Recent news items published within the last 6 months on quantum computing developments are listed below. Click on the hyperlinked item to go to the press release or news article for more details. For older news items published in 2022 click here, for 2021 click here, for 2020 click here, for 2019 click here, for 2018 click here, and for items published in 2015-2017, click here.
September 23, 2023 – News Brief
IBM System One Processor Installed in Bromont, Canada for Use by The Platform for Digital and Quantum Innovation of Quebec (PINQ²)
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 in the DistriQ, a quantum innovation zone in Quebec to promote quantum expertise and innovation. A press release from IBM announcing this milestone is available here and additional comments from IBM Canada President Dave McCann have been posted on the IBM Canada website here.
September 23, 2023
Nanofiber Quantum Technologies and ColibriTD Secure Venture Funding
Two new quantum funding deals were just secured, Nanofiber Quantum Technologies Inc. (NanoQT), raised $8.5m and Paris-based ColibriTD closed €1M ($1.6M USD). Venture capital was the source of both deals. Our full article with additional details about these companies and the investments can be viewed here.
September 23, 2023
Atlantic Quantum Receives a $1.25 Million SBIR Grant from the U.S. Air Force
AFWERX is a U.S. Air Force program intended for fostering a culture of innovation with the Air Force. It is designed to provide small amount of funding to small business and startups to help develop innovative technology which can be utilized by the service in the future. AFWERX and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have awarded Atlantic Quantum with a $1.25 million Direct-to-Phase II contract to develop quantum computing hardware based upon Atlantic Quantum’s fluxonium based superconducting qubit technology. Click here for more.
September 22, 2023
SBQuantum’s Magnetic Sensor Chosen as a Finalist for the Third Phase of the MagQuest Challenge to Create a World Magnetic Model
Magquest is a competition created by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to find appropriate solutions for creating a World Magnetic Model (WMM) that has been ongoing since the competition was launched in March 2019. SBQuantum has announced that along with its partner Spire Global, it has been chosen as one of three companies invited to participate in the final phases of the challenge. The SBQuantum magnetic sensor is based upon a Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) Diamond technology that provides sensing of both magnitude and direction of the magnetic field along four axes in a very small volume. Their solution includes a machine learning algorithm to compensate for magnetic field interference to provide more accurate and stable readings. Their solution will be coupled with Spire Global’s existing infrastructure for satellites, ground stations, and data processing. Click here for additional information about the purpose of the Magquest competition and its current status.
September 22, 2023 – News Brief
IQM Signs MoU with Korean Cybersecurity Firm Norma to Collaborate on the Introduction and Expansion of Quantum Computers in South Korea
Norma is a cybersecurity specialist headquartered in Korea that was original established in 2011. They are now working to get involved in quantum security and have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Finnish company IQM Quantum Computers. The companies will be working together to introduce and expand quantum computers in South Korea, joint development of quantum applications, and joint implementation of quantum education programs. This announcement is a continuation of a recent trend of collaborations between South Korean and Western organizations. In recent months we have reported on others collaborations between Korean entities and QuEra, IonQ, IBM, Quantum Machines, Xanadu, and the U.S. government. A press release from IQM announcing the signing of this MoU has been posted on the IQM website here.
September 21, 2023
Wolfram Research’s Mathematica Now Is Supporting QuEra’a Neutral Atom Processor
Wolfram Research is now providing support for QuEra’s quantum computing capabilities directly within the Mathematica environment. Users can create and execute quantum algorithms targeted for QuEra’s analog quantum computing platform and submit them for execution on QuEra’s Aquila quantum processor through Amazon Braket. This capability is targeted for a broad range of Mathematica users including educators, students, researchers, scientists, engineers, data scientists, and financial analysts. Click here for our full article that describes this new collaboration between the two companies.
September 20, 2023
SandboxAQ Partners with FedLearn to Create an Introductory Online Quantum Course for the U.S. Government
FedLearn is a provider of AI-based adaptive online learning to train U.S. government employees on various topics. They have partnered with SandboxAQ to create a self-paced, two-hour online course provides an overview of the key opportunities, challenges and risks in quantum technology research and development. The course is non-technical, but should provide the learners after they finish the course with some sense of the risks and opportunities inherent with the use of quantum technology. The material course was created by the SandboxAQ education team. Additional information can be found in a news release provided by SandboxAQ and FedLearn which is available here.
September 20, 2023
Rigetti Receives Award to Provide Foundry Services to the AFRL
In this most recent announcement, Rigetti has been awarded a five-year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to continue providing foundry services. AFRL will have Rigetti fabricate such devices as quantum integrated circuits (QuICs), quantum-limited amplifiers, cryogenic microwave components, and 9Q QPUs and AFRL will use for their quantum computing and quantum networking research. Even though the basic terms are “Indefinite” this contract will help formalize the relationship and make it easier for Rigetti to plan. Click here for our full article that provides additional background on this fabrication facility and their activity in providing wafer foundry services.
September 15, 2023
QuEra Computing, the Sejong Special Autonomous City, and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Agree to Establish a Quantum Industry Ecosystem in Sejong City, South Korea
Boston based neutral atom quantum processor company QuEra will be partnering with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Sejong City to build infrastructure and R&D capabilities for the quantum computing industry in Sejong City. The activity will include developing educational programs, cooperating on international academic exchanges, conducting joint efforts to secure government public procurement projects, and raising awareness to the community of quantum technology. Additional information is available in a news release that QuEra has been posted on their website here. Click here for the rest of the article with additional details.
