Founder Team: Christina Wu, Daniel Volz, Tamás Varga
We are proud to announce our most recent investment in RhymeQ, the startup making quantum computers accessible to software developers across the world. RhymeQ has raised a $2.2 million pre-seed round led by Ground State Ventures, with participation from us, Vanagon Ventures, alongside Plug and Play and Freiraum Ventures.
RhymeQ came out of stealth last week at NVIDIA GTC Berlin, where CEO Daniel Volz unveiled Rhyme at the NVIDIA Inception startup pitch session.
The problem: powerful machines, almost nobody who can use them
Quantum computers promise to expand the reach of supercomputing and AI in chemicals, pharma, finance and manufacturing. But today, coding for a quantum computer effectively requires a PhD in quantum physics. Circuits are written at the level of qubits and gates, and only PhD-level physicists can debug them. The global pool of people who can do that is tiny.
→ While the gap between quantum algorithms and hardware is closing fast, the gap between hardware and the people who can actually program it is not.
The solution: Rhyme
Rhyme is a new abstraction layer that lets every developer with basic Python skills write and debug production-ready quantum applications, without touching qubits, gates, or physics. The coding feels familiar and conventional, while RhymeQ's compilers handle the translation to quantum hardware.
→ No hardware lock-in: Rhyme compiles directly to the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform, so the same code runs on GPU-accelerated quantum simulators and on real quantum processors from a range of hardware providers.
→ Enterprise-ready from day one: RhymeQ already works with blue-chip design partners in chemicals, pharma, manufacturing and mobility.
Why we invested: every compute paradigm needs its abstraction layer
Every new compute paradigm arrives the same way: strong and powerful, but almost impossible to use. Mainframes needed compilers. GPUs only became the engine of the AI revolution once CUDA made them programmable for ordinary developers. Quantum is at exactly that point now.
→ We believe the value in quantum will not only accrue to whoever builds the best qubit, but to whoever owns the layer developers write in. A hardware-agnostic programming layer becomes more valuable with every new processor that comes online, and grows with the developer community built around it.
→ The team has seen both sides of the equation. Daniel Volz led quantum computing initiatives for McKinsey and BASF and co-founded Kipu Quantum. Tamás Varga, the inventor of Rhyme, spent more than 15 years as a software engineer at Swiss Re and UBS, so he knows how enterprise developers actually work. Christina Wu completes the team as COO.
“Platforms are won by whoever wins the developers. Quantum has brilliant machines and almost no one who can program them. RhymeQ is going after exactly that gap, and that’s why we’re backing them.”
"We are on a mission to make quantum computers programmable by every developer on the planet. While vibe coding is taking over the classical programming world, the situation is not so simple in the quantum world. With Rhyme, any programmer can both develop and debug production-ready code to run on quantum computers at enterprise level." – Daniel Volz, Founder & CEO, RhymeQ
The fresh capital will be used to grow the engineering team, build out Rhyme's enterprise platform, and grow a worldwide community of Rhyme developers. RhymeQ will also partner with quantum hardware companies to integrate their existing software libraries with Rhyme.
Want to try it? The first developers on the waitlist now get free access to the Rhyme compiler and developer community, with more invitations rolling out over the coming weeks. Join at rhymeq.com.
About RhymeQ
RhymeQ Technologies makes quantum programmable for every developer. Founded in 2026 by Dr. Daniel Volz (CEO), Dr. Tamás Varga (CTO) and Christina Wu (COO), the company is based in Karlsruhe, Germany and Zürich, Switzerland. Its goal is for Rhyme to become the default way the world programs quantum computers, as error-corrected hardware arrives. RhymeQ is a member of NVIDIA Inception. More: rhymeq.com
