Spacetech startup SpeQtral secures US$8.3m in funding round led by Temasek unit

SPACETECH startup SpeQtral has closed a US$8.3 million financing round led by Temasek's early-stage deep science investment platform, Xora Innovation.

In a press statement on Tuesday (Nov 30), SpeQtral said the latest capital injection will be used to expand the company's regional and international presence, establish strategic business partnerships and hire talent. It also intends to use the funds to support the commercial rollout of SpeQtral's terrestrial systems and further develop its satellite-based systems.

Based in Singapore, SpeQtral was formerly known as S15 Space Systems and is a spin-off of the Alexander Ling Group at the National University of Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies.

In April 2019, the startup had raised US$1.9 million in seed funding led by New York-based venture fund Space Capital.

According to SpeQtral, its Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology solution enables the creation and distribution of "computationally uncrackable" encryption keys that are generated by the laws of physics rather than mathematical algorithms.

Commenting on SpeQtral's latest funding round, Xora Innovation chief executive Donna See said this technology enables critical solutions for governments and enterprises seeking to ensure a "web of trust" between buyers, sellers and intermediaries of the modern digital economy in the quantum age.

"While the emergence of fully functional quantum computers will spur breakthroughs in optimisation problems for applications across a broad spectrum of industries, it is only a matter of time before the same computational capabilities are used to break the fundamental cryptographic principles that safeguard today's data communications - principally, public key encryption," stated SpeQtral.

"SpeQtral is on a mission to deliver tamper-proof and computationally uncrackable encryption keys, within and across global communications networks, securing data against present and future threats brought on by advances in computing. Together with partners, SpeQtral is reinventing cryptography for the quantum age, using satellites in low earth orbit to secure data networks across the globe."

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