Q.ANT Photonic NPU and Open-Source SDK

Q.ANT GmbH is a photonic computing company founded in 2018 and headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, with a U.S. office in Austin, Texas. It commercializes photonic accelerators for AI and high-performance computing in data centers.

Its Native Processing Units perform mathematical operations directly on thin-film lithium niobate photonic integrated circuits and are designed to co-process alongside CPUs and GPUs. The product line includes the second-generation NPU, the Native Processing Server, and an open-source SDK. The company runs its own chip pilot line with IMS CHIPS, and its site lists deployments at LRZ and Jülich.

• NPU Gen 2: second-generation photonic processor with native nonlinear operations.
• Native Processing Server: server form factor described as the first commercial photonic processor.
• Open-source SDK: C/C++ and Python APIs, documentation and sample applications.
• CPU simulation backend: development without photonic hardware.
• Co-processing design: works alongside CPUs and GPUs in data centers.

Research groups in Vietnam can use the SDK to develop photonic-native neural network algorithms. National or university HPC centers can evaluate the processor for AI inference and scientific workloads once cloud access opens.

The open-source SDK lets developers program a photonic processor without hardware, using a CPU simulation backend. Vendor claims include up to 30x energy efficiency and 50x faster computation versus conventional approaches, not independently verified. Hardware access is planned through the cloud or an on-premise server.

AI and HPC data centers face power and efficiency limits, which has pushed interest in photonic accelerators. Vietnamese universities and AI compute operators can start with the free SDK simulator and track cloud access as it opens.

Founded 2018; Stuttgart, Germany, with an office in Austin, Texas. ISO 9001 certificate listed. Collaborators include LRZ, JSC and IONOS; the company raised what it describes as Europe's largest photonic computing Series A in 2025.