QDevil's Qubit Controls: What the EIC Accelerator Paid For

Every superconducting or spin qubit lives at the bottom of a dilution refrigerator, a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, and every wire that reaches it brings heat and electrical noise along. QDevil, a 2016 spin-out from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, built the unglamorous hardware that sits on those wires: filters that strip out noise, sample holders that carry the chip, and voltage sources that tune it. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2019 round it won a grant to turn that kit into one standardised system, which it called QCAUX.

Two years after the project started, Quantum Machines, an Israeli maker of quantum control systems, acquired QDevil for an undisclosed price. TechCrunch reported at the time that QDevil had raised only "about €1 million, mostly in the form of grants". The Danish company still exists, now as QM Technologies ApS, and its products are sold under the Quantum Machines name.

What Became of QDevil

QDevil is no longer independent. Quantum Machines announced the deal on 30 March 2022, according to TechCrunch and Quantum Zeitgeist; neither side disclosed the price. The Danish register shows the transfer on 21 July 2022, when QM Technologies Inc. became the shareholder and Quantum Machines' chief executive Itamar Sivan took the chair of the board, according to North Data. The company was renamed QM Technologies ApS on 5 May 2025 and keeps QDevil ApS as a secondary name. ownr lists it as active, 100% owned by QM Technologies Inc., with 32 employees in July 2026.

The buyer said the products were complementary to its own. "At some point, we realized that it would be highly impactful to join forces, because their products are actually complementary to ours," Sivan told TechCrunch. Quantum Machines sells the electronics that generate and read out qubit pulses at room temperature; QDevil's kit sits between those instruments and the chip inside the refrigerator. Quantum Machines has since raised a $170 million Series C in February 2025, led by PSG Equity with Intel Capital, according to The Quantum Insider and Fortune.

The Technology: Wiring a Qubit at 10 Millikelvin

A quantum processor under test needs many low-frequency control lines, one of its gates per line, and each line must arrive without heating the electrons on the chip. Research groups have long built this chain themselves from parts made by different suppliers. QDevil's pitch, set out in the CORDIS project description, was a standard chain: a computer-controlled voltage source at room temperature, a breakout box, a filter bolted to the coldest plate of the refrigerator and a modular holder for the chip. A single qubit may need up to 20 signal channels, the company wrote, while existing options offered no more than 8.

QDevil was founded by Jonatan Kutchinsky, its chief executive, and Ferdinand Kuemmeth, then an associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, and by 2020 sold the QFilter, the QBox breakout box, the QBoard sample holder and the QDAC voltage source, according to The Quantum Insider. The individual products came out of physics labs. The QFilter is "the result of several years of development at Harvard University and the University of Copenhagen", says its manual. In November 2023 the German Physical Society named QDevil, the Niels Bohr Institute and the University of Copenhagen's tech transfer office winners of its Technology Transfer Prize 2024 for turning lab circuits into the QDAC and QBoard products, according to the Niels Bohr Institute and Tagesspiegel Background.

What QCAUX Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 9 October 2019 cut-off names QDevil ApS of Copenhagen, with QCAUX and grant-only funding, in a single row: no partner company shared the project. QCAUX followed a €50,000 Phase 1 feasibility study, QCAux, that ran from April to September 2019, according to CORDIS and North Data's record of EU funding. The grant agreement for QCAUX was signed on 19 February 2020 and the project ran from 1 March 2020 to 30 April 2022, with an EU contribution of €977,179.88 towards a total cost of €1,395,971.25.

The plan was specific. The objective on CORDIS promised "a digital-analogue converter with up to 240 signal channels which transmit at up to 4.2GHz", an automated breakout box, an RF/RC filter with 100 channels, a new filter for superconducting qubits, and a modular sample holder transmitting signals "up to 42GHz". It also promised pilots with laboratories in Denmark, the UK and the US, sales from 2022, €36 million of accumulated revenue between 2021 and 2025 and 12 new jobs.