September 14, 2023 – News Briefs
Qblox and ScalinQ Agree to Promote Qblox’ Control Electronics with Scalinq’ Cryogenic Hardware
Qblox is a Dutch manufacturer of control electronics units that provide the controls to the qubits in a quantum computer. ScalinQ is a manufacturer of cryogenic hardware components that quantum processor engineers need to use to build their systems. The components include LINQER, a sample holder for quantum chips, CliQ, a compact lowpass infrared quantum filter, and BriQ, a high density breakout box. By marketing the devices together, they can ensure that these components can be integrated easily and make it more convenient for the engineers building up the quantum processor. A press release from the two companies announcing their agreement to work together has been posted on the ScalinQ website here.
September 14, 2023
NOVONIX and SandboxAQ to Harness AQ Software for Battery Tech Testing and Processes
A collaboration was just announced by NOVONIX and Alphabet spin-off SandboxAQ leveraging SandboxAQ’s AI-driven chemical simulation software and NOVONIX’s Ultra-High Precision Coulometry (UHPC) technology. The enhanced data and analytics capabilities of the collaboration complements NOVONIX’s UHPC testing equipment, R&D prototyping, and testing services to provide actionable information faster. Accurately predicting cell life using short-term, high-throughput UHPC testing with advanced AI models will accelerate innovation for new battery chemistries. For more about this collaboration, click here.
September 13, 2023
Riverlane Unveils a Decoder Chip for Quantum Error Correction
Riverlane has developed IP that will perform high performance the error decoding function that will be mandatory for implementing fault tolerant computers. They are working on two forms of this IP. The first is code programmed in the Verilog hardware design language that can allow the IP to be implemented in an FPGA. The second form is a dedicated ASIC that can potentially implement this function more efficiently, although not as flexibly as the FPGA. Read our article here that describes their technology, how it can be used, and future plans for implementation.
September 13, 2023
D-Wave Makes Progress in Its Gate Model Quantum Computing Development Program
D-Wave has announced some early results from a test chip it has developed to characterize the fluxonium superconducting qubits it plans on using. D-Wave has taken a different path from some of the other superconducting processor manufacturers including IBM, Google, Rigetti, and others who are using what are called transmon qubits. The fluxonium approach is more recent and it combines features of both flux and charge qubit circuits. Click here for the rest of our article with additional details including some test results about this development.
September 12, 2023 – News Brief
Quantagonia’s HybridSolver is Now Accessible through the Strangeworks Platform
Strangeworks has added another partner to their quantum syndicate of hardware, software, and service providers. This new one is Quantagonia, a German software company that specializes in providing optimization solutions for customers through their HybridSolver. Quantagonia’s software can accept problem formulations in multiple ways including mixed integer programming (MIP), linear programming (LP), and quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems (QUBO) and compile the problem to run it on many different quantum and quantum-inspired backends including CPUs, GPUs and QPUs. Optimization represents an important class of use cases and Quantagonia’s tools and experience can help a user find the best optimization approach from the many available. For users with a Strangeworks account, they can access Quantagonia’s HybridSolver for free on problems that have up to 50 variables. Running problems larger than that will entail some charges. Strangeworks has issued a press release announcing their new partnership with Quantagonia that is available here.
September 12, 2023 – News Brief
Xanadu and NVIDIA Team to Provide High Performance Simulation of Quantum Circuits
In June of this year, Xanadu released version 0.31 of its Pennylane quantum programming platform which had a new feature that supports multi-node/multi-GPU calculations. This capability requires explicit installation of the NVIDIA cuQuantum SDK but when that is installed it opens up the capability to perform large state-vector simulations. The Brookhaven National Laboratory is current running simulations that use up to 256 NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs to simulate about three dozen qubits and Xanadu has an end of year a goal of supporting simulations that have up to 1000 nodes (or 4000 GPUs) to provide state vector simulations of more than 40 qubits. This may not seem a great many but it is important to remember that every time one adds one more qubit to a simulation, the hardware resources needed to perform a classical simulation will double. Both Xanadu and NVIDIA have posted blogs about their work with multi-GPU simulations with Pennylane. The NVIDIA blog can be seen here and the Xanadu blog is available here.
September 12, 2023
Infleqtion Announces Open Beta of Superstaq, a Hardware Agnostic, Optimizing Compiler
Superstaq was originally announced in September 2021, by Super.tech, a quantum software spinout from the University of Chicago that was subsequently acquired by Infleqtion. They have been providing access to the software to a select group of private beta users since then and continuing to develop upgraded versions. Now Infleqtion is making the software generally available to anyone. Click here for more.
September 12, 2023 – News Brief
Swedish Semiconductor Foundry ConScience AB Delivers First Quantum Chips to a U.S. Client
ConScience AB is a company based in Gothenburg, Sweden that operates a state-of-the-art cleanroom laboratory and provides foundry services in micro and nanofabrication to academic and industrial organizations. In the past they have worked with several academic institutions including Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard and are now looking to extend that client base to quantum companies. Among other process technologies that have in their portfolio is a leading-edge superconducting Al and III/V process technology.They have just announced delivery of a quantum chip to an unnamed U.S. company developing superconducting based quantum processors. Additional information is available in a press release that can be accessed here.
September 10, 2023
Quantum Related U.S.-India Collaboration Announcements at the G20 Summit in India
Several quantum related announcements came out last week at the G20 Summit in New Dehli, India. First, the U.S. and India have agreed to elevate and expand the U.S.-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) originally signed in May 2022. Second, the Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) anounced that the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) has joined the CQE as an international partner. And finally, the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) announced that India’s S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata has been accepted as a member. Click here for our article that provides additional information about these announcements.
