News Brief

A consortium led by UBS and including the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator Foundation (GESDA), CERN, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), and the Swiss universities ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) will be established at CERN beginning March 2024 to accelerate the usage of quantum computing to support implementation of six of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The effort will have a three year pilot implementation from 2024-2026 with UBS contributing funding of two million Swiss francs per year. The effort will include over 40 partners from more than 20 different countries [...]

Early quantum startups will have a chance to receive a $100,000 investment from Qubits Ventures, a VC firm investing in early-stage quantum tech startups in a pitch competition that will be held on day 2 of the Q2B23 Silicon Valley event on December 6, 2023. Any startup with a focus on quantum solutions that has raised less than $2.5M in funding is eligible to apply.‍ Applications will be evaluated on their uniqueness, feasibility, financial viability, and market desirability. The deadline to submit a pitch for consideration is November 15, 2023. From the submitted entries, seven finalists will be selected to make [...]

Aliro Quantum has received its Series A funding from several venture firms including Accenture Ventures and lead investor Leaders Fund. Although the company didn't release the exact amount of the funding, they indicated it was less than $20 million. Aliro is a software company that specializes in providing software that can  emulate, pilot, and deploy entanglement-based quantum networks. It was spun out of the NarangLab at Harvard University in 2019. Their software was recently selected as the vehicle for providing quantum network configuration, control and orchestration in the EPB Quantum Network Powered by Qubitekk in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The company will be using the new funds to accelerate [...]

Photo of the IQM/VTT 20 Qubit Quantum Processor. Credit: IQM As part of a program announced in November 2020 to install a series of quantum computers in Finland, IQM and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have reached the next milestone and installed a 20 qubit superconducting based processor at the Micronova research facility in Espoo, Finland. It joins a 5 qubit machine that was installed at Micronova in November 2021. The 20 qubit processor includes improved manufacturing, integration, signaling, and packaging techniques which the team will leverage for reaching their next milestone, which will be the installation of a 50+ qubit [...]

We reported last March that PsiQuantum had received  £9 Million in funding from the UK government at what is now the new STFC-PsiQuantum R&D facility for developing advanced cryogenic technology. PsiQuantum has now announced a second activity that will occur at that facility and that is to work with the the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre on a 12-month project to develop Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC) applications in the UK. The 12 month project will including training personnel on FTQC principles, identifying potential applications with high potential impact and value, and developing algorithms for two industrial relevant use [...]

The contract was awarded by the German Aerospace Center Quantum Computing Initiative (DLR QCI) in association with the DLR Institute for Atmospheric Physics for a project called KLIM-QML that started in December 2022 and will continue through November of 2026. PlanQC and d-fine will work with DLR experts with a goal of improving the predictions about climate trends and more effective adaptation and mitigation strategies against climate change. There will be two parts to the work. The first will be to tune the free parameters in the climate model and the second will involve parameterization of the climate model. PlanQC is [...]

The grant was provided to Rigetti Computing under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Imagining Practical Applications for a Quantum Tomorrow (IMPAQT) program. The project titled “Scheduling Problems with Efficient Encoding of Qubits” (SPEEQ) seeks to develop a novel and qubit efficient encoding of optimization problems related to scheduling problems with the goal of enabling larger problems to be mapped to currently available NISQ-era quantum computers which have a limited number of qubits. These scheduling problems are very common in industry and Rigetti will work to take advantage of its hybrid classical/quantum system architecture to develop an apporach that is [...]

IBM is updating its access plans for its IBM Quantum systems. First, it will transition its fleet to only those systems that contain more than 100 qubits. This includes users who access via the free Open Plan. These users will be able to obtain 10 minutes of free runtime per month on the IBM Qiskit Runtime. A new offering will be the IBM Quantum Credits. IBM is interested in supporting researchers who are developing applications approaching quantum utility and will provide selected members of the research community with a pre-set amount of access to their more powerful utility-scale systems over the [...]

A new coalition to raise the awareness and drive adoption of post-quantum cryptography has been formed with founding members IBM Quantum, Microsoft, MITRE, PQShield, SandboxAQ, and the University of Waterloo. Their goal is to accelerate the global adoption of PQC in commercial and open-source technologies by providing their expertise, outreach, and education. Key areas they will be focusing on include advancing standards relevant to PQC migration, creating technical materials to support education and workforce development, producing and verifying open-source, production-quality code, implementing side-channel resistant code for industry verticals, and ensuring cryptographic agility. A press release announcing the formation of this group is available here. September 27, [...]

A 127 qubit IBM System One quantum processor has been installed at an IBM facility in Bromont, Quebec, Canada. It will be administered by PINQ² (Platform for Digital and Quantum Innovation of Quebec), a non-profit organization (NPO) founded by the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy of Quebec and the Université de Sherbrooke. The processor is only IBM's fourth quantum processor to be installed outside of IBM's facilities in New York state and is the only one located in Canada. The machine will be used for advanced quantum computing research and for quantum workforce training. The machine will support quantum activity [...]