. Its strong spin-orbit coupling allows for fast, all-electrical control of qubits—no magnetic fields required, unlike some competing platforms. That's appealing from an engineering standpoint, though it's hardly a settled contest. Silicon spin qubits, championed by groups like Australia's Diraq (working with Belgium's imec), have demonstrated comparable fidelities and enjoy deeper ties to the existing semiconductor ecosystem.
The QuTech Alumni Network
Groove's founders aren't exactly newcomers to this arena. CEO Dr. Anne-Marije Zwerver finished her PhD at TU Delft in mid-2022, focusing explicitly on scaling spin qubits for industrial production. Her dissertation work involved collaboration with Intel on industrially manufactured spin-qubit wafers, research that landed in Nature Electronics the same year.
CTO Dr. Nico W. Hendrickx led the QuTech team that first demonstrated fast two-qubit logic in germanium back in 2020, followed by a four-qubit germanium processor in 2021—both published in Nature. He picked up the Christiaan Huygens Science Prize in 2023 for the effort, a detail that underscores the academic pedigree underpinning the venture.
It's a pattern familiar in deep-tech spinouts: credentialed researchers, flagship publications, and a bet that what works in a university cleanroom can be wrestled into something a foundry might actually produce.
From 18 to 100, and Then What?
Groove's stated plan is to push from 18 qubits to 100, assembling what it describes as a "unit cell" with the architectural elements necessary for further scaling. More importantly, perhaps, the company aims to shift manufacturing out of research labs and into established semiconductor foundries—a transition that's easier to announce than execute.
The funding follows earlier support from the EIC Accelerator program the company secured in 2025, less than a year after its founding. That's a notable pace, though it also raises the usual questions about timelines. Deep-tech startups often burn through capital faster than expected when the rubber meets the road.
Europe's Semiconductor Quantum Push
Groove isn't working in a vacuum. The European quantum landscape has seen a flurry of activity around semiconductor-compatible platforms. France's Quobly pulled together a €21 million package in 2025 to industrialize a 100-qubit silicon-dot chip. Diraq, partnering with imec, reported silicon spin qubits exceeding 99 percent fidelities last fall.
And the institutional backing is real. The EU launched its SPINS pilot line in April under the Chips JU program—a 25-partner consortium coordinated by imec, explicitly designed to accelerate semiconductor spin-qubit development across Europe. That reflects a broader strategic calculus: aligning quantum computing development with existing semiconductor manufacturing capabilities could give European players an edge in a field where the U.S. and China have poured billions.
Whether that edge materializes depends on execution. Pilot lines and research consortia are one thing; shipping actual quantum processors at scale is another.
The Foundry Gamble
What distinguishes Groove—and the broader spin-qubit cohort—is this foundry fixation. The promise is compelling: leverage decades of semiconductor manufacturing expertise, avoid reinventing the fabrication wheel, and potentially scale faster than platforms that require bespoke production environments.
The risk is equally clear. Foundries are optimized for classical chips, not the finicky, cryogenic demands of quantum devices. Translating lab demonstrations into foundry-manufactured qubits is an open challenge across the field. Fidelities can degrade. Yields can plummet. Integration headaches multiply.
Groove's germanium platform, for all its technical merits, hasn't yet proven it can navigate those obstacles at industrial scale. Neither, to be fair, has anyone else in the spin-qubit world.
The Long Game
The quantum computing industry remains, in many respects, pre-commercial. No platform has definitively proven it can deliver fault-tolerant, error-corrected computation—the threshold where these machines might start solving problems classical computers can't touch. That's still years away, optimistically.
What's happening now is a sorting process. Which qubit technologies can scale? Which can be manufactured reliably? Which will attract the capital, talent, and partnerships necessary to survive the brutal middle years between lab demos and market traction?
Groove has credentials, capital, and a technological bet that aligns with Europe's semiconductor ambitions. Whether germanium spin qubits prove more scalable than silicon variants—or whether some entirely different platform leapfrogs them both—remains genuinely unclear.
What seems certain is that the competition has shifted. This is no longer purely an academic exercise. The race to build scalable, manufacturable quantum processors has entered the industrial phase, and the Dutch are placing their chips on germanium and foundry compatibility.
Whether that bet pays off may take another decade to know for sure. But with €16 million in fresh funding and an 18-qubit processor already running, Groove has bought itself a seat at the table.
