BIRD Foundation Backs Qarakal Quantum and Quantum Elements for $2.4 Million Quantum-Accelerated Catalysis Project

The Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation has approved matching grant funding for a joint $2.4 million quantum computational chemistry initiative between Tel Aviv-based Qarakal Quantum and California-based Quantum Elements. Selected by the BIRD Board of Governors as part of a $7.4 million funding round unlocking $20 million in public-private deep-tech projects, the program is evaluated by reviewers appointed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Israel Innovation Authority. BIRD grants fund up to 50% of an approved venture's project budget (up to $1.2 million for this initiative) on a non-dilutive matching basis, repaid through commercial royalties once revenue is generated.

Integrated Hardware-Software Co-Design Stack for Surface Catalysis

The collaboration pairs Qarakal Quantum's modular superconducting quantum architecture with Quantum Elements' AI-driven digital twins and error-suppression toolchains to build a simulation platform for heterogeneous surface catalysis. Modeling active-site electron correlations and bond-breaking intermediate states in transition-metal catalysts exceeds the tractability limits of classical Density Functional Theory (DFT) and post-Hartree-Fock approximations. Rather than running chemistry algorithms on uncharacterized physical devices, the project employs a vertical hardware-software co-design strategy: Quantum Elements models the specific noise parameters and physical crosstalk of Qarakal's 3D Pangaea bus architecture, optimizing compiler pipelines, pulse-level control, and dynamical decoupling techniques—drawing on the firm's error-suppression methods deployed in tools like Orbit—before deploying circuits on physical superconducting hardware.

Industrial Objectives and Commercial Simulation Constraints

The initiative aims to deliver a validated minimum viable product (MVP) featuring application programming interfaces (APIs) tailored for computational chemists and industrial materials engineers in the chemical and energy sectors. Heterogeneous catalytic processes underpin an estimated 80% to 90% of global chemical processing products, representing an annual market of $5 to $6 trillion where computational screening of transition-metal surfaces can reduce experimental development cycles. However, translating prototype co-design workflows into verifiable computational advantage over classical High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters requires executing chemical Hamiltonian mappings within the coherence and connectivity constraints of near-term superconducting modules, while scaling physical hardware without accumulating prohibitive phase noise across inter-module interconnects.

Project details and commercial objectives are outlined in the Qarakal Quantum Project Announcement here, with institutional grant background available via the BIRD Foundation Newsroom here.

October 24, 2026 / Updated: October 28, 2026