QT Sense
Advancing disease diagnostics through quantum sensing at a single-cell level.
Website: https://www.qtsense.com
Cover Block
PUBLIC
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | QT Sense |
| Tagline | Advancing disease diagnostics through quantum sensing at a single-cell level |
| Headquarters | Groningen, Netherlands |
| Founded | 2024 |
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | B2B |
| Industry | Healthtech / Diagnostic Equipment |
| Technology Type | Quantum sensing (nanodiamond-based) |
| Geography | Western Europe |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Funding Label | Seed |
| Total Disclosed | ~$6.5M (2025 round); additional €4M reported Feb 2026 |
Links
PUBLIC
- Website: https://qtsense.com
- LinkedIn (founder Romana Schirhagl): https://nl.linkedin.com/in/romana-schirhagl-5898aba0
- PitchBook profile: https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/720697-60
- Dealroom profile: https://app.dealroom.co/companies/qt_sense
Executive Summary
PUBLIC
QT Sense is a Groningen-based deeptech spinout commercializing nanodiamond quantum sensors that measure free-radical activity inside individual living cells, a measurement modality that conventional fluorescence and mass-spectrometry tools cannot match for spatial resolution at the single-cell level [EU-Startups, Feb 2025] [Tech Funding News, Feb 2025]. The company was founded in 2024 around research led by Romana Schirhagl, whose lab work on nitrogen-vacancy diamond sensing in C. elegans models was published in peer-reviewed literature [PubMed, 2025] [LinkedIn, 2026]. Its commercial product, Quantum Nuova, generates spatially resolved, quantitative maps of radical levels and is being placed with early-access research and drug-discovery partners, including groups studying colorectal cancer [QT Sense Website, 2026] [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026]. The business model is B2B instrument and platform sales into life-sciences research and pharma R&D, a category with established procurement channels and capital-equipment budgets. Capitalization to date includes a €6 million seed in February 2025 and a reported €4 million follow-on in February 2026, putting total disclosed funding at roughly $10.8 million (estimated, based on EUR/USD at announcement) [EU-Startups, Feb 2025] [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026]. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the points worth watching are the cadence of Quantum Nuova placements at named research institutions, the publication of partner-generated data in oncology and sepsis indications, and any disclosure of pharma co-development agreements that would convert instrument sales into recurring assay revenue.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by EU-Startups, The Quantum Insider, PitchBook and the company website.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Seed (two tranches disclosed) |
| Business Model | B2B instruments / platform |
| Industry / Vertical | Healthtech, Life Sciences, Oncology |
| Technology Type | Quantum sensing, nanodiamond NV centers |
| Geography | Netherlands / Western Europe |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale, deeptech |
| Founding Team | Academic spinout, founder Romana Schirhagl |
| Funding | ~$10.8M total disclosed (estimated) |
Company Overview
PUBLIC
QT Sense was incorporated in 2024 in Groningen, the Netherlands, as a commercial vehicle for quantum-sensing research developed in the academic group of Romana Schirhagl, who is listed publicly as the company's founder [LinkedIn, 2026] [EU-Startups, Feb 2025]. The company's registered address is Blauwborgje 31, 9747 AC Groningen, in the science-park cluster around the University of Groningen [PitchBook, 2026]. Its scientific premise rests on a body of published work using fluorescent nanodiamonds containing nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect centers as quantum probes for free-radical chemistry inside living cells, including in vivo experiments in Caenorhabditis elegans models [PubMed, 2025].
The first major commercial milestone came in February 2025, when QT Sense announced a €6 million seed round to refine the Quantum Nuova product and expand from research-grade prototypes toward early customer deployments [EU-Startups, Feb 2025] [Tech.eu, Feb 2025] [Silicon Canals, Feb 2025]. Roughly twelve months later, in February 2026, the company disclosed an additional €4 million tranche to support real-time analysis of living cells and broader early-access placements with research and drug-discovery partners [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026]. The lead investors for both tranches are not disclosed in the captured public sources.
Public materials describe QT Sense as a venture-backed private company classified by PitchBook under Diagnostic Equipment, with HealthTech, Life Sciences and Oncology as named verticals [PitchBook, 2026]. Headcount, board composition and full cap table are not publicly itemized in the captured sources.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by PitchBook, EU-Startups, The Quantum Insider and the company website.
