Ground State Ventures Closes $88M for Europe's Quantum-First VC, Crushing Its $70M Target
TL;DR
Amsterdam-based Ground State Ventures, the firm formerly known as QDNL Participations, announced an $88M (€75.2M) fund close on April 28, 2026, blowing past its original $70M target by 26%. Led by founder Ton van 't Noordende with quantum hardware veteran Chad Rigetti as Partner, the firm is positioning itself as the global first-cheque investor for quantum-tech startups, with 15 portfolio companies already at a combined $1.3B valuation. The rebrand and oversubscription mark a clear signal: quantum has graduated from science project to fundable category, and Europe is producing its first dedicated category leader.
Key Takeaways
The category specialist trade is back in vogue. Generalist deeptech funds keep claiming quantum coverage, but Ground State raised on the thesis that you cannot underwrite a superconducting qubit company the way you underwrite a SaaS company. By committing to the first cheque in nearly every deal and recruiting physicists with PhDs from Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley, the firm is making expertise its moat. LPs clearly bought the argument: 26% oversubscribed in a market where most VC funds are extending raises by quarters.
Chad Rigetti as Partner is the strongest quantum signal of 2026. Rigetti, who founded Rigetti Computing and took it public via SPAC, joining a fund as Partner rather than running another startup is a notable quantum-industry data point. It validates Ground State's thesis to founders and gives the firm something most generalist competitors lack: a GP who has actually built and operated a quantum hardware company through the trough.
$1.3B portfolio valuation in 15 months is aggressive but defensible. Most early-stage quantum bets are still pre-product, so mark-to-market gains are noisy. That said, the prior fund's portfolio has absorbed enough follow-on capital to validate the underwriting at the seed stage, especially given that Q*Bird, Qblox, QuantWare and QphoX are now standard names cited in any European quantum survey. The track record is what got LPs to over-subscribe Fund II, not the rebrand.
Europe finally has a quantum-native fund with US distribution. Offices in Amsterdam, London and San Francisco are not a vanity move; they reflect where the founders sit. Five US portfolio companies, nine European, one Swiss, plus active sourcing in India and Australia is a credible global mandate from a firm small enough to actually execute on it. This is the kind of focused-but-global structure that European LPs have asked for and rarely seen delivered.
Fund Overview
Fund Name: Ground State Ventures (Fund I, formerly QDNL Participations Fund)
Fund Size: $88M (€75.2M), exceeded $70M target by 26%; final close expected near term
Stage: Pre-seed and seed (first cheque investor of record)
Check Size: Not formally disclosed; concentrated portfolio of ~30 companies implies meaningful first cheques relative to fund size
Geography: Global, anchored in Europe with US and Asia-Pacific reach
Focus: Early-stage quantum technology, computing, sensing, networking and components
Key LPs: Anchor support from Quantum Delta NL ecosystem; broader institutional and strategic LP base undisclosed
Why This Fund Matters
Quantum is one of the very few categories where the gap between technical promise and venture-fundability has remained stubbornly wide. Most generalist funds either avoid the space or write small option-bets without the in-house physics talent to underwrite hardware risk. The result has been chronic underfunding at the seed stage and a wave of mediocre US SPACs that left LPs cynical. Ground State's pitch directly addresses that gap: dedicated capital, physics-first diligence, and a willingness to be the company's investor of record from incorporation.
The decision to rebrand from QDNL Participations to Ground State Ventures is more than cosmetic. QDNL signalled a Dutch government adjacency that helped on the way in but capped the firm's ambition as it scaled globally. The new name borrows from quantum physics itself, which signals to founders that this is the dedicated specialist they want on their cap table, not a sovereign-flavoured spinout. Rebrands rarely move LP commits, but in this case the timing alongside Rigetti's Partner-level commitment and a 26% oversubscription suggests the new identity is doing real work.
Europe also needed this. The continent has spent a decade investing public money into quantum research without producing many fundable companies at scale. Most European quantum startups raise their seed locally and then have to find US lead investors for Series A. Ground State's transatlantic footprint at least gives founders a bridge before they have to migrate cap-table-first to California.