The only published periodic report, labelled as covering March 2021 to April 2022, says all four devices were worked on and the product was "ready for piloting", but also that "piloting has not started for this project, and due to Covid19, it is expected to be delayed". No later report of the pilots is public, and the final results of the project were not published on CORDIS.

1. Voltage source with up to 240 channelsPartlyQDAC-II has 24 channels and several units can be synchronised, per its 2024 manual; its fastest filter setting is 300 kHz, not the GHz range in the objective.
2. Filter with 100 channelsPartlyQFilter-II handles up to 48 lines in a stacked pair of 24-channel banks, per its manual.
3. Modular sample holder up to 42 GHzPartlyQBoard-II, launched in October 2023, is specified for low RF loss "up to 8 GHz", per Quantum Machines.
4. Pilots in Denmark, the UK and the USNot reportedNot started at the last report; no pilot results published.
5. Products on sale from 2022DeliveredQBoard products used by "more than 80 research groups, startups, and established companies", says Quantum Machines.
6. 12 new jobsDeliveredAverage staff rose from 6 in 2019/20 to 28 in 2024, per the filed accounts.
7. €36M revenue, 2021 to 2025Not verifiableThe Danish accounts show gross profit, not revenue; sales are now booked within the Quantum Machines group.

The products are real and sold widely, which is more than many 2019 grantees can show. But the public specifications fall short of the channel counts and frequencies written into the grant, and nothing on CORDIS or from the company shows the pilots the project was built around. Whether the plan was revised during the project is not public. The award is therefore rated partly delivered.

The Money

QDevil grew on sales and grants, not venture capital. It "grew to over 30 employees by 2022 without private investment", the Niels Bohr Institute wrote; the filed accounts show a lower figure, an average of 17 employees in the year to June 2022. The annual reports, available from the Danish Business Authority, show gross profit rising from DKK 4.43 million in the year to June 2020, when QCAUX began, to DKK 15.03 million in the year to June 2022 and DKK 19.81 million in 2024. The company made small profits in most years up to 2022.

The 2025 accounts, filed on 17 July 2026, break that pattern. Gross profit fell to DKK 338,767, the net loss was DKK 22.36 million and equity went from DKK 5.77 million to minus DKK 16.59 million. At the year end the company owed DKK 37.05 million to group companies and held DKK 437,636 in cash. Management says activities and finances did not change significantly in 2025 and "the result of the year is as expected", without explaining the drop. The company has lost more than half its share capital, which triggers the capital-loss rules of the Danish Companies Act; the parent has issued an unlimited letter of support and a subordination declaration valid through 6 July 2027, and the accounts are prepared on a going-concern basis.

Other EU Funding and the EIC Fund

QDevil is not in the EIC Fund portfolio: none of its 16 pages lists QDevil, QM Technologies or Quantum Machines, as expected for a grant-only award. After QCAUX the company joined IGNITE, a Horizon Europe consortium on germanium spin qubits that ran from July 2022 to December 2025, with an EU contribution of €375,000 to QDevil. In December 2024 it also received DKK 3,747,120 in Danish state aid for international collaboration, according to North Data. The register also lists patents published in 2025 and 2026 for a multichannel filter for low electron temperatures, a holder for quantum components and a switchable filter.

Why Europe Should Care

The Commission's Quantum Europe Strategy of 2 July 2025 aims to make the EU a quantum leader by 2030, with a quantum design facility and six pilot lines for quantum chips. Those chips have to be tested at millikelvin temperatures, with exactly the kind of filters, holders and voltage sources QDevil made. QDevil is one of the clearer examples of the question that hangs over EU deep-tech grants: the technology came out of a Danish university, the EU paid for part of its maturation, and the company now belongs to an Israeli group. Its engineers and its registered office remain in Denmark.

The Verdict

QDevil and Quantum Machines have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.