Diamonds Are a Quantum Computer’s Best Friend — Not Just a Woman’s Best Friend

Rose Odette
Nov 8
8 min read

Diamonds Made for Computer Use not Jewelry

Why Quantum Diamonds Are the Quiet Revolution in Computing

Every once in a while, you see an invention that doesn’t make headlines the way flying cars do, but you know it’s a tectonic plate shift. The new Quantum Diamond Foundry in Melbourne is exactly that. Quantum Brilliance, an Australian–German startup spun out of the diamond quantum science group at the Australian National University, just turned on the world’s first commercial facility dedicated to making “quantum-grade” synthetic diamonds at scale.(The Quantum Insider)

These aren’t jewelry stones. These diamonds are engineered with defects called nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers – atomic-scale “imperfections” that behave like controllable quantum systems. Instead of sitting in a ring, they get built straight into chips and sensors, becoming the heart of room-temperature quantum computers and ultra-sensitive instruments.(Startup Daily)

The backstory: three founders, one big bet

Quantum Brilliance started as a classic university spin-out story. Three co-founders – Dr Andrew Horsley, Dr Marcus Doherty, and Mark Luo – were working in and around ANU’s diamond quantum research efforts. Horsley and Doherty are physicists from the ANU Research School of Physics; Luo came from the commercial side and now leads the company as CEO.(Australian National University)

Meet the founders:

Dr. Andrew Horsley – Canberra, Australia Andrew Horsley is a co-founder of Quantum Brilliance and the architect behind its core technical vision: quantum computers built from synthetic diamonds that run entirely at room temperature. An applied quantum physicist based in Canberra, Australia, he comes out of the Australian National University ecosystem and has spent his career designing and operating practical quantum devices rather than just proving theorems.Australian National University+2Main Sequence+2 Horsley helped pioneer techniques for embedding and controlling quantum defects in diamond, work that earned him Australia’s 2024 Prime Minister’s Prize for New Innovators for making quantum computing “an everyday technology.”Industry.gov.au+1 Inside Quantum Brilliance, he shifted from CEO into the Chief Technology Officer role as the company matured, giving him full focus on the product engineering roadmap as they scale from lab prototypes to industrial-grade quantum accelerators.EIN Presswire+1

Dr. Marcus Doherty – Canberra, Australia Marcus Doherty is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Quantum Brilliance, and he’s very much the “deep physics” engine of the company. Based in Canberra as well, he’s a senior researcher and lecturer at the Australian National University, where he leads the Diamond Quantum Science and Technology Laboratory and is internationally recognized for his work on optical defects in diamond, especially nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers.Research School of Physics+2Australian Army Research Centre+2 Doherty developed one of the first self-consistent theoretical models of the NV center, which underpins a lot of the field’s modern progress and directly feeds into Quantum Brilliance’s ability to engineer stable qubits and sensors in solid-state devices.Research School of Physics+2THE ORG+2 He also brings a military angle as an Army Reserve officer, which fits surprisingly well with the company’s defense-oriented projects like mobile quantum computers and strategic sensing solutions.Australian Army Research Centre+1

Mark Luo – Sydney, Australia (global commercial lead) Mark Luo is the commercial driver of Quantum Brilliance, serving as co-founder and CEO and operating primarily out of Sydney, Australia, while leading a company that now spans Australian and European hubs.Equilar+2EIN Presswire+2 His background is finance and venture rather than physics: before co-founding Quantum Brilliance, he worked in global private capital at QIC, investment banking at Credit Suisse, fixed-income trading at UBS, and as a New Ventures Manager at CSIRO, where he helped science founders turn research into companies.Creative Destruction Lab+2Clay+2 That mix of capital markets and deep-tech commercialization is what shaped Quantum Brilliance’s go-to-market: instead of selling abstract “quantum access,” Luo pushed the company toward rack-mountable quantum accelerators and government-backed projects (like Germany’s mobile quantum computer program), positioning the firm as a strategic infrastructure provider rather than a science experiment.Australian National University+3Startup Daily+3Power Electronics News+3