September 9, 2023
UK’s Quantum Catalyst Fund Announces Awards for Its £15 Million ($18.7M USD) Program to 30 Quantum Research Projects
The UK’s Quantum Catalyst Fund is a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and Innovate UK (IUK). Its aim is to explore the benefit of using quantum technologies in various areas of interest for the UK Government and accelerate the adoption of quantum solutions for the public benefit. They have announced an initial set of phase 1 awardees that will receive up to £120,000 ($150K USD), inclusive of VAT for a three month phase 1 period. After this three month period the UK government will assess the progress of each of these projects and invite some of them to continue and participate phase 2 where they can receive £1 million and £2.5 million ($1.25 to $3.1M USD), inclusive of VAT for projects that can last up to 15 months. For additional details, read our full article here.
September 9, 2023 – News Brief
UK Rejoins Horizon Europe Under a New Deal Enabling Renewed Opportunities for Quantum Research Collaborations
Horizon Europe is a program under the European Union to fund key programs for advanced research and innovation. A key program Horizon Europe funds is the Quantum Flagship which supports many different quantum technology projects. An issue for organizations in the UK was that as a result of Brexit, they haven’t been eligible to apply for grants or bid to take part in projects in Horizon Europe or Quantum Flagship programs for the last few years. However, under a new deal just negotiated between the UK government and the European Union, UK UK researchers will be able to apply for grants and bid to participate in projects under the Horizon Europe programs. Since there is a great deal of quantum research occurring in both the UK and continental Europe, the prospect of organizations in the two regions collaborating on projects will help strengthen the development of the technology in Europe overall. Additional details can be found in a press release issued by the UK’s Prime Minister Office available here.
September 9, 2023 – News Brief
Rice University to Receive $1.2 Million Grant from the DOE to Compare Different Physical Architectures for Quantum Computers
The grant will be for a four year program to study the strengths and limitations of different physical systems used to build quantum computers. The team from Rice University will use theory, numerical simulations and quantum hardware-run algorithms to compare the viability and computational potential of different approaches for building quantum computers. One point of contention among quantum researchers is which of several modalities is the best and this project will help provide a framework for that comparison. This award was made under the Quantum Testbed Pathfinder program which we described last March. A press release from Rice University announcing the award can be seen here.
September 8, 2023 – News Brief
Honeywell to Use Quantinuum’s Quantum Origin for Generating Cryptographic Keys in Smart Meters for Gas, Water and Electric Utilities
One of the big concerns that cybersecurity experts have is the potential for hackers to start infiltrating critical infrastructure and interfere with basic utilities like gas, water, and electricity that are used by everyone. This is particularly true as the meters become smarter and send digital communications over a network. An example is the Honeywell E-Mon Class 6000 Smart Meter which Honeywell introduced in 2021. To enhance the security of their smart meters, Honeywell has integrated the Quantum Origin solution from Quantinuum into these products to make them resistant to future hackers who might possess a quantum computer from stealing the encryption keys. Honeywell is the first smart meter manufacturer to do so. The move is logical for Honeywell, since Quantinuum was originally formed as a spinoff from the Honeywell Quantum Solutions division which then merged with Cambridge Quantum Computing. and Honeywell still holds a substantial portion of the equity in Quantinuum. Honeywell has issued a press release with additional information that you can find here.
September 8, 2023 – News Brief
Classiq to Open a New Office in Boston
In an effort to expand the company’s worldwide presence, Classiq announced it is opening a new office in Boston, Massachusetts. Shai Lev, the company’s vice-president of strategic partnerships, will move there to direct the company’s growth in North America. Classiq, founded in 2020 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, builds the top layer of the quantum software stack bringing automation and synthesis to the quantum algorithm design process making it faster and easier for end users to take advantage of quantum computing. Classiq’s press release announcing the opening of this new office can be accessed on their website here.
September 7, 2023
Zapata and Andretti: A Marriage Made on the IndyCar Circuit
In another SPAC combination, Zapata AI (formerly known as Zapata Computing) will merge with the special purposed acquisition company (SPAC) Andretti Acquisition Corp. to become a public corporation. The projected terms of the deal will give Zapata a pre-money valuation of about $200 million and provide the new corporation with about $84 million from the SPAC trust fund before redemptions and transaction costs and to have a pro forma equity value of the combined company between $281 million and $365 million, depending on the level of redemptions. After the transaction closes, Zapata’s existing shareholders will roll over their equity and own about 61% of the new company, public shareholders will own about 14.3%, founders shares will represent 17.5%, and bridge investors will own about 7.2%. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024. Click here for the rest of the article that provides more details about Zapata’s strategy and approach.
September 7, 2023
Terra Quantum and HSBC Collaborate to Explore the Application of Hybrid Quantum/Classical Technology for Financial Optimization Applications
Terra Quantum and HSBC will be collaborating to see how Terra Quantum’s TetraOpt hybrid solver could be used to solve Quadratic Unconstrained Integer Optimization (QUIO) problems. One the areas the companies will investigate is collateral optimization. The goal for a bank is to balance risks, liquidity, and profitability of these assets while minimizing the cost and still meeting regulatory requirements. Click here for our full article about this collaboration.
