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DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), launched in July 2024, aims to identify and verify approaches for building fault-tolerant quantum computers that can achieve utility-scale operation, meaning its computational value exceeds its cost by 2033. Eighteen quantum computing companies have entered Stage A of the program, where they will provide detailed technical concepts over six months to show feasibility for creating utility-scale quantum systems. Funding for Stage A will be up to $1 million per company and the questions that a company will need to answer during Stage A include: How does your company want to build their quantum computer? Why will [...]

Contributed article by Parham Pashaei, Director of Quantum Solutions, Strategy & Partnerships, Quantum Algorithms Institute It’s no secret that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasing worldwide, but that comes at a cost that not many of us are thinking about: energy consumption and CO2 emissions. For example, each ChatGPT query consumes nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search and produces approximately 4.32 grams of CO2. As the AI industry searches for more sustainable and efficient ways to consume energy, quantum computers offer several solutions which the world should consider tomake AI energy consumption more efficient and [...]

As organizations look to upgrade their IT infrastructure to make their communications quantum safe, one of the approaches is to implement a hybrid classical/quantum approach. This combines together both classical algorithms with quantum algorithms to provide added protection against attacks against both the classical and quantum public key encryption. This significantly increases the difficulty for an attacker because they would need to break both the algorithms before they could get access to the encryption key. To this end, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has launched a new post-quantum security standard, Efficient Quantum-Safe Hybrid Key Exchanges with Hidden Access Policies (ETSI TS 104 015), to [...]

Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) has announced its Q4 2024 and full year 2024 financial results. A summary of key financial metrics comparing Q4 2024 with Q3 2024 as well as the full year comparison of 2024 versus 2023 is shown in the table below. The company significantly improved it's cash position in 2024. By the end of the year, the company had raised $167.8 million through its issuance of common stock and $20.1 million through its issuance of convertible promissory notes and other debt for a total of $187.9 million. Operational highlights include NASA collaborations for quantum remote sensing and phase unwrapping, [...]

Diagrams explaining the LR-QAOA Benchmarking Process - See originals at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.06471 A team from the Julich Supercomputing Centre, AIDAS, RWTH Aachen University, and Purdue University has released a paper that describes a new quantum benchmarking protocol called Linear Ramp Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (LR-QAOA) which they tested on 19 different QPUs from five vendors: IBM, IQM, IonQ,Quantinuum, and Rigetti for problem sizes requiring from Nq = 5 to Nq = 156 qubits. The tests included three different qubit topologies, 1D-chain, native layout, and fully connected graphs, qubit counts that ranged from 5 to 156, and LR-QAOA layer count (parameter p) that [...]

Microsoft's release in February of a technical paper on Nature as well as a post of a pre-print paper discussing Roadmap to fault tolerant quantum computation using topological qubit arrays on arXiv has generated a lot of discussion amongst quantum physicists and others on the viability of this approach. In order to provide additional information about their work on this technology, Dr. Chetan Nayak gave a presentation at the recent APS 2025 conference in Anaheim, California with supplementary data that provides further insight into Microsoft's work. Later that day, GQI sat down with Dr. Nayak to further discuss this technology and, [...]

Making the Business Case for Quantum Computing Overview In this episode of The Quantum Spin by HKA, host Veronica Combs talks with Elena Yndurain, a professor, business leader and author. She teaches at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain and specializes in the practical application of theory in Quantum, Artificial Intelligence, SaaS, and more. She created the first Quantum Computing curriculum for executives. In her new book, she analyzed four use cases in 11 industries. She and Veronica discuss working for startups, moving beyond early adopters, and making relevant use cases for quantum technology. Here is the link to her new [...]

D-Wave Quantum Inc. has announced its Q4 and full year 2024 financial results. A quick summary of some key financial metrics comparing Q4 2024 versus Q3 2024 and the year ago quarter of Q4 2023 as well as a comparison of full year 2024 versus 2023 is shown in the chart below. The company raised additional funds through At-The-Market (ATM) and Equity Line of Credit (ELOC) common stock issuance programs in both Q4'2024 and also in the first few months of 2025. In Q4'2024 they raised $161.3 million and in 2025 so far they have raised $146.2 million. The company reported [...]

enQase, a U.S. based spin-off of Qnu Labs has announced a new quantum safe security solution. Their solution leverages several different quantum cybersecurity solutions including PQC (Post Quantum Cryptography), QKD (Quantum Key Distribution), dQKD (Digital Quantum Key Distribution), and QRNG (Quantum Random Number Generation). The QRNG portion uses hardware provided by Qnu Labs. The dQKD is a technology they have developed that combines elements of the PQC and QKD protocols. The company provides flexible options for deployment and can offer a variety of different options including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), perpetual licensing and on-premises hardware solutions through a variety of transmission [...]

IonQ has announced its Q4 and full year 2024 financial results. A quick summary of some key financial metrics comparing Q4 2024 versus Q3 2024 and the year ago quarter of Q4 2023 as well as a comparison of full year 2024 versus 2023 is shown in the chart below. Company executives called 2024 IonQ's best year ever and believes that 2025 will be a great year for them too. The company beat their previous revenue expectations for both Q4 and the full year 2024. They also slightly beat their previous expectations for full year 2024 books. Although the company's 2024 net [...]