Q.ANT is a German deep-tech company building photonic processors that use light instead of electrons to run AI and high-performance computing workloads far more efficiently than conventional silicon. Founded in 2018 as a spin-off from laser-maker TRUMPF and based in Stuttgart, Q.ANT manufactures chips on a Thin-Film Lithium Niobate platform, claiming up to 30x energy efficiency and 50x performance gains over standard processors for targeted computation. Its Native Processing Unit is designed to drop into existing data-center infrastructure to offload the heavy linear-algebra operations that dominate AI inference. In July 2025 Q.ANT raised a €62 million (about $72 million) Series A, the largest photonic-computing round in Europe, co-led by Cherry Ventures, UVC Partners and imec.xpand with participation from L-Bank, Verve Ventures, Grazia Equity and TRUMPF. ARM founder Hermann Hauser joined its advisory board. The funding scales production, advances next-generation photonic processors and supports US expansion.