Following being named among the twelve 2021 BNEF Pioneers last week, identifying it as one of the most impactful and original technology innovations for advancing the low-carbon economy, the deep tech startup QLM Technology Ltd is pleased to announce the close of its Seed funding round, securing a total of £3.1 million of investment.
QLM is a deep tech startup with an impressive ambition to help organisations tangibly achieve net zero through mitigation of greenhouse gas emission with their revolutionary quantum single photon detection tech. The camera QLM has created can continuously visualise and quantify methane plumes; it’s the first solution that genuinely enables the oil & gas industry to measure methane emissions.
QLM has successfully garnered support for its deep tech startup, poignantly illustrated through the huge seed round raise. If you’re looking to do the same for your deep tech startup, make sure you’ve taken a look at the biggest deep tech investors in the UK, where you can also find information about the newly established Science Creates Venture EIS seed fund.
Building a greener future
The investment is led by the Green Angel Syndicate and includes the Enterprise100 syndicate, the Newable Venture Fund, the Development Bank of Wales, the Bristol Private Equity Club, the Britbots Seed Fund, and Houston-based oilfield technology solutions provider ChampionX.
The multidisciplinary consortium of green investors, technology accelerators and oil and gas industry professionals shares QLM’s vision of enabling organisations to achieve Net Zero through mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. The investment will drive the expansion of QLM’s technical and commercial capability, secure industrial validation of the unique quantum TDLidar technique, and provide a roadmap to commercial readiness of the revolutionary quantum gas camera.
QLM has astutely recognised the fragility of the promise from oil and gas majors to reduce methane emissions whilst there is no practical way to measure the quantities properly, continuously, and at scale.
You can read more about the journey QLM embarked on to reach where they are now in our latest deep tech Startup for 10 feature. The investment demonstrates a pledge to hold accountability to the most polluting organisations, ensuring empty statements cannot be justified by the lack of adequate technology.
Dr Murray Reed, CEO at QLM, says, “This funding round will enable us to scale up our development and launch our business providing next-generation greenhouse gas monitoring. Our unique quantum Lidar is the right solution for the challenge of how to effectively measure industrial methane emissions, and meet the major commitments that the oil and gas majors have made to control their greenhouse gas emissions.”
Dr Bernard Bulkin, leader of the Green Angel investment and incoming QLM Chairman adds, “QLM has technology with great potential to substantially change what we know about industrial and environmental greenhouse emissions and help enable NetZero. I feel confident this seed round will allow the company to progress rapidly to the next level.”
QLM Technology was founded by its Chief Technical Officer, Xiao Ai, after postgraduate research into single photon Lidar gas detection at the University of Bristol. He realised that his research, in which a Lidar beam simultaneously probed both the shape and the concentration of plumes of methane, could help achieve Net Zero through mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre at the university helped Xiao form QLM Technology Ltd in 2017. Dr Murray Reed, a photonics industry veteran with thirty years of experience commercialising cutting-edge technology in Silicon Valley, became CEO in June 2019.
QLM collaborates with industry, government and academia. Innovate UK is the major financial backer of the Single Photon Lidar Imaging of Carbon Emissions (SPLICE) project which developed the quantum-enabled camera. QLM continues to benefit from the expertise of the UK National Physical Laboratory.
