News Brief

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the development of a prototype superconducting quantum computer with the prototype to be installed at the  Walther Meißner Institute of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Participants in the project, codenamed GeQCoS (German Quantum Computer based on Superconducting Qubits), include the Walther Meißner Institute (WMI) of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Technical University of Munich, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF), and Infineon. Additional information about this project [...]

Microsoft has transitioned its Azure Quantum service to Public Preview from its previous status of Limited Preview where it was opened to a small number of partners and customers. Currently they indicate that the two hardware platforms available are the Honeywell's 10 qubit computer and the IonQ's 11 qubit computer, both of which are based upon ion trap technology. Microsoft has announced additional hardware partners including Quantum Circuits Inc. (QCI) which uses superconducting technology and Toshiba which provides a Simulated Bifurcation Machine, but these do not seem to be available in the public preview. The public preview will also include software [...]

The Quantum Open Source Foundation (QOSF) in collaboration with the Unitary Fund reviewed over 50 nominations for the best contribution to open source quantum software and has awarded the 2020 Wittek Quantum Prize for Open Source Software to Roger Luo, PhD student at University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute, for his work on Yao.jl and its surrounding ecosystem in the Julia programming language. Yao.jl is one of the fastest free quantum simulators available and has a surrounding ecosystem that consists of more than 50 repositories under the umbrella of the Quantum-BFS organization. In additional to Yao.jl, Roger has made over 3000 [...]

Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) has created this program to provide provide program partners with access to QCI’s industry-leading quantum acceleration platform, expert resources, and funding to explore and push the boundaries of quantum computing for delivering practical business results. The QikStart program is suited for non-quantum programming experts who are looking for practical solutions to complex constrained optimization problems. These types of problems are commonly seen in businesses in such areas as supply chain, logistics, drug discovery, cybersecurity, transportation and others. We previously reported on QCI's Mukai software that is expected to be utilized in this program. For more about the [...]

CINECA is an Italian consortium composed of 70 Italian Universities, four national research centers and government ministries formed to support the Italian scientific community with supercomputing and scientific visualization tools. They current possess several classical supercomputers shown on the TOP500 list. They have reached a deal with French company Pasqal to utilize Pasqal's forthcoming “Fresnel” 100-qubits processor with an expected start in the first half of this year. Several features of Pasqal’s technology were deemed important and contributed to the selection including high qubit connectivity, processor topology re-arrangement at will, and analog control to implement Hamiltonian evolutions. We previously reported on Pasqal's neutral atom technology [...]

The two companies have announced a multi-year agreement to use CQC's "EUMEN" computational chemistry platform to design and implement noisy-intermediate-scale-quantum (NISQ) algorithms for early-stage drug discovery and development and augment Roche's Alzheimer’s disease research efforts. EUMEN is a software package developed by CQC to facilitate the design of pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals, performance materials and agrochemicals using the power of quantum computation. Additional details are available in the news release on the CQC website here. January 28, 2021

The latest round of funding was a $10.5 million Series A round that was led by Team8 and Wing Venture Capital additional participation from Entrée Capital, OurCrowd and IN Venture, the corporate venture arm of Sumitomo Corporation in Israel. This follows an earlier $4 million seed round from Entrée Capital that occurred in May 2020 to bring the total funding to $14.5 million. Classiq is developing quantum software that operates at a higher level in the stack. Rather than having programmers describe their algorithms at the gate level, they are working on technology that allows users to describe what they are [...]

The round was led by  Draper Esprit with additional participation from Cambridge Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, and Cambridge Enterprise, University of Cambridge. Riverlane is developing a quantum operating system called Deltaflow and they indicate that 20% of the world's quantum hardware manufactures have already signed up to use it. Some of the funds will be used to expand internationally to the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world. The Series A funding follows a £3.25 million ($4.4M USD) round they received in June 2019. In addition, a consortium led by Riverlane received a grant of £7.6 Million ($9.3M USD) in May 2020 [...]

Qureca's new course is specifically targeted for non-technical business professionals who want to better understand quantum technology so they can build a quantum strategy and find opportunities where it might be applied in their own organization. The course consists of four online lessons which the learner can go through at their own pace. These include: 1) Basics of Quantum Computation, 2) Quantum Computing Applications, 3) Transitioning to Quantum-Safe Security, and 4) The Quantum Industry. The duration of the course is expected to be about four weeks with an estimated time requirement of about 3 hours per week. The course does not [...]