QuantumDiamonds, a Munich-based developer of diamond quantum sensing tools for semiconductor failure analysis, has raised €91 million in Series A funding. The round includes €15 million in equity led by World Fund plus €76 million in non-dilutive funding under the European Chips Act. The company builds QDm.1, a platform that uses nitrogen-vacancy centers in synthetic diamonds to non-destructively map electrical current paths inside advanced 2.5D and 3D chip packages and localize opens, shorts, and leakages at micron resolution. The capital will scale production of the QDm.1 system and support construction of a dedicated manufacturing facility in Munich.
Quantum Sensing Enters Semiconductor Fabs
The timing aligns with rising demand for inspection tools that can handle buried defects in stacked chip architectures. QNAMI raised roughly $8 million before its acquisition by Quantum Design in June 2026. DiaSense secured €1.3 million in March 2026. QuantumDiamonds differentiates through a widefield imaging approach purpose-built for fab failure analysis rather than broad scientific research, and it already has systems operating at customer sites in the United States and Taiwan.
Buried Defects Defeat Traditional Tools
Advanced packaging creates failure modes that optical, electron-beam, and thermal methods cannot reliably reach without destroying the sample. Nine of the world's ten largest semiconductor manufacturers are already engaged with QuantumDiamonds, and early customer feedback indicates the tool reduces defect localization from weeks to minutes. A Tier 1 U.S. chip designer stated they had spent six weeks debugging a chip before QuantumDiamonds located the defect in under a minute.
Widefield NV Imaging Replaces Cross-Sectioning
The QDm.1 captures magnetic fields generated by current flow across a 3×3 mm field of view using roughly 70 billion NV centers in a synthetic diamond. Physics-informed machine learning then reconstructs 3D current density, revealing defect depth without delayering the package. This approach complements existing tools such as lock-in thermography and X-ray CT rather than replacing them outright.
As CEO Kevin Berghoff noted:
"They couldn't care less about it being quantum."
Mission Capital Plus Sovereign Backing
World Fund led the equity portion alongside Bayern Kapital, IQ Capital, Earlybird, and prior seed investors. The €76 million non-dilutive tranche marks QuantumDiamonds as the only startup to receive manufacturing support under the European Chips Act, placing it alongside GlobalFoundries and Carl Zeiss. The structure signals both commercial traction and strategic importance to European semiconductor supply-chain resilience.
$10.9B Metrology Market Draws Strategic Capital
The global semiconductor metrology and inspection market stands at $10.9 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $20.2 billion by 2035. QuantumDiamonds plans a €152 million production facility in Munich that will be the first of its kind for quantum-based chip inspection systems. The company has also opened an Asia hub in Taiwan and completed its first U.S. installation at Eurofins EAG Laboratories in Sunnyvale.
Ex-McKinsey Founder and TUM Lab Buildout
CEO Kevin Berghoff left a McKinsey role and paused his PhD at Technical University of Munich to start the company. CTO Dr. Fleming Bruckmaier previously led one of Europe's leading quantum sensing research groups at the same university. The team has hired senior engineers from Intel, Applied Materials, and Analog Devices while growing to 70 employees.
Scaling Production and Global Deployments
With the new facility underway and distribution partnerships in place across the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, QuantumDiamonds intends to double its engineering headcount within twelve months and move from early deployments to higher-volume manufacturing of both lab and in-line systems.