The investment is led by the Green Angel Syndicate and includes the Enterprise100 syndicate, the Newable Venture Fund, the Development Bank of Wales, the Bristol Private Equity Club, the Britbots Seed Fund, and Houston-based oilfield technology solutions provider ChampionX. The multidisciplinary consortium of green investors, technology accelerators and oil and gas industry professionals shares QLM’s vision of enabling organisations to achieve Net Zero through mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. The investment will drive the expansion of QLM’s technical and commercial capability, secure industrial validation of the unique quantum TDLidar technique, and provide a roadmap to commercial readiness of the revolutionary quantum gas camera.

Dr Murray Reed, CEO at QLM, says: “This funding round will enable us to scale up our development and launch our business providing next-generation greenhouse gas monitoring. Our unique quantum Lidar is the right solution for the challenge of how to effectively measure industrial methane emissions, and meet the major commitments that the oil and gas majors have made to control their greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Bernard Bulkin, leader of the Green Angel investment and incoming QLM Chairman adds: “QLM has technology with great potential to substantially change what we know about industrial and environmental greenhouse emissions and help enable NetZero. I feel confident this seed round will allow the company to progress rapidly to the next level.

¹ https://about.bnef.com/bnefpioneers/

About QLM Technology

QLM Technology was founded by its Chief Technical Officer, Xiao Ai, after postgraduate research into single photon Lidar gas detection at the University of Bristol. He realised that his research, in which a Lidar beam simultaneously probed both the shape and the concentration of plumes of methane, could help achieve Net Zero through mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre at the university helped Xiao form QLM Technology Ltd in 2017. Dr Murray Reed, a photonics industry veteran with thirty years of experience commercialising cutting-edge technology in Silicon Valley, became CEO in June 2019.

QLM collaborates with industry, government and academia. Innovate UK is the major financial backer of the Single Photon Lidar Imaging of Carbon Emissions (SPLICE) project which developed the quantum-enabled camera.  QLM continues to benefit from the expertise of the UK National Physical Laboratory.