September 7, 2023 – News Brief
Delft Circuits Receives €6.3 Million ($5.35M USD) in Series A Funding
A large portion of Delft’s Circuits’ Series A funding came from new investor DeepTechVC which supplied €5 million. The remainder came from their previous seed investors including High-Tech Gründerfonds, QuVest Capital, Scholt Group. Delft Circuits produces highly advanced cryogenic cabling solutions under the product name of Cri/oFlex that are used in quantum computers, quantum communications and other devices that operate at low temperatures. These cables can operate at frequencies of up to 26.5 Ghz. and can include custom connectors. The company currently has 40 employees and 400 square meters of fabrication space. They will use the funds to upgrade the production capacity and expand the team. As the quantum computing manufacturers continue to scale up the size of their systems there will be increased demands for their products. A press release from Delft Circuits announcing the investment is available here.
September 6, 2023
Q-CTRL and Diraq Will Partner on Three Multi-Million Dollar Quantum Projects
These two Australian headquartered companies will be working together on two projects sponsored by the Australian New South Wales (NSW) Office of the Chief Scientist and one from the U.S. Army Research Office. In each case Diraq will develop and provide access to its silicon spin qubit based hardware and Q-CTRL will be providing the quantum infrastructure software solution to maximize the capability of the hardware for the end user. Click here for the rest of our article that provides more details about these grants.
September 6, 2023 – News Brief
Unitary Fund Granted $1.48 Million from the NSF for Their Mitiq Project
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided a two year grant to the Unitary Fund to further develop and grow their open source Mitiq project which develops algorithms for quantum error mitigation. The grant is awarded by NSF’s Pathways for Open Source Ecosystem (POSE) program launched last year. Mitiq has proven be quite popular since its introduction and has recently had over 100,000 downloads with over 50 contributors worldwide. Mitiq currently provides several different error mitigation algorithms including zero noise extrapolation, probabilistic error cancellation, variable noise Clifford data regression, digital dynamic decoupling, and readout error mitigation. Additional information can be seen in a blog posting on the Unitary Fund website here and also an award notice posted on the NSF website here.
September 6, 2023
Zurich Instruments Introduces Control Electronics Solution for Multi-Hundred Qubit Systems
Zurich Instruments has introduced a new device called the Quantum System Hub (QHub) designed to help engineers scale up their quantum processors to sizes of as many as 300 superconducting qubits. It provides up to 56 Zsync ports that can connect to and coordinate operations with other Zurich Instrument devices such as their SHFQA (Quantum Analyzer), SHFQC (Qubit Controller), SHFSG (Signal Generator), or HDAWG (Arbitrary Waveform Generator) to synchronize up to 448 microwave channels. A key to this technology is the Star Architecture as shown in the picture above. This ensures that the system can have high synchronization accuracy and low feedback latency. These characteristics are important for implementing things like mid-circuit measurement or error correction algorithms. Click here for the rest of our article about this new product introduction.
September 5, 2023 – News Brief
Orange Quantum Systems Receives a €1.5 Million ($1.6M USD) Seed Investment
Orange Quantum Systems is a startup based in Delft, Netherlands that provides diagnostic tools and quantum chip testing equipment to the quantum R&D market. They have received this funding from the QDNL Participations Fund and Cottonwood Technology Fund. This funding, along with an Accelerator Grant the company received from the European Innovation Council, will allow the company to develop its next generation of quantum chip test equipment. This Automated Test Equipment (ATE) device will enable automation of testing quantum chips and take an activity that may take dedicated quantum engineers several weeks to finish to something that is more automated, more reliable, and much quicker to complete. A blog article from Orange Quantum Systems announcing this seed investment is available here.
September 2, 2023
U.S. Department of Energy Selects Three Projects to Receive a Total of $24 Million in Funding for Quantum Network Research
The funding is being made under a program announcement titled Scientific Enablers of Scalable Quantum Communication that will provide up to a total of $24 million in funding for projects that can last up to three years. The projects selected are all collaborative efforts between a DOE national laboratory and two or three universities. Click here for additional details on the three projects selected.
September 2, 2023 – News Brief
Oxford Quantum Circuits Lets the QAT Out of the Bag
Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) has released new open source software calledQuantum Assembly Toolchain (QAT). It is a low-level, python based compiler that supports input in circuits written in both QASMv2.0 and base-profile compliant Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR). It also supports pulse level control with a OpenPulse interface and has built-in optimizer functionality as well as support for the optimizers functionality in Quantinuum’s TKET. The software can be accessed by users either through OQC’s private Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS) or through AWS Braket. One of OQC’s goals with this software is to make it flexible so that users can experiment, adjust and contribute functionality to the software for their own particular needs. OQC has made a blog posting announcing the software which can be seen here. And the software can be accessed on GitHub here.
September 1, 2023
Oxford Ionics Raises an Additional £2 Million ($2.5M USD) from the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF)
The NSSIF is a corporate venturing arm for dual-use advanced technologies that is a joint initiative between the UK Government and the British Business Bank. They provide patient capital for companies developing advanced technology. 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. Oxford Ionics had received a £30 Million ($36.6M USD) Series A venture round in January and now has added these additional funds. They will be using the funds to expand their R&D team and to complete the the construction of a 30,000 square foot office and laboratory space. Additional information about this investment is available in a article on the Silicon Canals website here.
September 1, 2023
Who’s News: Management Updates at Infleqtion, Atom Computing, Aliro Quantum, Qrypt, Oxford Ionics, and QuEra Computing
Infleqtion has a new Director of Partnerships and has already recruited an additional advisor. Atom Computing has recruited a Vice President of Public Sector and has also added to its Board of Directors. Aliro Quantum has recruited a new Chief Product Officer. Qrypt has added two individuals to their Board of Advisors. Oxford Ionics has appointed a non-executive director. And QuEra Computing has added a President. Click here for the details on these management additions within the quantum industry.
