Quantum Elements, Qarakal land $2.4M BIRD grant for catalyst-discovery quantum platform
What's the deal? California-based Quantum Elements and Tel Aviv's Qarakal QuantumDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → won a conditional grant from the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation to jointly build a quantum simulation platform for modelling chemical reactions on material surfaces. The project has a budget of $2.4 million.
The details: BIRD grants cover up to 50% of a project's budget, capped at $1.5 million, on a non-dilutive basis repaid via royalties once commercial revenue is generated. The project is one of seven deep-tech collaborations BIRD approved in its September 2026 cycle, which awarded $7.4 million to unlock roughly $20 million in combined public-private investment.
What's the endgame? The partners will combine Qarakal's modular superconducting quantum hardware with Quantum Elements' software for fault-tolerant computing, using AI-driven co-design, error suppression, and decoders. The goal is a validated prototype that turns industrial catalyst problems into quantum-ready workflows.
Why it matters: Catalytic processes are involved in an estimated 80 to 90% of chemical products, across industries from energy to advanced materials. Classical methods like density functional theory hit precision limits on problems with strong electronic correlation and complex bond-breaking pathways — the gap quantum computing aims to fill.
How it works: Rather than running quantum chemistry independently of the machine, the project jointly optimises multiple layers of the computing stack. Quantum Elements' digital-twin technology will model the noise environment of Qarakal's system, informing compilation, calibration, and algorithm design before limited hardware time is used.
"Useful quantum applications cannot be developed in isolation from the hardware that has to run them," said Izhar Medalsy, co-founder and chief executive officer of Quantum Elements. Qarakal CEO Nissan Maskil said its architecture is "modular by design and tailorable for real-world workloads — that's what makes this collaboration work."
The signal: The grant sits in the top 10% of grant rounds for the sector by size, and reflects a wider push to pair near-term quantum hardware with industrial chemistry rather than chase general-purpose breakthroughs. Founded in 1977, BIRD has invested roughly $470 million across more than 1,200 bilateral projects; its next cycle takes submissions through November 23, 2026.
Read more: AP News
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
