Ukrainian-American Startup Haiqu Achieves Quantum Data-Processing Milestone on IBM’s Heron Chip
The startup encoded more than 500 features on 128 qubits, advancing anomaly detection and strengthening its position as one of Ukraine’s most globally connected deep-tech companies.
KYIV, Ukraine — 20 November 2025
US-Ukrainian quantum software startup Haiqu announced it has demonstrated that current-generation quantum computers can process high-dimensional, real-world data more efficiently than classical systems, a breakthrough that could accelerate near-term quantum machine learning. The company used IBM’s latest Heron processor and a proprietary embedding technique to load more than 500 numerical features into circuits running on 128 qubits (source).
Haiqu’s approach compresses hundreds of classical data features into a limited number of qubits, addressing one of the core bottlenecks preventing practical quantum applications. The company tested the method on an anomaly detection task and compared a hybrid pipeline — quantum preprocessing followed by classical models — with a fully classical baseline using random-parameter embeddings. According to Haiqu, the quantum-enhanced pipeline consistently outperformed the classical one, and preprocessing on the Heron processor was faster than simulating the same operations on a classical machine.
IBM Research director Jay Gambetta said the result points to meaningful progress for near-term devices. “The ability to encode high dimensional data with hundreds and even thousands of features enables applications of a new scale, as what the team at Haiqu has experimentally shown on our hardware,” he said. “Advances like this are what push the industry towards achieving a quantum advantage in the near term.”
Researchers say anomaly detection is a promising early application, given its role in identifying financial fraud, abnormal market behavior, medical deviations, industrial sensor failures and unusual weather patterns. “Understanding and implementing quantum embedding is an essential part of data analysis on quantum devices,” said Oleksandr Kyriienko, Professor and Chair in Quantum Technologies at the University of Sheffield. “Anomaly detection is a very suitable target, since even a smaller improvement in scores can lead to crucial detections or elimination of false positives.”
Haiqu co-founder and CTO Mykola Maksymenko said the findings show that modern quantum processors are beginning to reach useful scales. “With Haiqu’s software, quantum applications can run at a significantly larger scale,” he said. “This is where the impact of quantum processing of data can become useful, as we see in our research on anomaly detection.”
CEO and co-founder Richard Givhan said the company aims to make this capability accessible to industry. “We are not claiming quantum advantage just yet,” he said. “However, we are providing the clearest empirical signal to date that real-world high-dimensional data can now be loaded onto a quantum computer and QML could soon be useful for processing this data.”
Founded in 2022 within the Creative Destruction Lab’s quantum program in Toronto, Haiqu builds software that enhances the performance of noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. In 2023, the company raised a $4 million pre-seed round led by MaC Venture Capital with participation from Toyota Ventures, SOMA Capital, u.ventures, SID Venture Partners, Roosh Ventures and several angel investors including Paul Holland, Alexi Kirilenko and Gordy Holterman. The company is using the capital to advance its technology, build strategic partnerships and pursue applications in finance, life sciences, mobility and chemistry.
“We are accelerating the timeline to practical quantum computing by developing novel software that can extract value out of clumsy near-term quantum hardware, enabling quantum applications that were previously impossible,” Givhan said in a previous announcement. Toyota Ventures founder and general partner Jim Adler said Haiqu’s approach “boosts quantum hardware to solve practical industry problems,” adding that his firm had been watching the quantum space for years before finding software that could deliver on the technology’s promise.
In January 2025, Haiqu secured an additional $1.6 million to contribute to the Compilation Open Design project in Canada. As part of the initiative, the company is working with Open Quantum Design and quantum hardware and software firm Xanadu to develop the Catalyst compiler, which helps translate hybrid quantum–classical code into machine instructions and supports early-stage quantum application development in an open-source environment.
Haiqu was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum in June 2025, joining another Ukrainian-founded company, Respeecher, in the annual cohort recognizing leading global innovators shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The designation places Haiqu among a select group of early-stage companies acknowledged internationally for developing breakthrough technologies.
Haiqu plans to extend its data-embedding research to larger datasets and more complex industrial problems. The company has opened applications for beta users to test the technology on seismic signals, medical metrics, financial anomalies and industrial sensor data, with reproducible notebooks and technical documentation available on its website.