August 31, 2023 – News Brief
QuEra Partners with QAI Ventures to Provide Access to QC Access to Startups in QAI’s Quantum Accelerator Program
QAI Ventures has started a quantum accelerator program that is part of Switzerland’s QuantumBasel quantum hub. The program started this July with an initial cohort consisting of Anaqor, Kipu Quantum, Miraex, Moonlight AI and qdc. As part of the program, the cohort members will be given access to various quantum processor platforms to conduct experiments and develop their technology. QuEra will be one of the hardware partners that will support this effort. They will provide premium access to their Aquila 256 qubit analog quantum processor along with the companion Blocade software as well as custom training and consulting services from QuEra’s scientists. For QuEra, this will allow them to expand their marketing efforts in Europe with the potential to obtain increased revenues from this region. For more information about this partnership between these two organizations, you can access a press release from QuEra and QAI Ventures with additional information.
August 30, 2023 – News Brief
IQM Introduces 5 Qubit IQM Spark Processor for Universities and Research Labs
For universities and research labs that want to have their own on-premise quantum computer for training and experimentation, IQM has just introduced a five qubit, IQM Spark superconducting quantum processor. Having a machine on-site allow an organization to have full control of the activity on the machine to perform research experiments and provide students with hands-on experience with an actual quantum computer. IQM supplements the learning experience with their IQM Academy, a free online training course to teach the foundations of quantum technology. The company indicates pricing for the machine is under 1 million Euros that would make it affordable for some organizations. They have already installed 5-qubit quantum computers to some universities and research institutions, including the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Germany. The estimated lead-time to receive an IQM Spark is about five months after contract. Additional information about the IQM Spark can be seen in a press announcement located here and a product page on the IQM website which is available here.
August 29, 2023
Quantum Machines Introduces the OPX1000 Quantum Controller for Large Scale Quantum Computing
Quantum Machines has introduced a large quantum control unit called the OPX1000 for providing the electronic signals which control qubit operations in a quantum processor. This unit is a big brother to its previous flagship product the OPX+. A single OPX1000 unit can fit into a 3U rack panel space and can provide 64 outputs with 16 inputs. In addition, a user can stack many of these units together to create a solution that is able to provide hundreds of outputs and inputs for large scale systems that may have hundreds of qubits. Click here for our article with additional information about this new product introduction.
August 25, 2023 – News Brief
UCLA Wins $1 Million Award from the NSF for Quantum Sensors Research
The award was given as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Quantum Sensing Challenges for Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems (QuSec-TAQS) program which has budgeted $25 million to make 10-12 awards for projects that will last up to four years. The UCLA research team will be studying quantum sensors to measure and understand atmospheric and aerosol chemistries with contribute to poor air quality and climate change. The goal of the program will be to demonstrate that the improved sensitivity of a sensor based upon quantum technology will be able to detect minute quantities of substances such as ammonia, nitrogen oxides and organic hydroperoxides which cannot be sensed using classical sensors. A press release posted on the UCLA website announcing the award can be found here.
August 25, 2023 – News Brief
MathWorks Introduces a MATLAB Support Package for Quantum Computing
MATLAB is a very popular program language for use in numeric computing and has millions of users with backgrounds in engineering, science, and economics to perform data analysis, develop algorithms, and create models. They have now introduced a support package for quantum computing that can be integrated with MATLAB that allows a user to build gate-based quantum circuits, simulate the circuits, connect to quantum hardware, and analyze and plot results. The package currently provides support for connecting with Amazon Braket and IBM Qiskit. Additional details about the support package are available on the MathWorks website here, as well as instructions on how to use it with IBM Qiskit here and another set of instructions for Amazon Braket here.
August 25, 2023 – News Brief
QuEra Processor Availability Increased on Amazon Braket by Fourfold
QuEra first made its Aquila quantum processor available on Amazon Braket last November. This processor is a little unique because it is the first neutral atom based Aquila processor accessible through a major cloud provider. It has up to 256 qubits and operates in an analog mode that uses a technology QuEra calls “Field-programmable qubit arrays (FPQA)” that allow a user to place the qubits in near-arbitrary configurations. Although QuEra is also planning on supporting a more traditional gate-based approach, they believe this analog mode may allow end users to achieve quantum advantage with their application in an earlier timeframe than the gate-based approach. The latest development is that QuEra has now increased the availability of their machine on Amazon Braket from the original 10 hours to 48 hours per week. This is a possible sign of increased customer demand to use their processor as well as a lower requirement internally at QuEra to need time with the machine for maintenance, calibration, and experimentation. A news release from QuEra announcing this increase in availability on Amazon Braket can be accessed here.
August 24, 2023
Amazon Braket Speeds Up Hybrid Applications with Rigetti Processors by Supporting Parametric Compilation
Amazon Web Services has just announced that it is now supporting a Parametric Compilation feature for customers who are accessing Rigetti processors through Amazon Braket. This is a feature useful for variational hybrid classical/quantum algorithms that allows a circuit to be compiled once, have the result saved in a cache, and then run multiple variations of the circuit on the quantum processor without requiring any additional compilations by just having the runtime system feed a new parameter for each execution. As a result, they are reporting a 10X performance improvement for certain hybrid classical/quantum processing jobs that use this feature with the Rigetti machines. Click here for more information about how this feature works.
August 24, 2023
NIST Releases Draft Standards for the First Three PQC Algorithms
NIST has released draft standard documents for three out of the four PQC algorithms selected last year and the documents have entered into a three month public comment period as the next step on the way to formal approval. Read our full article here.
