Generalist · VC Firm

Founders Fund

Founders Fund's quantum exposure is one deep, early conviction: it led PsiQuantum's $50M Series B in 2017 and followed in the 2020 Atomico-led round; it is not listed in the BlackRock-led $450M Series D (2021) or the $1B Series E (Sept 2025, $7B valuation). A small 2017 seed position in Rigetti via its FF Science allocation predates Rigetti's 2022 listing and is no longer on the firm's portfolio page.

Active San Francisco, United StatesFounded 2005

Investment thesis

Founded 2005 by Peter Thiel with Ken Howery and Luke Nosek; the original contrarian 'hard tech' franchise: SpaceX, Palantir (first institutional investor), Anduril (co-founded by partner Trae Stephens), Stripe, OpenAI, and since Feb 2026 a co-led $30B position in Anthropic.

Quantum exposure is a single deep position, not a program: led PsiQuantum's $50M Series B in 2017, backing the only photonic, fault-tolerant-first architecture, and followed in the Atomico-led 2020 round; no new quantum position since.

Monopoly logic over market logic: backs companies that can own a category outright (the 'competition is for losers' doctrine), which in quantum means betting on the one architecture they believe can reach a million qubits, not spreading across modalities.

Unmatched defense and sovereign-customer networks (Anduril, Palantir, SpaceX) that map directly onto quantum's government-led early market: PsiQuantum's DARPA US2QC selection and AFRL contracts sit squarely in FF's home territory.

Anti-thesis

The patterns that trigger a fast no with this fund.

  1. Quantum has no internal champion left: Aaron VanDevender (the chief scientist who held the PsiQuantum board seat) is gone, Brian Singerman went partner emeritus (Dec 2024) and now runs GPx ($500M, backed by Thiel), and Scott Nolan is full-time CEO of General Matter
  2. The follow-on story has gone quiet: FF is absent from the published investor lists of PsiQuantum's Series D (2021) and Series E (Sept 2025); its last sourced quantum check is the 2020 Atomico-led round
  3. Monopoly doctrine cuts against quantum's reality: a standards-driven, government-subsidized, multi-modality race with no near-term winner-take-all dynamics is the opposite of the FF playbook
  4. Sovereign and cost-plus customers (DARPA, AFRL, state-anchored fabs) cap the venture-style upside FF underwrites for
  5. Single-modality bet: if photonics is not the winning architecture, FF's entire quantum exposure is one position; it holds no hedge across trapped-ion, superconducting, or neutral-atom platforms

Notable quantum portfolio

Full portfolio
PsiQuantum

Frequent co-investors