News Brief

The Australian New South Wales (NSW) government will be providing enterprises in the state with funds to support commercializing of their idea and enable them to attract large-scale private investment. The NSW government has identified quantum technology as a high value sector. This program is targeting quantum hardware or software technologies at the Technology Readiness Level of between TRL 3-7 (i.e. early stage or mid-stage commercialization) . The grants will be made to enterprises for amounts between $200,000 to $4,000,000 AUD ($139K USD to $2.8M USD) and will be provided as a one time grant. If the project becomes successful, the [...]

The Canadian Quantum Strategy has a goal of expanding Canada's research, talent, and industrial base in quantum technology to help make the country a leader in the field. It will focus on three fields including Computing Hardware & Software, Communications, and Sensors. The investments being made are being divided into three areas: Research ($141M CAD), Talent ($45M CAD), and Commercialization ($169M CAD). The implementation will be advised by a new Quantum Advisory Council with Dr. Raymond Laflamme, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, and [...]

Xanadu will be working with the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) on projects related to quantum algorithms to help design next-generation lithium-ion batteries and ways of optimizing quantum computing hardware. Xanadu has decided to focus its efforts on fault tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) rather than NISQ and the battery project will work to find better battery designs that are longer lasting charging, increased safety, and better energy storage for electric vehicles. KIST is government funded and is Korea's leading science and technology research agency employing over 2000 researchers. The companies will be utilizing Xanadu's Pennylane software programming tool for [...]

The Galician Supercomputing Center (CESGA or Centro de Supercomputación de Galicia) is a high performance computing center in Galicia, Spain funded by the European Commission, the goverment of Spain, and the the regional government of Galicia and CSIC. The operate a supercomputer named FinisTerrae which is the third most powerful supercomputer in Spain. They will be acquiring from Fujitsu a quantum computer, a high-performance computer, an emulator of quantum algorithms and a storage system and will integrate this equipment with the rest of their IT infrastructure. Installation will occur during 2023. This activity is part of the Quantum Technologies Pole of [...]

Duality is a quantum accelerator based in Chicago, Illinois and led by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago and the Chicago Quantum Exchange. They provide entrepreneurial and business training, mentorship, technical expertise, industry exposure, access to office space and state-of-the-art facilities along with $50,000 to fledgling quantum startups in a year-long program to help them get started. They have already supported 11 startups including Super.Tech which was acquired last year by ColdQuanta (now Infleqtion) and qBraid which won first place in pitch competition at the Quantum World Congress event last December. They are now accepting [...]

Oxford Ionics is a quantum hardware startup developing an ion trap based quantum processor using a proprietary, patented Electronic Qubit Control (EQC) technique based on microwave signals for controlling the qubits instead of the more common laser based controls. The company believes this approach combines the high qubit quality inherent in ion traps and will be more scalable than laser controlled ion traps. Because the controls and the ion traps can be integrated onto a silicon chip they take advantage of high volume semiconductor manufacturing technology. We reported last July that they are partnering with Infineon Technologies to manufacture the chips [...]

The program will be led by Finland's VTT and include 24 different organizations based in 9 different countries including Finland, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Austria, Italy, Spain and Czech Republic. It will include funds to upgrade existing micro, nano and quantum technology infrastructures in Europe and allow the participants to design, prototype, and test new quantum devices. Overall the program will provide support for experimental production of devices using superconducting, photonics, semiconducting and diamond modalities and also involve creating a roadmap for transferring the prototype devices to an industrial production environment. VTT's share of this funding will amount to €3.8 million [...]

Davidson Technologies is a 27 year old company headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama that specializes in providing advanced technical solutions to the aerospace and missile defense industry. They have entered into an agreement with D-Wave Quantum Inc., to resell D-Wave's products and services, including the Leap™ quantum cloud service. In addition, they are also working together on a project to support classified quantum-hybrid applications. Davidson has a long history of providing solutions to the U.S. defense establishment in such areas as Advanced Cybersecurity Architectures, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Modeling & Simulation, and Systems Engineering & Integration. Their domain specific expertise and [...]

The governments of The Netherlands, France, and Germany have sign this statement in order to increase the synergies of their quantum efforts and to achieve critical mass and accelerate their advancement of their quantum technologies. The agreement will provide for informal information exchanges and regular meetings to discuss progress. This effort will not only include quantum research but other related areas including education, policy, implementation and use case development. Additional information on this agreement can be found in a news release posted on the Quantum Delta NL website here. January 3, 2023

The 30 month long project, called the  Quantum Communications Infrastructure (QCI) network or IrelandQCI, will create a network backbone from Dublin to Cork via Waterford using quantum channels over existing fiber optic cables. The project will be led by the Walton Institute with additional partners at Trinity College Dublin, Tyndall National Institute University College Dublin, Maynooth University, the Irish Centre for High-End Computing, HEAnet, and ESB Telecoms. Half of the funding will come from the Irish Government and the other half from the European Union (EU). The network will be part of an overall EU project called Quantum Communications Infrastructure (EuroQCI) that is working [...]