News Brief

IonQ and South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the recent Quantum Korea 2023 conference to support a program targeted at masters and doctorate students, postdoctoral researchers, and quantum industry professionals in South Korea. As part of the program, IonQ will contribute its quantum computing resources and experience to help South Korea grow a vibrant quantum community in their country. IonQ's news release announcing the signing of this MOU can be accessed on their website here. June 30, 2023

Tohoku University Will Access the Quantum Annealer Over the Internet. Credit: NEC NEC along with Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). has developed a prototype 8 qubit quantum annealer using a new patented architecture from ParityQC. The architecture brings several advantages including high resistance to noise, long coherence times, and high scalability. NEC and Tohoku will be researching the use of this processor to solve combinatorial optimization problems and will be comparing the results against a  simulated quantum annealing machine (NEC Vector Annealing) that runs on the vector supercomputer “SX Aurora TSUBASA” at Tohoku University. Results of this [...]

Terra Quantum announced that it has acquired divis intelligent solutions GmbH (“divis”), a software company based in Dortmund, Germany that develops algorithms for use in efficient data analysis, automatic machine learning, and process optimization for clients in industries including automotive, chemical, consumer, energy, and synthetic materials. The company will be working to extend their classical optimization algorithms to take advantage of the potential performance advantages in quantum and hybrid classical/quantum platforms including areas such as quantum machine learning (QML). divis’ founder Professor Thomas Bäck will remain Managing Director at divis and Professor of Computer Science with the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer [...]

Multiverse Computing is a leading quantum software company headquartered in San Sebastián, Spain with a North American headquarters in Toronto, Canada. They will be supporting the curriculum development at the Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS) in Quebec, Canada by providing UdeS students with access to Multiverse's Singularity quantum computing software as a service (qSaaS) platform. Multiverse and UdeS will be receiving student feedback on the software and will be using it to develop additional quantum computing educational material. The parties will also work to identify other joint educational projects and collaboration opportunities in quantum computing. A press release announcing this collaboration is [...]

Quantum Machines is an Israeli based developer of quantum control and electronics at the mid-stack level. They have signed Memorandums of Understanding with the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), Korea Quantum Computing Industry Leaders' Alliance (QCILA), and Orientom. KRISS is the national measurement standards laboratory for the Republic of Korea. QCILA is a consortium of commercial entities in Korea comprising telecom, electronics, and quantum organizations to advance the practical use of quantum computing technology in the country. And Orientom is a specialized software company focused on developing a quantum finance platform. The partnerships with these organization will include [...]

Bundesdruckerei GmbH is a digital security company headquartered in Berlin, Germany. They have been working with Q.ANT since 2022 as part of the Qu-Gov project funded by the Federal Ministry of Finance BMF to research how quantum technology can be used to ensure digital security for government and other end users. As one of the first deliverables of this contract, Q.ANT has delivered a Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) developed using their photonic based technology based upon their lithium-niobate and optical waveguide technology. Random numbers generated with quantum technology are considered more secure for use as encryption keys because quantum physics ensures [...]

Algorithmiq, a quantum software company based in Helsinki Finland, has received a $15 million Series A round to continue its work on utilizing quantum computing to accelerate drug discovery. The investment was led by Inventure VC, with additional participation from Tesi, Presidio Ventures, Thames Trust, and previously existing backers. Late last year, the company launched a new drug discovery platform called Aurora that works by using classical pre-processing to reducing the complexity to model only the most relevant part of the molecule on the quantum processor and then use classical post-processing to reduce errors. The company is currently working on proof-of-concept projects [...]

The grant was provided by Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency, which previous announced is was awarding a total of £45 million ($57.7M USD) for 49 different projects for research into various areas of quantum technologies. Infleqtion UK, a subsidiary of Infleqtion, has won one of the project in the PNT (Position, Navigation, and Timing) category. The specific amount of the award made to Infleqtion has not yet been made public. The company will use this funding to complete the development of an optical atomic clock that will have accuracy level far exceeding the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) with [...]

The non-profit South Carolina Quantum Association, located in Columbia, South Carolina, will be receiving $15 million to set up a quantum program that will be run out of the Boyd Foundation Community Innovation Center. The program will focus on research, education, and workforce development. The group will work with Benedict College and other state universities to help set up a quantum curriculum. Some of the money will be use to rent time on a quantum computer located elsewhere for use in training and research. The association and government officials are hopeful that this effort will help emerge a local quantum industry hub in [...]

Entropica Labs is a Singapore quantum software company and Atom Computing is a U.S. based hardware company developing a quantum processor based upon neutral atom technology. The two companies have agreed to work together to explore how their respective technologies can work together for performing useful large scale quantum computations. The ultimate goal is to find ways the technologies can work together for error corrected quantum computing. This is in line with Atom Computing's belief that their neutral atom approach is very amenable for scaling up to large numbers of qubits in the near future. A press release provided by Entropica [...]