dougfinke

IonQ will acquire the assets of Qubitekk in an all-cash deal for $22 million and members of the Qubitekk team will be joining the company. The deal also includes acquisition of Qubitekk's 118 U.S. and international patents in the areas of quantum networking hardware and quantum network security. IonQ has been investing in quantum networking technology in recent years with an acquisition of the assets of Entangled Networks in 2023 and a $54.4 million contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for researching quantum networking. Qubitekk is one of the few U.S. based companies developing products for this area. Their product [...]

TNO has great experience in nanofabrication and advanced materials engineering. Equal1 has its hybrid UnityQ architecture and a vision to create single chip systems with millions of qubits on the chip. This partnership will leverage TNO's advanced fabrication facilities to fabricate Equal's spin qubit chips. A press release announcing this partnership is available on the Equal1 website here. November 2, 2024

Oxford Ionics has recruited Chris Goodings to become their VP of Engineering. His responsibilities will including leading the company's technical activities including including the Quantum Science & Engineering, Quantum Infrastructure, and Software Development teams. He has significant prior experience in engineering management with a background that includes working at Salience Labs, Graphcore, Blu Wireless Technology Ltd., NVIDIA, and other companies. Oxford Ionics has posted an announcement about Goodings joining the company that can be seen here. Nu Quantum has added Roland Acra to its Board of Advisors. Acra will advise the company on US commercial expansion, scaling product and go-to-market strategy to [...]

KPMG LLP has partnered with the Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) to advance quantum technology for enterprise use. This collaboration aims to help KPMG's clients leverage quantum technology for improved processes and future-proofing. KPMG will support the development of relationships and training within the CQE community, focusing on practical applications in various industries. The partnership emphasizes the potential of quantum technology to solve business challenges and positions Chicago as a key hub for quantum innovation. An announcement about KPMG joining as a new member of the CQE has been posted here. November 2, 2024

Qolab is a quantum computing hardware startup founded by Google Quantum AI alumni Alan Ho and John Martinis, along with Professor Robert McDermott of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. They are pursuing a superconducting based quantum processor that will use a proprietary fabrication processes for building high quality qubits. They are working with Applied Materials to help develop the necessary fabrication process. Nikkei Asia has reported that the Development Bank of Japan has made a venture investment in Qolab for $3.5 million. This would represent the first venture investment they have made in a quantum computing startup based in the U.S. [...]

As we mentioned in our article last August when NIST announced its first set of Post Quantum Cryptography Algorithms (PQC) for standardization, they wanted to see additional diversity in algorithms for the digital signatures beyond the three that were initially selected. In particular, they wanted to have additional algorithms available that were not based upon a structured lattice approach to provide alternatives in case weaknesses showed up. So, in September 2022 they called for proposals for a new series to evaluate additional PQC digital signatures and received 40 valid proposals by the submission deadline last June. NIST has now whittled down [...]

by Amara Graps One of my current favorite books at home is Cal Peternell's Twelve Recipes. He is a professional chef who wrote the cookbook to codify a core set (dozen) of recipes for his sons to carry with them into their future lives. Each recipe has a basic form, then Peternell adds variants that transform the cookbook into a multi-year meal plan. The recipes use simple ingredients and are presented in the style of a story, making them extra-memorable. With Peternell's cookbook in mind, a tempting meal for clicks on the news headlines occurs roughly once-per-year, using the following recipe [...]

by Joe Spencer The International Council of Quantum Industry Associations (ICQIA) is urging Canada to prioritize quantum technologies during its 2025 G7 Presidency, seeing it as a pivotal opportunity to solidify global leadership in this transformative field. Why is this Important? Quantum technologies are essential for economic prosperity and national security. The ICQIA highlights that other G7 nations and security alliances are rapidly increasing their focus and investments in this area, such as NATO with it’s billion dollar innovation fund and the AUKUS Framework. 2025 is a landmark year for quantum. The UN has declared it the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, [...]

Zapata AI, one of the pioneering startups in the quantum software market, has ceased operations as of October 9, 2024. The sudden terminations appears to have been precipitated by an acceleration of payment of about $2.5 million that the company owed to Sandia Investment Management LP. Originally, this payment was not due until a Valuation Date of March 28, 2026, but the company received notice from Sandia that this date had been accelerated to October 8, 2024. So the company had to shut down and terminate almost all of the employees except for a handful that will be needed for a [...]

When IBM announced version 1.0 of Qiskit last May, they also mentioned that they were developing a Qiskit Code Assistant service with a Visual Studio code extension that will help customer generate code for their Qiskit programs. This tool is a generative AI assistant that has been trained on millions of text tokens of Qiskit code examples created over the years. It uses IBM's Granite Code large language model (LLM) and IBM's watsonx AI platform to help automate the code process so that users can generate high-quality Qiskit code with more productivity, at a more abstract interface level, and obtain more [...]