Their thesis was blunt: if quantum stays locked in giant fridges in national labs, it will never become infrastructure. So instead of chasing the same superconducting or trapped-ion roadmaps as everyone else, they doubled down on synthetic diamond – a material where NV centers can hold quantum information for long times even at room temperature. From that one decision, everything else in their go-to-market flows.(mseq.vc)

Early on, they weren’t trying to sell cloud access to a moon-shot machine. They were selling small, rugged “quantum accelerators” – boxes that fit in a standard server rack and bolt directly into existing supercomputers and data centers. That gave them a real customer: high-performance computing labs that needed to experiment now, not in 2035. The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Australia, Oak Ridge in the US, and Fraunhofer IAF in Germany all became anchor partners for these rack-mounted, room-temperature quantum units.(Quantum Computing Report)

Their GTM strategy: start where the power already is

Quantum Brilliance’s go-to-market isn’t “build it and hope developers show up.” It’s plug into existing power centers – literally and figuratively.

First, they targeted supercomputing and research hubs: places that already buy exotic hardware, have budgets for experimental systems, and desperately want to explore hybrid quantum-classical algorithms. Their QB-QDK systems slot into a normal 19″ rack, sip power compared to traditional cryogenic quantum systems, and talk nicely to GPUs/CPUs. Fraunhofer IAF’s installation in June 2025 is Europe’s first room-temperature quantum accelerator based on NV centers, fully integrated into an HPC stack.(Quantum Computing Report)

Second, they made it full-stack. The company doesn’t just ship hardware; it ships an entire toolchain (like their Qristal stack and development kits) so developers can write and test algorithms for quantum machine learning, optimization, and sensing, long before the qubit counts explode. That “hardware + software + application lab” story has shown up in collaborations with NVIDIA (CUDA-Q integration) and with European and Australian research centers.(Quantum Brilliance)

Third, they leaned into sovereign capability and public capital. The Quantum Diamond Foundry in Melbourne is funded heavily by the Australian federal National Reconstruction Fund Corporation and the Victorian government’s Breakthrough Victoria investment arm, alongside private Series A investors like Main Sequence, In-Q-Tel, and Intervalley Ventures.(Startup Daily) The narrative is simple but powerful: this is not just a startup, it’s industrial infrastructure – a strategic capability for Australia in quantum tech and advanced manufacturing.

Why the diamond foundry changes the game

The foundry itself sits in Notting Hill, Melbourne, at the Co-Labs facility. Its job is to mass-produce quantum-grade synthetic diamonds that can be embedded directly into integrated circuits to create quantum devices – compact, portable, and operating at room temperature.(Breakthrough Victoria)

Up to now, if you wanted diamond quantum hardware, you were calling a lab and begging for a tiny batch of hand-crafted crystals. With this foundry online, Quantum Brilliance is moving the industry from artisanal to industrial:

They control the materials pipeline – growing diamonds, engineering NV centers at controlled densities, and packaging them into chips and modules.(Quantum Computing Report)
They can promise repeatable specs, not one-off science projects.
And they can ship at scale, which is exactly what you need if you want quantum accelerators in data centers, satellites, vehicles, hospitals, and remote infrastructure.(NextBigFuture.com)

From a strategy lens, the foundry is their moat and growth engine. The more they standardize quantum diamonds as a component, the easier it becomes for OEMs, integrators, and system builders to treat them like any other specialized chip. That’s how you move from “cool demo” to “quietly inside everything.”

Five ideals this story puts on the table

Ideal 1 – Infrastructure over hype. Instead of chasing press-friendly “world’s biggest quantum computer” headlines, Quantum Brilliance is doing the unsexy work: materials science, fabs, supply chains. The ideal here is long-term infrastructure thinking — build the picks and shovels that the next decade of quantum innovation will depend on.(Quantum Computing Report)

Ideal 2 – Room-temperature reality beats cryogenic dreams. Most quantum roadmaps assume giant dilution refrigerators and bespoke facilities forever. Diamond-based qubits flip that script: small, rugged, room-temperature. That ideal is about designing for deployment from day one, not just for scientific purity.(Startup Daily)

