dougfinke

Yuval Boger interviews Helmut Katzgraber, general partner at 55North and former quantum leader at AWS. They discuss Helmut’s view that the most promising near- to mid-term quantum applications are in quantum simulation for materials, chemicals, and pharma, rather than optimization. They also explore European competitiveness, venture opportunities across the quantum stack, cloud and on-prem deployment models, and the workforce and product skills needed to turn quantum ideas into successful companies. Transcript Yuval: Hello, Helmut, and thank you for joining me today. Helmut: Hi, Yuval. Nice talking to you again. Yuval: So who are you and what do you do? Helmut: My name is Helmut Katzgraber. [...]

Guest post by Zeynep Koruturk, Dr. Kris Naudts, & Donald Harmitt of Firgun Ventures and Professor Bob Coecke of Relational Intelligence Limited Few questions in the quantum sector are asked more often, or answered more loosely, than how many qubits a useful quantum computer will require. Press releases announce systems with hundreds of qubits, then thousands, and the implicit suggestion is that the field is approaching a finish line. The reality is more nuanced, and arguably more interesting. It is not as black and white as saying there is a single number of qubits that makes a quantum computer "useful". The [...]

Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) has announced plans to establish its first European Union facility in Barcelona, Spain. Dubbed the OQC Global Quantum Development & Manufacturing Centre, the site will serve as the company's primary global hub for the design, development, and industrialization of its superconducting quantum hardware. The project represents a €92 million ($98M USD) investment and is projected to create 210 high-skilled jobs over the next five years—more than doubling OQC's current global headcount of 150 employees. Operations are slated to begin in Q4 2026. Transaction & Funding Details The expansion follows OQC's recent £260 Million ($350 Million USD) Series [...]

Australian headquartered quantum hardware company Diraq has opened its office in Palo Alto as part of its U.S. growth strategy. The office will serve as a key hub for product development and developing ecosystem partnerships. The company indicated it is planning further expansion with an additional offices in the Los Angeles area as well as operations in Chicago. The company’s architecture utilizes silicon spin qubits (quantum dots) fabricated via standard Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) processes on 300mm wafers. This approach enables the high-density integration of quantum and classical control electronics on a single silicon chip. Diraq’s qubits operate at a temperature of [...]

We had previously reported on a Boeing Q4S project to demonstrate entanglement swapping in space (see here and here). Now, Boeing has announced further progress with the completion of ground testing of the high-fidelity entanglement swapping in the compact, space-qualified Q4S payload. This milestone moves the company closer to realizing a space-based quantum network capable of linking quantum sensors and computers globally. The payload has previously passed environmental qualification and is now undergoing final spacecraft integration ahead of a planned 2027 launch. Q4S is a planned one-year, on-orbit demonstration mission designed to test quantum networking hardware in the harsh environment of [...]

Superconducting hardware developer IQM Quantum Computers has achieved its first physical installation on U.S. soil with the deployment of Pathfinder, a 20-qubit IQM Radiance system, at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The processor represents ORNL’s first-ever commercially procured quantum computer and has been installed directly within the facility's high-performance computing (HPC) ecosystem. By physically housing the machine alongside Frontier—the world’s most powerful supercomputer for open science—ORNL's Tech Integration Group can directly engineer and test low-latency, hybrid quantum-classical hardware connections.   The acquisition highlights IQM’s strict on-premises deployment model, distinguishing it from common cloud-only access patterns where hardware remains [...]

Image of the EeroQ Electron on Helium Chip EeroQ has been developing a unique modality that involves using electrons bound to the surface of superfluid helium as the qubits. This approach is less mature than other, more common modalities, but it might be able provide significant advantages in the future including long coherence times, small qubit size, fast gates, and CMOS compatibility once the technology is developed further. The company has just published a technical paper in Nature Physics describing a successful demonstration of Strong coupling of a microwave photon to an electron on helium that provides a mechanism to readout [...]

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced an expansion of its quantum computing strategy, securing collaboration agreements with eight prominent players across the quantum hardware, control systems, and error correction landscape. The initiative aims to integrate the company’s market-leading HPE Cray high-performance computing (HPC) platform with a diverse array of quantum modalities, positioning HPE as a central systems integrator for hybrid classical-quantum computing. The eight partners named in the announcement span virtually major technological stacks in the industry including: Hardware Modalities: Intel (silicon spin qubits), IQM and Rigetti Computing (superconducting), Quantinuum (trapped ion), and QuEra Computing (neutral atom). Control & Error Correction: [...]

Neutral-atom quantum hardware developer Atom Computing and quantum software specialist Phasecraft have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on application-focused algorithms. The partnership aims to adapt Phasecraft’s hardware-optimized software to Atom’s neutral-atom architecture, with a primary focus on accelerating materials discovery for clean energy applications like advanced batteries and solar technology. The joint effort will also explore how these specialized algorithms can be utilized to benchmark industry progress toward utility-scale quantum systems. The announcement highlights significant momentum for both companies, particularly for Atom Computing as it has developed systems with over 1,200 physical qubits, featuring advanced capabilities towards fault-tolerant quantum [...]

Yuval Boger interviews Mehmet Sanliol, managing director at Evercore covering quantum technologies and semiconductors. They discuss how investors value public quantum companies, when private companies should consider IPOs or SPACs, and why consolidation may shape the next phase of the industry. Mehmet also shares his perspective on technical and market signals that could affect valuations, the outlook for quantum software, and the recent developments in quantum that caught his attention most. Transcript Yuval: Hello, Mehmet, and thank you for joining me today. Mehmet: How are you, Yuval? My pleasure. Yuval: So, who are you and what do you do? Mehmet: So, my name is Mehmet [...]