The European semiconductor industry is gaining momentum with the approval of the European Chips Act, which aims to foster the sector through state subsidies. One of the beneficiaries is QuantumDiamonds, a German startup that has developed a novel approach to inspecting chips. The company has been granted €76 million in non-dilutive funding by Germany’s federal economy ministry and the state of Bavaria, as part of its $178 million investment plan.
QuantumDiamonds was founded at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and has already raised a €15 million equity round led by VC firm World Fund. The company declined to disclose its valuation but stated that the round was also backed by Bayern Kapital and existing investors including Creator Fund, Earlybird, First Momentum, IQ Capital, Onsight Ventures, and UnternehmerTUM.
CEO Kevin Berghoff told TechCrunch that raising the round was a quick process due to customer pull. ‘We work with almost everyone in the chip ecosystem,’ he said. With huge demand for all kinds of chips, there’s just as much demand for solutions to speed up the manufacturing process and improve output.
QuantumDiamonds claims its technology can compress defect detection from weeks to a two-minute inspection that doesn’t stop production lines. This means that its hardware is typically paid back entirely within a couple of months, Berghoff said. The company also charges a subscription fee for on-site support and software that interprets the data.
The startup’s approach leverages synthetic diamonds’ tiny properties to observe how electricity flows through chips. Compared to current inspections, which look at the top layer of a chip with a microscope of sorts, this has the advantage of detecting defects through all layers without destroying the chip in the process. This capability could be particularly relevant as chips are increasingly multi-layered.
QuantumDiamonds is already out of the lab and on its way to moving from clients’ labs to their fabs – the semiconductor manufacturing plants. ‘What we have now is a tool for a lab environment, where you do sample-based testing, and test maybe one out of a million chips,’ Berghoff said. ‘What we now aim for is to also do high-throughput testing, meaning you can do 100% quality control in the fab itself.’
The machines are costly, although it depends on how you compare them. ‘We are in the single-digit millions for the lab tools. And the high-throughput system could be up to $10 to $15 million; but it would not be anywhere close to ASML machines that [cost] maybe $400 million,’ Berghoff said.
The comparison could work in other ways. ‘[QuantumDiamonds] can become Europe’s next ASML,’ World Fund managing partner Daria Saharova wrote in a statement. That’s VC bullishness for you, but it could also play out differently. ‘ASML also wants to do more [when it comes to] inspection, so they are a typical company that might buy us at some point,’ Berghoff said candidly.
For the time being, QuantumDiamonds may be more akin to another World Fund portfolio company: IQM, the Finnish quantum spinout that recently went public. Both companies come from Europe’s deep tech breeding ground and aim to leverage European support and funding to go global.
QuantumDiamonds is still at an earlier stage of its journey but 2026 has been a year of international expansion for the startup, which opened a regional hub in Taiwan and completed its first commercial deployments both in Taiwan and in the U.S., where it installed a system at Eurofins EAG Laboratories in Sunnyvale, California.
However, its new funding will also generate jobs in Munich, where most of its team of 70 people is based. The company’s growth trajectory suggests that it may become a major player in the chip manufacturing industry.
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