The contrarian read is that quantum is still too early for venture economics. Even the most credible quantum hardware companies are years from material revenue, and the failure rate inside the portfolio over the next decade will be brutal. But the right way to think about a fund like this is power-law-on-power-law: if even one of the 15 existing portfolio companies turns into the IBM of quantum, the rest can go to zero and the fund still delivers top-decile returns.
The Team
Ton van 't Noordende founded the firm in 2022 as QDNL Participations, with anchor support from the Dutch quantum ecosystem. He has built the team around the conviction that quantum diligence is fundamentally a technical exercise, recruiting investors who hold doctorates in physics rather than recycled MBAs. Chad Rigetti's addition as Partner is the marquee hire. Rigetti founded Rigetti Computing in 2013 and remains one of the few people on the planet who has built a publicly traded quantum hardware company end to end. His operational scar tissue is exactly what early-stage quantum founders need on their boards. The broader investment team draws from Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley physics programs, an unusually deep technical bench for a fund of this size.
Early Portfolio
The Fund I portfolio includes 15 companies with combined valuations of roughly $1.3B reached within 15 months of investment. Disclosed names include Dutch quantum-hardware standouts QuantWare, Qblox, QphoX, QT Sense and Q*Bird, all of which trace back to university spinouts at Delft and TU Eindhoven. The geographic split runs five US companies, nine European, and one Swiss, with active sourcing in India and Australia. Six of the 15 portfolio companies have a female CEO or co-founder, an unusually strong diversity profile for deeptech.
What This Means for Founders
If you are spinning out of a quantum lab at MIT, Harvard, Maryland, Stanford, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge or Chalmers, Ground State is now the fund to call before you incorporate. The firm has formalised pre-incorporation engagement with leading research groups, which is rare in venture and almost unique in deep tech. The model is closer to a university tech-transfer office than a traditional VC, which suits scientific founders far better than dialing through generalist Tier 1s.
The trade-off is dilution and ownership. As a first-cheque investor concentrating across roughly 30 companies, Ground State will want enough to matter at exit, which can pinch founders used to optimising for round size at seed. Founders should expect a partner who is technically credible enough to push back on architectural decisions, which is mostly a feature but occasionally a friction.
Fund Momentum Take
This is the most defensible thesis-led fundraise we have seen in deeptech this quarter. The combination of category focus, physics-native diligence, an operational quantum founder as Partner, and a transatlantic footprint is hard to copy and almost impossible for a generalist Tier 1 to replicate without a multi-year talent build. Most quantum venture activity to date has been opportunistic; Ground State is the first credible attempt to make it institutional.
Our principal concern is duration risk, not portfolio risk. Quantum's commercialisation curve is long, and Fund I is now well into its deployment with a $1.3B paper portfolio. The pressure to mark up further and raise Fund II at a larger size will be enormous, but a fund that scales prematurely in a still-small market will dilute exactly the discipline LPs are paying for. The right move is to keep Fund II proportionate to the actual deal-flow surface and resist the pressure to do growth tickets that are better served by Tier 1 generalists.
Net-net, this is a category-defining raise for European deep tech and a structural improvement to global quantum cap-table architecture. We expect Ground State to be on the term sheet of every consequential quantum-tech round at seed and pre-seed inside the next 24 months.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Ground State Ventures a new firm?
No. The firm operated as QDNL Participations from 2022 until April 2026 and was anchored by the Dutch quantum ecosystem under Quantum Delta NL. The current $88M close coincided with a rebrand to Ground State Ventures.
How big is the fund relative to the original target?
The fund has closed at $88M (€75.2M), 26% above the original $70M target. A final close is expected in the near term.
Who runs the firm?
Ton van 't Noordende is founder and General Partner. Chad Rigetti, founder of Rigetti Computing, joined as Partner. The wider investment team is staffed with physicists holding PhDs from Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley.
What does Ground State invest in and at what stage?
The firm writes first cheques into pre-seed and seed quantum-tech companies, including computing, sensing, networking and component plays. Ground State acts as investor of record and engages with founders pre-incorporation through deep relationships with leading research labs.
Where does the firm operate from?
Headquarters in Amsterdam, with offices in London and San Francisco. The current portfolio includes five US companies, nine European, and one Swiss, with active sourcing in India and Australia.
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