Ideal 3 – Go where the high-value problems already live. By targeting supercomputing centers, national labs, and government-backed research projects (like Germany’s mobile quantum computer initiative and Fraunhofer’s accelerator), they placed their hardware right next to the world’s hardest problems in materials, energy, security, and AI. That’s far better than hoping abstract “developers” will find you.(The Quantum Insider)

Ideal 4 – Public–private alignment as a growth lever. The equity stakes from the National Reconstruction Fund and Breakthrough Victoria aren’t just checks; they’re signals. Governments want sovereign quantum capability. Quantum Brilliance aligned its roadmap to that macro-need, and in return, it gets patient capital, policy air cover, and credibility.(Startup Daily)

Ideal 5 – Full-stack or forgotten. In a frontier market, just shipping hardware is not enough. Quantum Brilliance’s stack spans from diamond growth to algorithms, dev kits, and integration with classical stacks (CUDA-Q, HPC clusters). That full-stack posture makes it easier for customers to say “yes” because they’re buying a solution, not a science experiment.(Quantum Brilliance)

Five action moves if you’re thinking like a founder, investor, or strategist

Action 1 – Ask: what’s my “diamond foundry”? Where in your domain is there a missing piece of infrastructure that everyone quietly needs but nobody owns? It might be data labeling, compliance automation, a specialized training corpus, or hardware integration. The play is to own the bottleneck resource that unlocks everyone else’s growth.

Action 2 – Design for deployment, not just demo. Quantum Brilliance optimizes for devices that fit in standard racks, use standard power, and talk to standard toolchains. What’s the equivalent in your world — the design choice that makes adoption almost boringly easy for your ideal customers?

Action 3 – Anchor yourself to power users and power problems. They embedded into Pawsey, Fraunhofer, Oak Ridge, and German government projects because that’s where credibility and complex use-cases live. Look at your own GTM and ask: are you selling to the edges of the market, or to the gravitational centers that shape everyone else’s roadmap?

(Quantum Computing Report)

Action 4 – Blend deep tech with sovereign narratives. The “Future Made in Australia” message, plus sovereign quantum capability, unlocked serious funding and political will for them. Diamonds Are a Quantum Computer’s Best Friend - If you’re building deep tech in any critical domain (health, energy, defense, infrastructure, immigration systems), you should be asking: which government or ecosystem is strategically hungry for what I’m doing?(TechAU)

Action 5 – Tell the story in human terms, not physics terms. The deeper magic in this story isn’t NV centers; it’s that three founders decided quantum should be small, rugged, and everywhere, not fragile and rare. When you tell your own innovation story, strip it down to that human-level pivot: what did you refuse to accept about the status quo, and what did you build instead? That’s what people actually remember.

The close - Diamonds Are a Quantum Computer’s Best Friend

The Quantum Diamond Foundry is more than a shiny lab in Melbourne. It’s the moment diamond quantum tech stopped being “cool research” and started becoming industrial supply. Behind it are three founders who believed that quantum computers belong in racks, cars, hospitals, and satellites — not just behind glass at national labs — and an execution strategy that anchored them to the heaviest hitters in computing and public capital.

If you zoom out, this is the pattern: pick a frontier technology, own the enabling infrastructure, align with sovereign and enterprise demand, and make it boringly deployable. That’s how revolutions stop being news and start being normal.

Resources & Authority Links

Today’s Authority Sources

Quantum Brilliance – Official announcement of the Quantum Diamond Foundry in Melbourne(The Quantum Insider)
Breakthrough Victoria – Investment update on funding the world’s first commercial Quantum Diamond Foundry(Breakthrough Victoria)
National Reconstruction Fund / NRF – Equity investment in Quantum Brilliance to build Australia’s first quantum diamond foundry(National Reconstruction Fund)
Fraunhofer IAF – Europe’s first room-temperature diamond-based quantum accelerator from Quantum Brilliance(Quantum Computing Report)

Books

Charge Like a Bull – Breakthrough strategies for relentless business growth: https://a.co/d/hF64gYh
Lead Like a Lioness – Transformational leadership for women in business: https://a.co/d/hwEIYnk