Product and Technology
MIXED
The company's product, Quantum Nuova, is an instrument platform that uses nanodiamond quantum sensors to produce spatially resolved, quantitative maps of free-radical levels in biological samples [PUBLIC] [QT Sense Website, 2026]. Free radicals (reactive oxygen and nitrogen species) are implicated in oncology, neurodegeneration, sepsis and inflammation, but they are short-lived and difficult to localize with conventional probes; the QT Sense approach uses NV-center diamonds whose electron-spin properties shift in response to nearby magnetic noise from radicals, allowing optically-read measurements at sub-cellular scale [PUBLIC] [Tech Funding News, Feb 2025] [PubMed, 2025].
The stated commercial use cases are disease research, drug efficacy profiling and environmental monitoring, with early-access systems being placed with research and drug-discovery partners and at least one disclosed application area in colorectal cancer [PUBLIC] [QT Sense Website, 2026] [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026]. The February 2026 funding announcement positions a newer capability around real-time analysis of living cells, suggesting iteration from fixed-sample measurement toward longitudinal live-cell workflows [PUBLIC] [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026]. Pricing, throughput specifications and detailed system architecture are not publicly itemized in the captured sources.
On the underlying technology stack, the scientific approach is anchored in peer-reviewed work on in vivo nanodiamond quantum sensing of free radicals, which provides external validation for the measurement principle independent of company marketing [PUBLIC] [PubMed, 2025]. Software, data-pipeline and cloud infrastructure choices are not disclosed in any captured source, and no public job postings were surfaced from which to infer a tech stack.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Product claims corroborated by company website, EU-Startups and The Quantum Insider; underlying science corroborated by PubMed, but commercial specs (pricing, throughput, named customers) remain undisclosed.
Market Research and Opportunity
PUBLIC
Quantum sensing for life sciences sits at the intersection of two markets that are growing for different reasons: the broader research-instruments market driven by pharma R&D budgets, and an emerging quantum-technology category where sensing is generally regarded as the nearest-term commercial application ahead of computing and networking.
No company-specific TAM is disclosed in the captured sources, and there is no named third-party report sizing the nanodiamond-quantum-sensing sub-segment that QT Sense addresses. As an analogous reference point, PitchBook classifies QT Sense under Diagnostic Equipment with HealthTech, Life Sciences and Oncology as verticals, all multi-billion-dollar end markets with established capital-equipment procurement [PitchBook, 2026]. Industry coverage of the company's seed round frames the opportunity around complex diseases such as cancer and sepsis, where existing diagnostic and drug-screening tools struggle to resolve oxidative-stress chemistry at the single-cell level [Tech Funding News, Feb 2025] [Silicon Canals, Feb 2025].
The demand drivers surfaced in cited coverage are threefold. First, oncology drug discovery increasingly relies on single-cell and spatial-biology readouts, a workflow shift that favors instruments capable of generating spatially resolved quantitative data rather than bulk averages [Tech Funding News, Feb 2025]. Second, free-radical and oxidative-stress biology is implicated across an expanding set of disease areas, broadening the potential customer base from a single therapeutic vertical to a horizontal research tool [QT Sense Website, 2026]. Third, European public and private capital has continued to fund quantum technology companies through 2025 and into 2026, and sensing applications, which do not require fault-tolerant qubits, are commonly cited as the first to reach commercial revenue [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026] [Yole Group, 2025].
Adjacent and substitute markets include conventional fluorescent probes (cheap, ubiquitous, but limited in quantitative free-radical specificity), electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (sensitive but not single-cell spatially resolved), and mass spectrometry imaging (powerful but destructive). Regulatory exposure is comparatively low at the research-tool stage; if QT Sense extends from research instruments toward clinical diagnostics, EU IVDR and equivalent frameworks would become material.
| Market reference point | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 seed round | €6,000,000 (~$6.3M) | [Quantum Computing Report, 2025] |
| 2026 follow-on | €4,000,000 (~$4.3M reported) | [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026] |
| Industry classification | Diagnostic Equipment; HealthTech, Life Sciences, Oncology | [PitchBook, 2026] |
Analyst takeaway: the captured evidence supports a credible research-tool opportunity in oncology and oxidative-stress biology, but a defensible top-down TAM cannot be constructed from public sources alone. Investors should request the company's own bottoms-up sizing built from instrument ASP times addressable lab count.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market framing corroborated by Tech Funding News, Silicon Canals and PitchBook; no third-party TAM report is cited.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED
QT Sense competes less against a single named rival and more against the installed base of existing oxidative-stress and single-cell measurement workflows, with quantum-sensing peers concentrated in academic spinouts rather than scaled commercial vendors.
