News Brief

The  Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) will be building up a new quantum network in the city-state of Singapore called the National Quantum-Safe Network Plus (NQSN+). This network will be an upgrade of the the National Quantum-Safe Network (NQSN) that we reported on earlier this year and this network is intended to cover the entire island-country. SPTel, a joint venture company of ST Engineering and SP Group, and SpeQtral have been selected to build this network. These companies will leverage SPTel's experience in providing digital communication infrastructure in Singapore with SpeQtral's expertise in developing both terrestrial and space-based solutions [...]

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign team has won an award for a two-year program from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to look at ways of reducing defects in the deposition process of the aluminum/aluminum oxide/aluminum junctions used in superconducting Josephson junctions. Defects in the junction can negatively impact coherence time in a superconducting qubit so improvements that can reduce the disorder in the material can help improve the overall qubit quality. The team will be using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) as well as low temperature characterization to be able to develop a full picture of a the Josephson junction deposition. [...]

Quoherent, Inc., a Huntsville, Alabama quantum hardware startup, has secured a $4.7 million in a seed round led by Morpheus Ventures with additional participation from Draper Associates, Khosla Ventures, and Alpha Edison. The company is developing a novel quantum modality that used topological materials that operate at room temperature. The could potentially enable installing a quantum computer at the edge or in portable systems. The funds will be used to will be used to accelerate development of Quoherent’s “third-wave” solid state quantum qubits. Additional information is available in a press release provided by Quoherent which available here. November 15, 2023

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker joined Fermilab leaders, DOE officials, U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, members of the Illinois state legislature, the consul generals of U.K. and Italy, and leaders from other federal agencies, including NASA, federal labs, academia and industry for the ribbon-cutting of the SQMS “Quantum Garage” on Nov. 6. Photo: Dan Svoboda, Fermilab The Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has built a 6,000 square foot lab devoted to advanced research in quantum technology. The facility will provide start-ups, academia and industry with access to advanced scientific tools, equipment, [...]

Equipment in the Penn Quantum Hardware Lab at the University of Pennsylvania Quantum Motion will be providing the Penn Quantum Hardware Lab at the University of Pennsylvania with its latest silicon qubit chips along with funding to work on techniques for testing Quantum Motion's silicon-based quantum processor chips. The funding provided will support a postdoctoral scholar, a PhD student, for three years as well as additional testing equipment in the lab. The Penn Quantum Hardware Lab has considerable expertise in developing new methods to encode and control electron spin qubits to enable devices with improved qubit-to-qubit connectivity and new control approaches. [...]

Quandela, a French quantum hardware startup developing photonic based processors, received has closed on €50 million in funding to support international expansion and continue with their R&D efforts. The investors include Serena, Credit Mutuel Innovation, the European Innovation Council Fund, Bpifrance, OMNES Capital and Quantonation. This amount also include funding from the French government through the France 2030 Plan. The company also announced it had delivered their first quantum computing machine, called MosiaQ to the OVHcloud datacenter. MosiaQ is a photonics based processor that can support anywhere between 2 and 12 qubits. The company also indicated it has started the production [...]

IQM has announced its Radiance series of upgradable quantum processors. These are based upon IQM's superconducting quantum technology and the processors will come in two versions, a 54 qubit version available availability planned for Q3 2024 and a 150 qubit version with availability planned for Q1 2025. Customers purchasing the 54 qubit version will be able to upgrade to the 150 qubit version when it is available. And customers with the 150 qubit version should be able to upgrade to more advanced IQM processors when those become available. Target customers for these machines include businesses, high performance computing centers, data centers [...]

PASQAL, a global leader in neutral atom quantum computing, is supporting the Faculty of Engineering, Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS), a leader in education and applied research in Canada, to create a research chair in applied quantum computing. The chair holder will develop quantum software solutions for industry, using PASQAL’s hardware and technology. PASQAL is setting up a facility to manufacture quantum processors at Espace Quantique 1 of DistriQ – Quantum Innovation Zone in Sherbrooke, Canada. This will help accelerate the adoption of neutral atom quantum computing in the North American market. The research chair is part of PASQAL’s strategy to deliver [...]

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has created a project called QuantiCom (Quantum Computing for Materials Science and Engineering) to research the use of quantum computers for rapid development of new materials. One of the subprojects of this endeavor is called QuantiCom Q2H which is intended to demonstrate the use of quantum computing for performing atomic level simulations of molecules. ParityQC has won a three year contract that goes through 2026 to develop quantum algorithms for performing these simulations and will start with two small molecules, hydrogen and water. Once they have developed a quantum based simulation algorithm, they will then compare [...]

Analog Quantum Circuits is a superconducting hardware components startup based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. They were founded in 2022 by a team that came from the University of Queensland. The company develops miniaturized core microwave components such as such as amplifiers, attenuators, circulators, and other components. These components can be integrated on-chip to help enable the scale-up of superconducting quantum processors. Uniseed is Australia’s longest running early-stage commercialisation fund and the Uniseed-managed funds have committed to invest $3 million AUD in the company. Additional information is available in a news release posted on the Uniseed website here and also an article [...]