SQC lands $2.5M government grant for quantum-enhanced energy forecasting
What's the deal? Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) has received a US$2.33M grant from the Australian Government's Critical Technologies Challenge Program. The funding advances SQC and partner Schneider ElectricDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to Stage 2 of the program, continuing joint work with UNSW Sydney.
What's the endgame? The pair are using SQC's quantum-enhanced AI chip, Watermelon, to sharpen Schneider Electric's energy forecasting models. In Stage 1, applying Watermelon to a year of next-day forecasting data delivered an average 20% improvement in accuracy over the classical benchmark, with gains up to 41%.
Why now? Rooftop solar, home batteries, and electric vehicles are making household energy systems harder to predict. More accurate forecasting can improve management of distributed energy resources and lower consumer costs — even modest gains help.
Stage 2 funding will expand modelling to hundreds of homes across Australia, with direct integration into Schneider Electric's AI workflows.
"We have always believed that quantum processors would work alongside CPUs and GPUs to deliver real-world performance gains," said Michelle Simmons, founder and chief executive officer of SQC. Colette Munro, Pacific Zone president at Schneider Electric, said the partnership showed "how advanced energy technology has the potential to better manage this complexity, lowering costs for consumers."
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Sydney, SQC manufactures silicon chips with atomic precision and iterates new processors weekly. Watermelon, launched in 2025, is already deployed across telecommunications, banking, and high-frequency trading, available via cloud and hardware sale.
The signal: The grant sits in the top 10% of deep tech grant rounds in Australia by size, based on 396 comparable deals. It marks a bid to move quantum computing from the lab into production energy systems.
Read more: theinsiders.com.au
Image credit: Silicon Quantum Computing
