What are you building, and why now?

We are building inspection systems for semiconductor manufacturing that use quantum sensors to see inside increasingly complex chips. As demand for AI accelerates, chipmakers are moving from traditional two-dimensional designs to highly complex three-dimensional architectures. I often compare it to a skyscraper: everything is being stacked on top of itself to deliver more performance in the same footprint. But existing inspection tools can only see the surface.

Our technology acts like an X-ray system for magnetic fields, allowing manufacturers to look inside advanced chips, identify defects and understand exactly how they are performing. This matters because yield is now one of the industry's biggest bottlenecks. For some of the most advanced chips, the percentage that work correctly after manufacturing is much lower than most people would expect, so even small improvements have a major impact.

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What did you see that others missed?

The technology originated from research at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), where my co-founder, Dr. Fleming Bruckmaier, developed a novel quantum sensing approach during his PhD. We saw an opportunity to take something that only a small number of quantum physicists could really understand and turn it into a tool that solves a real industrial problem. We’ve done this by focusing on building systems that could operate in real manufacturing environments and deliver actionable insights to engineers.

There is a huge amount of attention on quantum computing, but our view has always been that customers don't buy our technology because it's quantum; they buy it because it solves problems better, like finding defects faster, improving yield and bringing products to market more efficiently.

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What fundamental breakthrough made this possible?

The quantum sensor we use allows us to capture information that was previously inaccessible. Collecting the data is only half the challenge; you need to make sense of what you measure.

Around half of our engineering team are machine learning engineers who interpret these magnetic fields and reconstruct what is happening inside the chip.

Over time, our systems become more powerful because every deployment improves our models. We were fortunate to start working with some of the world's leading semiconductor companies very early, which gave us access to chips and datasets that helped us build better models. Every new chip we analyse makes those models stronger.

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What needs to go right for this to work at scale?

Today, our systems are primarily used in laboratory and failure analysis environments. We want to get to the point where we move into high-throughput production environments, where chips can be inspected directly as part of the manufacturing process. This will require continuous improvement for throughput, automation and system integration so inspection is fast and efficient enough to support production at an industrial scale.

Ultimately, our customers see this technology becoming part of the standard toolkit used to manufacture every advanced chip.

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How does the world change if you are successful?

I think many of humanity's biggest advances have come from improvements in our ability to observe the world: microscopes transformed biology and telescopes transformed astronomy. Our view is that quantum sensing can unlock a similar step change. If you can measure something more accurately, you can understand it better and ultimately build better technologies.

In semiconductors, it means better chips and more efficient manufacturing. Longer term, the same technology could be applied to materials science, chemistry, batteries, navigation systems and even aspects of drug development.

We are unlikely to build the next smartphone ourselves, but we hope to help enable many of the technologies that make those products possible.

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Why are you the team to do this?

Building a company like QuantumDiamonds requires expertise across three very different disciplines. First, there is the quantum sensing expertise that originated from years of fundamental research. Then, there is the commercial mindset. We've always been obsessed with building products that customers will actually buy rather than publishing papers.

Third, there is deep semiconductor industry experience. We have assembled a team that includes senior leaders from some of the world's most important chip manufacturers, giving us a detailed understanding of customer requirements and procurement processes. Success comes from bringing those three worlds together.

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What does the next 12 to 24 months unlock?

The next phase is about scaling deployment. We expect to expand commercial installations across Taiwan, Korea, Japan, the US and Europe while developing our first inline production systems capable of operating at manufacturing throughput.

At the same time, we will continue exploring new applications for the underlying platform in areas such as materials science, batteries and drug development. Our long-term vision is simple: to make advanced inspection and quantum sensing a foundational capability across multiple industries. The opportunity starts with semiconductors, but it does not end there.

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