The competitive picture instead breaks into three layers worth describing in prose.
The first layer is the incumbent toolkit used today inside pharma and academic biology labs to study reactive oxygen and nitrogen species. Fluorescent dye probes from established life-sciences suppliers are inexpensive, widely validated and embedded in standard protocols; electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometers from instrument vendors offer high chemical specificity for radicals but lack single-cell spatial resolution; mass spectrometry imaging platforms generate spatial chemical maps but typically destroy the sample. QT Sense's pitch is that Quantum Nuova produces quantitative, spatially resolved, non-destructive measurements at sub-cellular scale, a combination the cited press argues is not available in the incumbent stack [Tech Funding News, Feb 2025] [QT Sense Website, 2026]. The durability of that edge depends on whether the company can demonstrate reproducible results across multiple labs and disease models, not just inside the founding group.
The second layer is the small set of other quantum-sensing companies and academic groups working on NV-diamond and related modalities for biology. Public coverage in The Quantum Insider and Yole Group treats QT Sense as a notable European entrant in this category but does not name an obvious head-to-head commercial competitor [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2025] [Yole Group, 2025]. The risk here is less about losing deals to a specific rival today and more about a larger life-sciences instrument vendor (for example a diversified microscopy or spectroscopy company) acquiring or licensing a competing NV-diamond approach and bundling it into an existing channel.
The third layer is the buyer's alternative of doing nothing new: continuing with existing assays. In research-tool sales, the hardest competitor is usually inertia plus an existing budgeted instrument, not a rival vendor. QT Sense's defensible edge in the near term is founder-led scientific credibility (peer-reviewed in vivo work in C. elegans), a Groningen base inside an active European quantum and life-sciences cluster, and approximately $10.8 million (estimated) of disclosed capital to fund early-access placements [PubMed, 2025] [EU-Startups, Feb 2025] [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026]. The most exposed flank is commercial channel: a 2024-founded company with no disclosed enterprise sales leadership in public sources will need to build or partner its way into pharma procurement, where incumbent instrument vendors already hold relationships.
An 18-month scenario worth flagging: QT Sense wins if at least one tier-one pharma signs a published co-development or evaluation agreement around oncology oxidative-stress profiling, which would convert academic credibility into commercial validation. The harder path is one where a larger microscopy or spectroscopy vendor announces a competing NV-diamond product line, in which case QT Sense's window to lock in early-access sites narrows materially.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitive context inferred from category coverage in The Quantum Insider, Yole Group and Tech Funding News; no direct named competitor confirmed in captured sources.
Opportunity
PUBLIC
If Quantum Nuova becomes the standard instrument for spatially resolved free-radical measurement in living cells, QT Sense has a credible path to becoming the default platform for an entire layer of oxidative-stress biology that pharma cannot currently see clearly.
The headline opportunity. The single largest outcome QT Sense could plausibly reach is category-defining: the company that makes single-cell free-radical chemistry a routine, quantitative readout in drug discovery, the way flow cytometry became routine for surface-marker phenotyping. The cited evidence makes this reachable rather than aspirational because the underlying physics is validated in peer-reviewed in vivo work [PubMed, 2025], the commercial product is already being placed with early-access partners including a colorectal cancer application [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026], and the broader quantum-sensing category is consistently identified by industry analysts as the nearest-term commercial slice of quantum technology [Yole Group, 2025] [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2025]. The prize, in plain terms, is the install base of every oncology, neurodegeneration and inflammation lab that today buys oxidative-stress assay kits and would prefer a quantitative spatial readout instead.
Growth scenarios.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pharma co-development | One or more top-20 pharma companies adopt Quantum Nuova as the standard tool for oxidative-stress profiling in oncology pipelines | A published evaluation agreement and joint paper with a named pharma partner | Early-access placements in drug discovery already disclosed [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026] |
| Core-facility standard | Quantum Nuova becomes a standard core-facility instrument across European and US research universities | Distribution partnership with an established life-sciences instrument vendor | Founder is embedded in the European academic quantum-sensing community; peer-reviewed in vivo validation exists [PubMed, 2025] [LinkedIn, 2026] |
| Diagnostic extension | The platform extends from research tool to regulated companion diagnostic in a specific indication (for example sepsis triage) | A successful clinical study and IVDR-track regulatory engagement | Press coverage explicitly names cancer and sepsis as target disease areas [Tech Funding News, Feb 2025] [Silicon Canals, Feb 2025] |
What compounding looks like. The flywheel in research-tool businesses is well understood: each instrument placement generates publications, publications drive citations, citations drive the next instrument placement, and an installed base eventually pulls through consumables, service contracts and assay-specific software. For QT Sense, an additional compounding layer is data: every Quantum Nuova measurement generates spatially resolved free-radical maps, and a curated cross-study database of such maps would be a defensible asset that no incumbent fluorescent-probe vendor can replicate retroactively. Early-access placements with drug-discovery partners are the first step of that flywheel [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026], although there is no public evidence yet of a productized data layer.
