QNu Labs
India's first commercial quantum-safe cybersecurity vendor. Incubated at IIT Madras Research Park in 2016 and headquartered in Bengaluru, QNu Labs ships a trio of quantum-security products: Tropos (laser-based QRNG, ~100 Mbps, NIST SP 800-90B), Armos (fibre-QKD with a decoy-state Differential Phase Shift protocol, ~200 km / 40 dB loss budget), and Hodos (post-quantum cryptography platform integrating NIST-selected PQC algorithms). Anchor customer is the Indian government — supplies QKD and QRNG to the Indian Army, Indian Navy, BEL, DRDO and WESEE, and is the lead vendor on the National Quantum Mission's 1,000-km indigenous quantum communication testbed announced in April 2025.
Timeline
Current flagship
Armos QKD — ARMOS 2.0 — decoy-state Differential Phase Shift (DPS) fibre QKD, 200 km / 40 dB loss budget, 10 Gbps classical co-existence
Milestones
- 2025-04National Quantum Mission demonstrates 1,000 km indigenous quantum communication network built on QNu Labs' Armos platform
- 2025-04Series A — INR 60 Cr (~$7.1M USD) led by National Quantum Mission (DST, INR 25 Cr); Speciale Invest, Lucky Investment, Tenacity Ventures, Singularity AMC, HDFC participate
- 202425 Armos QKD systems delivered to the Indian Navy
- 2023-12Pre-Series A — $6.5M raised
- 2023ARMOS 2.0 published — commercial QKD product hardened against photon-number-splitting attacks via decoy-state DPS
- 2022Won iDEX Open Challenge 2.0 — 150 km QKD with trusted nodes, Indian Army trials
- 2016Founded by Sunil Gupta, Srinivasa Rao Aluri, Mark Mathias and Anil Prabhakar; incubated at IIT Madras Research Park
Roadmap
Capability details
QKD
- Protocols
- BB84, decoy-state, DPS
- Rate vs distance
- Armos: ~8,000 secure bps @ ~50 km metro; ~200 bps @ 200 km / 40 dB SMF; co-exists with 10 Gbps classical on same fibre
3 unverified fields
-
modalities.qkd.rate_distance— Headline numbers (8 kbps @ 50 km, 200 bps @ 200 km, 40 dB) come from vendor press and the VIAVI validation study; not yet a peer-reviewed publication. ARMOS 2.0 preprint covers protocol security but not the headline rate-distance table. -
shareholders.0.stake_class— NQM contribution is reported as INR 25 Cr lead but stake percentages of any Series A shareholder are not publicly disclosed. -
key_personnel.3— Anil Prabhakar listed historically as co-founder; current operational involvement at QNu vs. continuing IIT Madras role not confirmed from primary sources.
People
References
- press https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2114874®=3&lang=2 Govt. of India / DST press release — QNu Labs on the 1,000 km NQM testbed (April 2025)
- press https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/04/30/qnu-labs-raises-over-7m-in-funding-led-by-indias-national-quantum-mission/ Series A funding announcement
- preprint https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368543286_ARMOS_20_an_ultra-secure_commercial_QKD_product_against_PNS_attacks ARMOS 2.0 — commercial QKD product against PNS attacks (decoy-state DPS)
- blog https://www.qnulabs.com/quantum-random-number-generator Tropos QRNG product page — laser source, time-of-arrival single-photon detection, NIST SP 800-90B
- blog https://www.qnulabs.com/quantum-key-distribution Armos QKD product page
- blog https://www.qnulabs.com/post-quantum-cryptography Hodos PQC product page
- press https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/04/09/armos-qkd-real-world-readiness/ Armos QKD validation study with VIAVI Solutions (MAP-300, 200 km / 40 dB, QBER <4%)
- press https://idrw.org/indias-quantum-leap-qnu-labs-targets-military-grade-networks-beyond-1000-km-under-national-quantum-mission/ 1,000 km-plus military quantum-network roadmap under NQM