IBM Backs Physics Acceleration Firm BQP as Revenue Skyrockets

IBM Ventures has invested in BQP, a Syracuse-based physics acceleration firm, bringing its total funding to $8 million. This investment is a continuation of their relationship that began in 2023 when BQP joined the IBM Quantum Network.

The company's software speeds up engineering physics calculations, such as determining where a satellite is heading or how heat moves through a battery pack. Since its 2025 seed round, contracted and committed revenue has risen eightfold, with customers tripling.

QuantumNOW, BQP's production solver, runs on customers' existing CPUs and GPUs, while a quantum-native version remains in development. The company's founder and CEO, Abhishek Chopra, stated that the industry had spent years treating this as a hardware problem but it was always a software problem.

BQP's production customers are primarily in aerospace and defense, with one notable example being its SBIR with the U.S. Space Force and SpaceWERX, which tracks more than 3,000 space objects in under a second. The funding is expected to help BQP push beyond defense into electric vehicle battery thermal management work in India.