News Brief

The U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has published a set of interim final rules for export controls on critical technologies including Quantum Computing Items, Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment, Gate All-Around Field-Effect Transistor (GAAFET) Technology, and Additive Manufacturing Items. The rules come into affect on September 6, 2024 and the BIS is inviting public comments for 60 days after that. The rules were formed to improve coordination of export controls with other like-minded countries and strengthen the effectiveness of the export controls. In addition, these controls recognize the dependence of the quantum industry on recruiting foreign talent and [...]

Rotonium is a company located in Padova, Italy working on utilizing the features of the orbital angular momentum of electromagnetic waves and photons to develop innovative technologies and applications in communication and in quantum computation. They have received €1 million ($1.1M USD) in a seed investment from Galaxia, the National Technology Transfer Centre for Aerospace, a fund established in partnership with  CDP Venture Capital‘s Tech Transfer Fund and Obloo Ventures. The money will be used to further develop their photonic technology based upon a single-photon qubit that operates at room temperature and to use it to design a commercial quantum computer. They [...]

Qrypt, a US quantum security pioneer, has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 contract by AFWERX to enhance the security of Mattermost secure chat. This project aims to address data privacy and encryption for the U.S. Air Force by integrating Qrypt’s one-time pad (OTP) cipher technology. The contract leverages Qrypt’s Quantum Secure Key Generation technology (BLAST) and Quantum Random Number Generators, developed with Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. This enhancement ensures the protection and integrity of chat communications against quantum threats. Qrypt CTO Denis Mandich emphasized the importance of this technology for military cybersecurity, noting [...]

Israeli quantum computing company Quantum Transistors has secured up to €17.5 million ($19 million USD) from the European Innovation Council (EIC), marking the largest investment among 68 selected companies out of 969 applications. The funding includes a €2.5 million ($2.72 million USD) grant from the EIC Accelerator and a future equity investment of €15 million ($16.28 million USD) through the EIC Fund. This financial boost will enable Quantum Transistors to scale up its R&D efforts and expand its team. Quantum Transistors aims to make quantum computing more accessible by developing an integrated universal quantum processor on a single chip. Their approach [...]

We had reported in February that the UK government had made awards to seven companies totaling £30 million ($38.9M USD) for installation of quantum processors at the UK National Quantum Computing Centre by March 2025. Now, Infleqtion has announced that it is the first one to deploy their installation using the company's neutral atom quantum technology. NQCC will also be using Infleqtion's Superstaq software and Infleqtion will also be participating in the upcoming UK Quantum Hackathon on July 22-24, 2024. For additional information, read Infleqtion's press release posted on their website here. July 16, 2024

Infleqtion has announced it has sold its super accurate Tiqker quantum clock to the University of Strathclyde in the UK. Tiqker is a hot atom, vapor cell, rubidium based atomic clock that provides long term frequency stability of under 5x10-15 with low phase noise. This technology would compete with Cesium-133 beam clocks that are widely used in critical frequency standard applications. Uses of such a high accuracy frequency standard include use in navigation systems designed to operate in GPS denied environments, providing an accurate frequency reference, and timing synchronization between data centers, 6G base stations, and backbone networks. The unit is [...]

Danish quantum software startup Kvantify has secured €10 Million ($10.8M USD) in seed funding in a round led by Danish VC Dreamcraft and biotech investor Lundbeckfonden BioCapita. Other participants in the funding in include Redstone VC, 2xN, and EIFO. Kvantify is a quantum software startup focusing on life science applications for such problems as drug discovery. They are developing quantum algorithms for chemical simulations which are very useful for the life sciences applications as well as applications in other industries. The amount of this funding is a little bit larger than most seed rounds. The company will be using the funds [...]

Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Heng Swee Keat, announced an investment of close to S$300 million ($222M USD) into the National Quantum Strategy (NQS). The NQS aims to advance Singapore’s growing quantum industry and strengthen its position as a leading hub for quantum technologies over the next five years. Key initiatives under the NQS include elevating the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) to a flagship national research center, establishing the National Quantum Sensor Programme, creating the National Quantum Processor Initiative (NQPI), and launching the National Quantum Scholarships Scheme (NQSS) to develop talent in quantum research and development (R&D). Additional information is available in [...]

Quantum Circuits Inc. has quietly raised $26.5 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital Partners with additional participation from others. This brings their total funding to $84 million since the New Haven, Connecticut based company was founded in 2015. The company was founded by leading quantum scientists from Yale University and is pursuing a modular, superconducting based processor with error correction. The company is currently testing its technology and plans to start offering its quantum capabilities via a cloud service. In the past, they have been listed as one of the future partners for Microsoft Azure Quantum's cloud service. [...]

IQM Quantum Computers (IQM) has announced that their 20 qubit Garnet quantum processor is now available to end users on the Amazon Braket service. This processor has a square lattice topology using tunable couplers and has a medium 2-qubit gate fidelity of 99.51% with a single pair hitting 99.8%. This processor joins others available on Amazon Braket including from IonQ, Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), QuEra, and Rigetti. It will be the first AWS processor hosted in the European Union. (OQC is located in the UK which is in Europe, but the UK is no longer part of the European Union). The [...]