Addressing freshwater shortages. Effective CO₂ storage. Discovery of new life-saving drugs. Precious metals detection. More efficient wastewater treatment.

These are just a few ways quantum technologies can help humanity make our world more sustainable. A few ways that are rapidly becoming a reality thanks to 10 startups that have just won the Quantum for Society Challenge, launched last fall by the World Economic Forum’s UpLink initiative and the Centre for the 4th Industrial Revolution Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (C4IR KSA).

The winners were announced in Riyadh on 14 April, the World Quantum Day – at a quantum event hosted by the C4IR KSA. Held in front of a large audience of quantum experts and decision-makers from industry, academia and governments worldwide, the announcement was met with applause.

“Quantum technologies such as quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum communications are truly transformational,” said Arunima Sarkar, the Head of Frontier Technologies at the World Economic Forum. “But technology itself is not enough. What the world needs most are new ideas when it comes to solving society’s biggest challenges. And that’s where quantum startups, scale-ups and innovators in general play a huge role, as there is simply never enough top talent to keep pushing the envelope of cutting-edge innovation.”

Quantum computing is a very different beast from traditional computing. It can greatly speed up computation when it comes to specific problems, especially those that rely on probabilities. Instead of using bits that can be 0s and 1s to process data, the heart of quantum computers – quantum bits, or qubits – can be in a superposition of 0s and 1s simultaneously. Thanks to superposition and other quirky properties of qubits, entanglement and interference, these machines should be able to sift through multiple outcomes of a solution extremely rapidly and choose the best one, much faster than classical computers ever could.

For sustainability and other societal challenges, this technology promises to be a game-changer. And that’s where the newly announced winners come into focus: some already well-established Series A and B companies; others with seed funding, but ambitious ideas and clever teams to implement them.

Take Nomad Atomics. Comprised of a small team headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, and an office in Germany, this startup is developing a quantum gravimeter to probe and image the Earth’s depths for effective monitoring of stored CO₂. Ensuring that stored CO₂ remains securely trapped underground for decades – or even centuries – is a major challenge.

Nomad Atomics’ ultra-precise gravitometer could help by using gravity to detect underground reservoirs and monitor how CO₂ behaves after it is injected. The device measures tiny changes in gravity caused by variations in underground mass. When CO₂ is stored underground, the gravimeter detects these changes, helping operators track where the carbon moves. This ensures the gas stays safely stored, helps spot leaks early and gives regulators confidence that the storage site is working as planned. “Gravity monitoring can really only be achieved with quantum sensors because they offer much higher accuracy and reliability than traditional sensors,” says the company’s CEO, Kyle Hardman. “As the next step, we are looking to partner with relevant carbon capture, utilization and storage operations to better understand the current monitoring challenges and needs, and to carry out pilot projects.”

Then there is Planqc, a company from Munich, Germany. This winner is busy building quantum computers based on neutral atoms, an approach very different from the preferred option of tech giants such as Google and IBM, which instead opt for superconducting qubits. A Series A company, Planqc wants to deal with computational challenges faced by many industries, such as optimizing supply chains, discovering new materials and advancing drug development. Their computers rely on arrays of optical tweezers and lasers to manipulate individual atoms, which serve as natural qubits.

Meanwhile, Algorithmiq, a Finnish Series A scale-up, is looking into accelerating drug discovery and further perfecting personalized medicine, with the help of specially developed quantum algorithms. Recently, the company launched its Aurora platform, which helps users working on molecular simulations – crucial when it comes to creating a new drug – to quickly and efficiently extract data from quantum computers. Algorithmiq is releasing parts of Aurora as stand-alone products, so-called digital quantum interfaces (DQIs). These technologies are built using deep knowledge of quantum physics, vastly enhancing the capabilities of existing and future quantum hardware and acting as enablers of quantum applications.

“Algorithmiq was founded by a team of quantum physicists, after participating in IBM Quantum hackathons,” said Boris Sokolov, the company’s co-founder. “Drug development requires solving difficult problems in chemistry – and being quantum by definition, it’s an apparent yet intricate use case for quantum computers. These machines have the capability to efficiently represent and simulate molecules, the structure of which otherwise requires exponential amount of regular memory and compute time.”

Algorithmiq is not alone in this field. Qnity, from Sao Paolo, Brazil, is looking into technology that could accelerate drug discovery. It is working on creating an electrochemical sensor able to detect molecular interactions with ultra-high sensitivity, to streamline the discovery of new drugs and development of new therapies.

Quantasphere, a winner from Saudi Arabia, also focuses on healthcare, but very different aspects of it. It is looking into quantum for precision medicine and genomics, relying on what’s known as QKD, or quantum key distribution, to secure the exchange of encryption keys. Put very simply, its goal is to make sensitive data – prevalent in healthcare – safe from future quantum computers. Information encrypted with the RSA-based encryption we use today is at risk from quantum machines of the future, but with lattice-based cryptography QKD it should be safe. Many companies and organizations worldwide are now moving to new, quantum-safe cryptography, with PQC (post-quantum cryptography) being the other approach.

Quantum Dice is another company focusing on security. This UK-based company is building technology that can generate ultra-secure random numbers, harnessing the quantum properties of light. The goal is to protect sensitive financial, government or other data from cyber threats.

Meanwhile, PlanetAI Space, based in Malaga, Spain, are betting on quantum machine learning and satellites to detect underground freshwater sources that are at risk of running dry, in a bid to help humanity conserve water. Using algorithms and a hybrid quantum-classical machine learning approach, their technology – dubbed the Quantum Aqua – integrates data from multiple satellites to estimate the probability of an underground water source in a certain location.

“It learns from real groundwater databases and replaces traditional field measurements with large-scale processed information,” says Maria Fernanda Gonzalez, the startup’s CEO and co-founder. Once implemented with quantum computers, the tool should generate up-to-date maps showing where water is located, with the potential to monitor the entire planet daily and detect possible sources of contamination to issue early warnings. “Quantum computing enables us to analyze and apply our algorithms to large volumes of satellite data much more efficiently than current tools, opening the door to near real-time information,” adds Gonzalez.

Quantum Mads from Spain is also interested in water-related innovation, but this team is looking into using quantum to make wastewater treatment more efficient – to reduce energy use and improve the efficiency of bioreactors. Then there is Quiminex from Canada, which applies quantum machine learning to mineral exploration, to precisely spot critical mineral deposits deep underground. And finally, Xairos Systems from the US aims to develop quantum timing for precise global synchronization, to ensure that our smart cities of the future run as smoothly as possible.

The announcement of the winning startups was one of the highlights of the event, alongside important discussions and presentations on the latest advances in quantum tech and science. Most importantly, the event brought together some of the planet’s key innovators – who, through research, policies, strategies or funding innovation, are building our quantum tomorrow, quanta by quanta.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/04/10-startups-quantum-sustainability-challenge/