Salesforce's corporate venture arm – Salesforce Ventures – announced its first quantum technology investment as part of quantum sensing vendor Q-CTRL’s $27.4 million Series B extension funding.

Salesforce Ventures claims the quantum software startup’s technology uses artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster quantum computing enterprise adoption.

“Q-CTRL’s technology stands above the rest of the industry in tackling the most foundational challenge in quantum computing,” Salesforce Ventures Managing Director Robert Keith said in a statement. “Q-CTRL’s products are essential for enterprise adoption of quantum computing, and their use of AI is delivering critical insights across hardware platforms that no one else can match. With their additional leadership in pioneering quantum sensors, we came to see Q-CTRL as one of the most consequential businesses in the sector for their ability to deliver value through quantum technology.”

Q-CTRL is designed to reduce errors and provide control infrastructure software for quantum computing research and development professionals as well as end users. It also built a quantum computing ed-tech platform, called Black Opal, which offers more than 350 lessons for skill training.

The startup raised $25 million in the Series B funding round in November 2021. The $27.4 million expansion brings the Series B raise to more than $52 million and total funding to $70.8 million.

Alumni Ventures, ICM Allectus, Mindrock Capital, former General Dynamics partner Bill Lightfoot, and Australian business leader John Eales were new investors in this Series B-1 round, with continuing investors including Airbus Ventures, Data Collective, Horizons, Main Sequence Ventures, and Ridgeline Partners.

Since 2009, Salesforce Ventures has invested about $5 billion in more than 400 enterprise software companies, including cloud-based companies like Dropbox, Snyk, Twilio, WIZ, and Zoom. The Q-CTRL investment comes on the heels of Salesforce’s 10% workforce cuts and recent leadership changes.

Q-CTRL is riding the quantum computing investment wave, as McKinsey noted more than $3 billion in venture capital investment poured into the space over the past 18 months. Quantum sensing was noted as one of the highest-funding categories.

Q-CTRL plans to use the funding for technology and product engineering and sales and marketing, It also expects to expand headcount from 80 to about 120 employees across its Sydney, Los Angeles, and Berlin operations.

The company claims it currently has more than 8,000 users, including quantum computing vendors such as Atom Computing, Alice & Bob, IBM Quantum, IonQ, and Rigetti, and its bookings across its quantum computing and quantum sensing divisions reached more than $15 million last year.

“Q-CTRL anticipates that with its software, enterprises will be able to leverage the skills of their current IT developers to develop, optimize, and execute quantum algorithms, and obtain high levels of performance on any given hardware at a low net cost,” IDC Research Manager Heather West said in a statement.