The size of the win. A useful comparable is the historical trajectory of single-cell and spatial-biology instrument companies, where category-defining platforms have reached multi-billion-dollar public valuations on the strength of installed-base economics in pharma and academia. Without naming a specific peer's market cap as a forecast, the reference class is instructive: research instruments that become standard workflow components tend to support durable double-digit-percent gross-margin businesses with long customer lifetimes. If QT Sense's pharma co-development scenario plays out and the company reaches even a low-hundreds installed base of Quantum Nuova systems with attached consumables and service revenue, the resulting business would be of strategic interest to every major life-sciences instrument acquirer (scenario, not a forecast). The €4 million follow-on raised in February 2026, on top of the original €6 million seed, is consistent with a company being funded toward exactly that kind of installed-base inflection [EU-Startups, Feb 2025] [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Upside scenarios anchored in cited press and peer-reviewed validation; comparable valuations and installed-base economics framed as scenario, not forecast.
Sources
PUBLIC
[The Quantum Insider, Feb 2025] QT Sense Raises €6 Million to Use Quantum Sensing to Understand Diseases | https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/02/25/qt-sense-raises-e6-million-to-use-quantum-sensing-to-understand-diseases/
[PitchBook, 2026] QT Sense 2026 Company Profile: Valuation, Funding & Investors | https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/720697-60
[EU-Startups, Feb 2025] QT Sense raises €6 million to understand diseases at a single-cell level with quantum sensing | https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/02/qt-sense-raises-e6-million-to-understand-diseases-at-a-single-cell-level-with-quantum-sensing/
[Silicon Canals, Feb 2025] Groningen-based QT Sense bags €6M to help treat complex diseases using quantum mechanics | https://siliconcanals.com/groningen-based-qt-sense-bags-6m/
[Tech Funding News, Feb 2025] Quantum sensing in medicine? This Dutch startup's €6M bet on nanodiamonds could change everything in medtech | https://techfundingnews.com/quantum-sensing-in-medicine-this-dutch-startups-e6m-bet-on-nanodiamonds-could-change-everything-in-medtech/
[InfinityQD, Feb 2025] QT Sense raises €6 million to understand diseases at a single-cell level | https://www.infinityqd.nl/resources/qt-sense-raises-eu6-million
[Quantum Computing Report, 2025] QT Sense Raises €6 Million ($6.3M USD) for Quantum Sensing-Based Disease Diagnostics | https://quantumcomputingreport.com/qt-sense-raises-e6-million-6-3m-usd-for-quantum-sensing-based-disease-diagnostics/
[LinkedIn, 2026] Romana Schirhagl - Founder - QT Sense | https://nl.linkedin.com/in/romana-schirhagl-5898aba0
[QT Sense Website, 2026] How it works | https://qtsense.com/how-it-works
[The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026] QT Sense Raises €4 Million For Quantum Tech That Analyzes Living Cells in Real Time | https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/02/04/qt-sense-raises-e4-million-for-quantum-tech-that-analyzes-living-cells-in-real-time/
[Yole Group, 2025] QT Sense raises €6 million to use quantum sensing to understand diseases | https://www.yolegroup.com/industry-news/qt-sense-raises-e6-million-to-use-quantum-sensing-to-understand-diseases/
[Tech.eu, Feb 2025] QT Sense raises €6M for quantum-powered disease detection | https://tech.eu/2025/02/25/qt-sense-raises-6m-for-quantum-powered-disease-detection/
[Dealroom.co, 2025] QT Sense company information, funding & investors | https://app.dealroom.co/companies/qt_sense
[PubMed, 2025] In Vivo Nanodiamond Quantum Sensing of Free Radicals in Caenorhabditis elegans Models | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39812229/
[QT Sense Website, 2026] About us | https://qtsense.com/about-us
Articles about QT Sense
- QT Sense Is Putting a Nanodiamond Inside a Living Cell to Read Disease in Real Time — The Groningen startup has raised roughly $10.8M across two seed rounds to ship its Quantum Nuova system to cancer researchers.