QuantumDiamonds wins €76 million backing for quantum semiconductor inspection facility
The European Commission has approved €76 million in German state aid for Munich-based QuantumDiamonds to build a semiconductor inspection equipment facility, backing a technology designed to identify hidden defects inside increasingly complex semiconductor devices. The decision, announced this week, supports a planned €152 million investment in Munich and marks one of the latest projects approved under Europe's Chips Act framework.
The approval places QuantumDiamonds among a growing group of companies receiving public support as Europe seeks to strengthen its position in the semiconductor value chain. Unlike many recent investments that focus on chip manufacturing itself, QuantumDiamonds operates in semiconductor metrology and inspection, the tools and techniques used to analyse whether chips function as intended during development and production.
The company has attracted attention for its use of quantum sensors embedded in synthetic diamonds to map electrical currents inside advanced semiconductor packages. According to QuantumDiamonds, the technology has already been evaluated through proof-of-concept projects with nine of the world's ten largest semiconductor manufacturers.
The Commission described the planned Munich facility as Europe's first production site for semiconductor metrology and inspection systems based on quantum sensing technology.
Why advanced chip packaging is creating new inspection challenges
Semiconductor manufacturing has become increasingly dependent on advanced packaging technologies.
Rather than building ever larger monolithic processors, manufacturers increasingly combine multiple chiplets, memory components and specialised processors within a single package. These approaches, commonly known as 2.5D and 3D packaging, are widely used in artificial intelligence processors, high-performance computing systems and advanced communications hardware.
The approach improves performance and energy efficiency, but it also increases complexity.
When a defect occurs inside a densely packaged device, locating the source of the problem can become difficult. Faults may be buried beneath multiple layers of silicon, metal interconnects and packaging materials, making conventional inspection techniques less effective.
Dr David Su, former director of failure analysis at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and now an adviser to QuantumDiamonds, described the challenge when the company announced its Munich investment plans in late 2025.
"Non-destructive fault isolation in advanced packaging is an incredibly difficult challenge that the industry is still working on to solve," he said.
"This technology shows significant promise in addressing that gap. By detecting magnetic fields to trace current, it offers a potential pathway to visualise defects that are currently invisible to standard thermal or X-ray tools."
For semiconductor manufacturers, the challenge is not simply finding physical defects. Engineers increasingly need to understand how electrical current behaves inside a functioning device, particularly when diagnosing yield issues or investigating failures.
From university spin-out to industry supplier
QuantumDiamonds was founded in Munich in 2022 to commercialise research conducted at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), one of Germany's leading engineering universities.
The company's roots lie in the work of the Bucher Lab, led by Professor Dominik Bucher, whose research focused on nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamonds and their applications in sensing and imaging. The scientific foundations of the technology stretch back nearly a decade through research led by co-founder Dr Fleming Bruckmaier.
Like many successful European deeptech companies, QuantumDiamonds emerged from a broader innovation ecosystem rather than a single research project. The team participated in programmes run by TUM Venture Labs and UnternehmerTUM before formally incorporating the company.
The founders bring complementary expertise.
Chief executive Kevin Berghoff previously worked as a senior consultant at McKinsey & Company, advising electronics and high-tech companies. During doctoral research in entrepreneurship at TUM, he met physicist Bruckmaier, who would become QuantumDiamonds' chief technology officer.
The company raised €7 million in seed financing in 2023, including €3 million from investors led by IQ Capital and Earlybird Venture Capital, alongside €4 million in non-dilutive funding from the European Innovation Council Accelerator programme and the Free State of Bavaria.
Those funds helped move the technology from laboratory prototypes towards commercial products. In 2024, QuantumDiamonds launched its first commercial system, the QD m.0.
How Quantum Diamond Microscopy works
At the centre of QuantumDiamonds' technology is Quantum Diamond Microscopy (QDM), a semiconductor inspection technique that uses diamond-based quantum sensors to map electrical currents inside advanced semiconductor devices.
The approach relies on nitrogen-vacancy centres, atomic-scale defects engineered into synthetic diamonds. When illuminated with laser light, these defects emit fluorescence that changes in response to magnetic fields.
Because electrical currents generate magnetic fields, the sensors can be used to map how current moves through a semiconductor device.
Rather than focusing solely on physical structures, engineers can analyse electrical activity occurring beneath the surface of a chip. This makes it possible to identify short circuits, leakage currents and other electrical anomalies hidden within advanced semiconductor packages.
The technology addresses a different challenge from many conventional inspection systems.
Manufacturers already rely on sophisticated equipment supplied by companies such as KLA, Onto Innovation and Hitachi High-Tech. Optical inspection, electron-beam analysis, X-ray imaging and thermal imaging remain essential throughout semiconductor production.
However, advanced packaging increasingly creates situations where engineers need to understand how electrical current behaves inside a functioning device rather than simply locate a structural defect.
Traditional optical inspection methods are limited to structures they can directly observe. QuantumDiamonds' approach uses magnetic sensing, allowing engineers to investigate electrical behaviour beneath multiple layers of material without opening the package.
According to the company, its systems can localise sub-surface faults in advanced semiconductor devices with micrometre precision.
The technology also differs from many quantum systems in another respect. Nitrogen-vacancy centres operate at room temperature, eliminating the need for the cryogenic cooling systems often associated with quantum hardware.
That makes the technology easier to deploy in industrial environments where reliability, throughput and integration matter as much as technical performance.
"Our tools give fabs layer-specific insight into current paths in TSVs, microbumps, and chiplets without opening the package," said Bruckmaier.
"As heterogeneous integration becomes the norm, this level of inspection is no longer optional but essential."
TSV stands for Through-Silicon Via, a vertical electrical connection used to link different layers within advanced semiconductor packages.
Scaling up in Munich
The newly approved funding supports a company that is moving from pilot deployments towards industrial-scale production.
QuantumDiamonds announced plans for a €152 million manufacturing facility in Munich in December 2025. The project aims to establish production capacity for its inspection systems in Germany.
"This investment plan is a strategic commitment to European technology sovereignty," said Berghoff at the time.
"We're transitioning from research to global production, and we are planning to do it in Germany."
The newly approved €76 million state-aid package represents the largest public commitment to the project so far and provides a substantial portion of the planned investment.
The facility is intended to manufacture semiconductor inspection systems rather than semiconductors themselves, reflecting the increasingly important role played by equipment suppliers within the wider chip ecosystem.
Where QuantumDiamonds fits into Europe's semiconductor strategy
The Commission's decision reflects the increasingly broad definition of semiconductor capability adopted by European policymakers.
While public attention often focuses on fabrication plants, semiconductor manufacturing depends on a large ecosystem of equipment suppliers, materials specialists, inspection systems and process-control technologies.
Europe already occupies important positions in several of these segments. ASML remains the world's leading supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography systems, while numerous European companies provide specialised manufacturing equipment and materials.
QuantumDiamonds' project extends that ecosystem into quantum-enabled inspection technologies.
The progress the startup has made so far is quite impressive. In four years, it has progressed from university research to commercial products, pilot projects with nine of the world's ten largest semiconductor manufacturers and a €76 million approved state-aid package to support industrial production in Munich. The company's growth illustrates how Europe's semiconductor ambitions increasingly extend beyond manufacturing capacity into the specialised equipment used to test, analyse and improve the chips themselves.
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