August 22, 2023
D-Wave Enhances Performance of Its Constrained Quadratic Model (CQM) Hybrid Solver
One of the technologies that D-Wave provides to its customers that should get more attention is three portfolio of three different hybrid solvers that will take a user specification of a problem as input and translate it into a program that can run on their quantum annealer. Currently, the company has three different solvers available including the BQM (Binary Quadratic Models), DQM (Discrete Quadratic Models), and CQM (Constrained Quantum Models). D-Wave is continuing to improve the functionality of these solvers and has just announced another improvement in the CQM solver that demonstrates continuing improvements ovr the BQM and DQM solver by providing the best answer in 80% of the 2045 problems tested. Click here for our full article.
August 19, 2023 – News Brief
The U.S. NSF is Providing $38 Million in New Grants for 22 Quantum Research Projects
As part of the the U.S. National Quantum Initiative Act originally passed in 2018, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has established a Expanding Capacity in Quantum Information Science and Engineering (ExpandQISE) program to help build capacity and broaden participation in quantum research and education. Twenty-two grants have been announced selected from submissions to a solicitation posted earlier this year. The grants are divided into two separate categories. Seventeen institutions received Track 1 grants which provides an amount up to $800 thousand for a project that can last three years. Another five institutions received Track 2 grants which provides an amount of $5 million for a project that can last five years. The projects will work in a number of different quantum related areas including physics, computer sciences, materials research, engineering, chemistry, education, and workforce development. The grants were all made to academic institutions with about half of the awards made to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, and institutions from EPSCoR (Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) jurisdictions. An announcement providing a listing of the awards has been posted on the NSF website here.
August 18, 2023
Quantum Computing Inc. Releases Second Quarter Financial Report
Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) announced that its second quarter 2023 revenue was $112 thousand compared to $121 thousand in the first quarter of 2023 and $65 thousand in the second quarter of 2022. Operating expenses were $3.8 million compared to $7.9 million in Q1 and $4.8 million a year ago. The company indicated that the decrease in operating expenses was largely due to a decrease in other SG&A costs driven by QPhoton merger-related expenditures for legal expenses and intangible asset adjustments. Net loss was $4.6 million versus $8.5 million in Q1 2023 and $5.1 million a year ago in Q2 2022. The company ended the quarter with about $7.2 million in Cash and Cash Equivalents an increase of over $1.8 million from the amount held on December 31, 2022. This was due to a $14.7 million infusion of capital from the company’s At-The-Market (ATM) facility it has in place with Ascendiant Capital Markets, LLC. Click here for more.
August 18, 2023 – News Brief
IonQ Partners with BearingPoint to Help Penetrate the European Market
One trend we are seeing in a number of places is quantum computing companies partnering with consultants or other organizations that have deep experience servicing clients using classical computing technology. This allows the quantum companies with an extended sales channel for customers they previously had no relationship with and also provides the consultants with some new technology to include in their portfolio of solutions. The latest example is IonQ, a leading provider of ion trap based quantum processors working with BearingPoint to provide professional services and access to IonQ systems to their clients in Europe. Until recently, IonQ had little presence in Europe, although that will be changing a little due to their recent agreement with Quantum Basel to set up a quantum data center in Switzerland. BearingPoint operates in 24 countries and works with over 1000 clients worldwide. The two companies will be working together to help accelerate the spread of quantum knowledge and encourage exploration of quantum use cases to European clients. A press release provided by IonQ announcing their agreement with BearingPoint can be accessed on the IonQ web site here.
August 17, 2023
SandboxAQ Establishes an Academic Advisory Board to Guide Their Efforts to Expand the Quantum Workforce.
SandboxAQ is a company that was originally formed as a group within Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and was spun off in March 2022 to pursue software applications that utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Quantum Technology. The company has a strong belief that the current level of people being trained in these fields is nowhere near what will be required over the next few years. So the company is determined to do something about that. Click here for our article that describes a few of the many efforts the company is undertaking to help increase the number of trained workers that will be needed to take full advantage of the benefits available with AI and quantum technologies.
August 17, 2023 – News Brief
Phasecraft Receives £13 Million ($16.5M USD) in Series A Funding
This Series A funding for Phasecraft was led by Playground Global with additional participation from AlbionVC, and existing investors existing investors Episode1, Parkwalk Advisors, LCIF, and the UCL Technology Fund. The UK based quantum software company specializes in developing efficient algorithms for materials discovery. The company was established in 2018 and has published 17 technical papers. Their software can provide a 1,000,000 times improvement for modelling materials over the best previous quantum algorithm. They partner with quantum hardware providers including Google, IBM, and Rigetti as well as end users like specialty materials developer Johnson Matthey and solar cell developer Oxford PV. The company will be using these new funds to continue building their technical staff. Their goal is to provide customers with a means to achieve an early commercial quantum advantage benefit by utilizing Phasecraft’s more efficient algorithms. This new funding brings their total of venture investment to £17.25 million ($22M USD). In addition, they also received grants from Innovate UK and the European Research Council for another £3.75 million ($4.7M USD). A press release with additional details on this new funding round has been posted on the Phasecraft web site and can be accessed here.
August 16, 2023
Zapata AI Collaborates with IonQ to Research Quantum Based Generative AI
Zapata AI (formerly Zapata Computing) has announced they will be working with quantum processor provider IonQ to research how quantum processors can be used in generative AI applications. Zapata possesses significant software technology and expertise in quantum so they will be combining this with their more recent experience in generative AI to research possible applications. Zapata also has experience working previously with IonQ on several quantum projects, Click here for our full article that provides more background details about this effort.
