News Brief

The funding from the European Innovation Council is comprised of an equity investment of €10 million with and a grant of €2.5 million. It is the first award the council has made to a quantum software company. This follows a €10 Million ($11.5M USD) seed round that Multiverse received in October as well as the August release of their flagship Singularity software product. Multiverse is focused on providing software that can help provide solutions to various finance related problems including portfolio optimization, capital allocation, fraud detection and risk management. Multiverse will be using some of the funds to further develop its [...]

In July of this year, we wrote about a Quantum Computing Challenge issued by BMW and AWS. The purpose was to develop quantum algorithms for four specific industrial problems and to test them on real quantum computing technologies. About 70 companies submitted entries and these are the winners: 1. Sensor positions for automated driving functions: Accenture2. Simulation of material deformations: Qu&Co3. Configuration optimisation of pre-series vehicles: 1QBit and NTT4. Automated quality analyses: QC Ware BMW will continue to work with these winners as a customer so that the winners can continue development of these pilot projects. For more details, you can [...]

NTT DATA is part of the NTT group of companies and is one of the leading providers of IT and business services in over 50 countries worldwide. They will be working with Classiq to utilize Classiq's software for credit risk analysis. Credit risk analysis is a very important function within financial institutions. It can also be very complex. These algorithms will look at a wide variety of factors involved in a lending situation and help determine the risk involved that may arise from a borrower defaulting on the loan or other factors. This data will help the lender make a decision [...]

SpeQtral is a Singapore based startup developing commercial space-based QKD founded on technology developed at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore. Among other projects they have a collaboration with Toshiba to power quantum-secure communication solutions in Southeast Asia. They have just announced they have closed an $8.3 million USD funding round led by Xora Innovation with additional participation from TIS Ventures.  The funds will be used to expand SpeQtral’s regional and international presence, establish strategic business partnerships, hire top talent, support the commercial rollout of terrestrial systems, and further develop its satellite-based systems. For more about [...]

One of the most strategic decisions a quantum hardware company can make is how they plan to manufacture their chips. Some companies, such as Rigetti, have decided to construct their own fabrication facility in order to obtain the best possible control and fabrication turn-around time. While others, including D-Wave, PsiQuantum, and others are utilizing semiconductor foundries to build their chips. Xanadu has decided to take the latter approach, but it appears they will be using multiple vendors for different parts of their system. In August, they announced they will partner with imec in Belgium to fabricate the chips that contain the [...]

The round was led by Airbus Ventures with additional participation from Ridgeline Partners, Main Sequence Ventures, Horizons Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Sierra Ventures, DCVC, Sequoia Capital China and In-Q-Tel. Besides Q-CTRL's work in developing control software for quantum computing, Airbus has been particularly interested in Q-CTRL's recent work in quantum sensing. Dr. Lewis Pinault, Airbus Ventures Partner based in Tokyo said “At Airbus Ventures, we’re particularly excited about Q-CTRL’s widening span of advanced applications and solutions, including lunar development, geospatial intelligence, and Earth observation, all increasingly critical in the global effort to address the accelerating planetary system crises we now face.” [...]

Tech Central is an effort by the New South Wales (NSW), Australia government to provide innovative tech companies to centralize and find affordable office space for scaling up. One goal will be to encourage collaboration between related companies and foster a culture of sharing ideas and resources. It will include a Scaleup Hub with 8,000 square meters (about 86,000 square feet) of space for these companies to locate and expand. The Scaleup Hub is slated to be in operation by July 2022. They also provide funding of up to $600,000 AUD ($427K USD) per company to fit-out the space and customize [...]

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking information about the public and private sector marketplace trends, supply chain risks, legislative, policy, and the future investment needs of eight emerging technology areas, including quantum computing. The goal will be to gather ideas from people both in the industry and the general public of ways that can foster economic growth and competitiveness across the Nation that benefit all citizens. Information that the government seeks includes material related to the relevant marketplaces; supply chains; legislative, policy and standards needs; and strategic public-private partnerships to enhance adoption. This will help the [...]

We wrote last September about Dell's first step in quantum computing to test a solution that integrates their Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd with IBM Qiskit quantum emulator. They have now taken a second step to test how their server can be integrated with both IonQ's quantum simulator (also called a vQPU or virtual Quantum Processing Unit) as well as IonQ's real ion trap quantum computer. Although the title of their blog post mentions the term "on-premise" this is only true when using a configuration that uses the vGPU. When interfacing with a IonQ's real QPU in Maryland, that machine will still be [...]

QuTech, a Dutch organization that is a collaboration between the TU Delft and TNO, has introduced a web site where users can simulate various aspects of a quantum internet. At this time, the simulations are performed on a classical computer but it is conceivable that this web site might allow allow users to try experience on real quantum communications hardware sometime in the future. The web site provides graphical animations of various quantum communications operations. There are currently three pre-configured applications available for beginners which include a Distributed CNOT, State Teleportation (also known as Quantum Teleportation), and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). [...]