QuantumDiamonds, a German startup spun out of the Technical University of Munich, has secured €76 million in non-dilutive funding from Germany's federal economy ministry and the state of Bavaria, approved by the European Commission under the European Chips Act. The money will fund a new Munich facility to produce semiconductor testing equipment, part of a previously announced $178 million investment plan. The deal matters because it reflects Europe's push, via state subsidies, to build a homegrown semiconductor industry beyond ASML — and it backs a novel chip-inspection method that the company claims can save chipmakers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Alongside the state grant, QuantumDiamonds has raised a €15 million equity round led by World Fund, with backing from Bayern Kapital and existing investors. Its technology uses synthetic diamonds and quantum sensing to detect defects across all layers of a chip without destroying it, compressing a weeks-long process into a two-minute inspection that does not halt production — a capability increasingly relevant as chips become multi-layered. The firm has begun international expansion in 2026, opening a Taiwan hub and completing first commercial deployments in Taiwan and the US, and now aims to move from lab-based sample testing to high-throughput quality control inside fabs. Its roughly 70-strong, mostly Munich-based team plans to double its engineering headcount over the next year.