August 15, 2023
PQC Coming Soon to a Browser Near You
Google has announced that the next release of their Chrome internet browser, version 116, will include support for Kyber-768, one of the Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms selected by NIST. During the initial negotiation process when a connection is first established, the TLS (Transport Layer Security) function in the browser will check to see if Kyber-768 is supported by the computer on the other end. If it is supported, the browser will use a hybrid key encapsulation mechanism that includes both Kyber-768 and X25519, an elliptic curve algorithm, in a hybrid algorithm called X25519Kyber768. Click here for more.
August 11, 2023
Rigetti Computing Announces Its Q2 Financial Results and First External QPU Sale
Rigetti Computing achieved a Q2 revenue of $3.3 million, an increase of over 50% versus the $2.2 million in Q1 2023 and $2.1 million in Q2 of 2022. Operation expenses were $19.0 million versus $23.7 million in the previous quarter and $27.0 million in Q2 of 2022. Net loss for the quarter was $16.9 million compared to $22.0 million in Q1 and $12.2 million in Q2 of 2022. The $12.2 million loss a year ago included a $6.5 million non-cash credit for a change in fair value of earn-out liabilities. The company also indicated that have created a 9 qubit device using the new Ankaa architecture and have sold this 9 qubit QPU to a national lab. Click here for full our full article covering the company’s Q2 earnings report and technical progress.
August 11, 2023
IonQ Announces Its Q2 Financial Results
IonQ continues to show growth in the latest quarter with revenue of $5.5 million in the second quarter of 2023 compared to $4.3 million in the first quarter and $2.6 million in the second quarter of 2022. This was significantly better than their expected outlook of $4.1 to $4.5 million they had announced in May. However, operating expenses also increased at $38.6 million versus $32.3 million in Q1 and $21.5 million in Q2 of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter was $19.4 million versus $15.9 million last quarter and $11.6 million in the year ago quarter. The company ended the quarter with $375 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short term investments. For additional information about their Q2 financial report, click here for our full article.
August 11, 2023 – News Brief
Kipu Quantum Signs Research Agreement with University of Santiago de Chile
Kipu Quantum and the University of Santiago de Chile will work together to research digital, analog, and digital-analog quantum computing solutions for quantum processors using superconducting, trapped ions, and neutral atom modalities. Kipu Quantum focuses on developing application and hardware-specific quantum algorithms which they believe can provide industrial usefulness much earlier than other more general approaches which may be more flexible, but require more powerful hardware to provide useful results. Earlier this year Kipu Quantum signed other research agreements with QuEra, Pasqal, and the University of Valencia. A news release announcing the agreement between Kipu Quantum and the University of Santiago de Chile has been posted on LinkedIn here.
August 10, 2023
D-Wave Announces Its Second Quarter Financial Results
D-Wave reported its second quarter revenue at $1.7 million, an increase of $124 thousand from the previous quarter and $336 thousand from Q2 of 2022. Bookings were $2.5 million compared to $2.9 million in the previous quarter and $1.0 million in Q2 of 2022. Operating expenses were $21.6 million, compared to $25.1 million in Q1 2023 and $13.1 million in Q2 2022. And a Net Loss of $25.9 million versus $24.6 million in the previous quarter and $13.3 million in the year ago quarter. Click here for the rest of our article covering D-Waves Q2 financial report.
August 10, 2023
QuantrolOx and Qblox Partner to Provide an Integrated Control Stack Solution for Superconducting Processors
One very important step in running a quantum processor is to calibrate, tune, and optimize the electrical control pulses that control the qubits. Initially, this optimization was performed manually by one of the PhD quantum engineers and can get quite tedious. But more and more smart software is coming to market that can do this automatically making it much quicker and also freeing up the quantum engineer to work on higher level activities. QuantrolOx has just introduced its first product, called Quantum Edge, that will do this and they have announced a new partnership with Qblox to integrate Quantum Edge with the Qblox’ Cluster hardware. Click here for more details about this new hardware/software control stack partnership.
August 9, 2023
President Biden Signs Executive Order Proposing Limitations on Quantum Technology Investments in China by U.S. Persons
The Executive Order directs the Department of Treasury to establish and implement a program to regulate U.S. investment in quantum computing, artificial intelligence related to military uses, and advanced semiconductors. These technologies are deemed critical for use in military, intelligence, surveillance, and cyber-enabled capabilities and could form a risk to U.S. national security. The Executive Order would prohibit prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in certain transactions and require that U.S. venture capitalists and other investors notify Treasury of prospective investments in companies located in China, Hong Kong, or Macau working in these fields. Click here for more about this Executive Order.
August 8, 2023
Q-CTRL Achieves ISO 27001 Certification for Information Security
In the classical world, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) had established a standard, called ISO 27001, for “establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system within the context of the organization.” As we all know, information security has become a big concern over the years and the document can define best practices that organizations should use in order to keep their information as secure as possible. So now, Q-CTRL has achieved certification of the most recent version of this standard called ISO 27001:2022 and is the first independent quantum software vendor to do so. Click here to read more about this standard and why it could give Q-CTRL an advantage when competing for new contracts from security aware enterprises in the future.
August 8, 2023
SandboxAQ Introduces Sandwich, an Open Source Framework and Meta-library of Cryptographic Algorithms
As we have mentioned many times previously, the IT community will need to make some major changes over the next few years to the cryptography protocols used in today’s computer communications networks in order to ensure they are still secure and quantum resistant to future quantum computers. A key feature that the industry is emphasizing in this process is called Crypto-Agility. By providing cryptographic frameworks that are more modular, it will make it less complex for IT departments to perform the upgrades, increase security, reduce errors, and make it more flexible for future changes. To facilitate this, SandboxAQ is introducing its Sandwich framework and meta-library to help accomplish these goals. Click here for more.
August 8, 2023
Multiverse Partners with Tech Mahindra as Part of a Go-to-Market Strategy
Multiverse Computing has announced they are partnership with Tech Mahindra’s Makers Lab group to develop quantum and quantum-inspired solutions for Tech Mahindra’s worldwide clients. A key focus of the Multiverse/Tech Mahindra partnership will be around Multiverse’s Singularity product which allows a user to specify a problem in an Excel spreadsheet without any knowledge of quantum and then have the software automatically translate this into something that can be run on a quantum processor. Tech Mahindra’s group that focuses on quantum technology is based in Ipswich, UK. Although both this group and Multiverse are based in Europe, Tech Mahindra indicates they are intending to leverage this partnership to work with their clients globally. Click here for the rest of our article about this partnership.
August 5, 2023
Who’s News: Management Updates at Alice & Bob, QuSecure, Quix, and BTQ
Alice & Bob has appointed a new Executive Chairman, QuSecure has added a new member to its Board of Directors, Quix has recruited a CFO, and BTQ has appointed a new member to its Board of Advisors. Click here to read our full article about these management updates.
August 4, 2023 – News Brief
Qubrid Joins NVIDIA’s Inception Program for Startups
To encourage new startups to develop products and technology that take full advantage of NVIDIA’s offerings, NVIDIA has created a free Inception Program designed to help startups by providing technical tools, opportunities to connect with investors, and other resources. Qubrid, subsidiary of Dihuni which provides a flexible platform for Quantum and Machine Learning/AI developers, has joined this program to receive these member benefits and also integrate its hybrid quantum-classical cloud computing platform with NVIDIA’s cuQuantum SDK, optimized libraries and tools for accelerating quantum computing workflows, and CUDA Quantum, an open-source programming model. This will make it easier for end users to focus on developing their applications rather and let Qubrid take care of providing the infrastructure for running the programs. A press release from Qubrid announcing their joining the NVIDIA program has been posted on their website here.
August 3, 2023 – News Brief
Quantinuum Partners with BMW and Airbus to Model Hydrogen Fuel Cell Membranes
As aircraft and auto companies research new technologies for creating low carbon emitting vehicles, an electric engine powered by a hydrogen fuel cell is considered a promising candidate. A leading approach uses an Oxidation Reduction Reaction (ORR) that passes hydrogen through a proton-exchange fuel cell (PEMFC) membrane that is coated with platinum or some other material as a catalyst. An important design choice to optimize the efficiency of the PEMFC is to choose the best material for use as the catalyst. This is where a quantum computer’s chemical modelling capabilities can be used. In this research the team modelled the oxidation reduction reactions for membranes that used both platinum and platinum-capped cobalt surfaces using Quantinuum’s InQuanto computational chemistry software and then ran the simulations on Quantinuum’s H1-1 quantum processor. The companies will be continuing their collaborations to find additional uses of quantum computing for relevant industry challenges. A press release provided by Quantinuum announcing this collaborative research can be accessed on their website here and a technical paper describing the research in more detail is available as a pre-print posted on arXiv here.
August 2, 2023
QuEra Announces On-Premise and Premium Access Models for Its Quantum Computers
QuEra had made its 256 qubit analog mode quantum processor called Aquila available through Amazon Braket last November. For many users that access method will be sufficient for the research and test cases they are looking to perform. However, for more demanding users, some customers may require a direct connection to the machine and premium support while others may want to have a machine installed on their premises for security or other reasons. To service these customers, QuEra has introduce both a Premium Access model as well as an On-Premise access model. Click here for more details about these two new access models for QuEra’s processors.
August 1, 2023 – News Brief
Q.ANT Joins the PlanQK Consortium as an Associate Partner
PlanQK is a consortium supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate that was created to develop a platform and an ecosystem for quantum applications. It consists of 19 partners and 84 associate partners from industry and the research communities. It consists of a serverless quantum platform, a quantum knowledge platform, a quantum marketplace, and an expert community. Q.ANT is a quantum hardware startup based in Stuttgart, Germany formed in 2018 as part of the TRUMPF group. Q.ANT has joined PlanQK to contribute their knowledge of photonic based quantum hardware and to provide manufacture capabilities for quantum chips to the PlanQK ecosystem. A press release with additional information that announces Q.ANT has joined the PlanQK consortium can be accessed here.
July 29, 2023 – News Brief
D-Wave Announces Two New Research Collaborations with the University of Waterloo Funded by NSERC
These two multi-year projects will be performed by D-Wave Quantum Inc. and the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo. The projects were funded by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Quantum Alliance program and will research ways to improve both device design and materials quantum for improving coherence in superconducting qubits. By taking steps to improve coherence times, it will provide for more accurate quantum calculations with fewer errors for algorithms running on a quantum processor. A press release announcing these new collaborations has been posted on the D-Wave website and can be accessed here.
July 28, 2023 – News Brief
Oxford Quantum Circuits Added to Cogniframe’s FirstQ Quantum Application Store
Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) and Cogniframe have announced that OQC quantum processor is being added to the FirstQ plug-and-play application store. The OQC processor will be joining Toshiba’s Simulated Bifurcation Machine (SBM) and Cogniframe’s own gate level simulator as execution backends for problems submitted to FirstQ. The FirstQ software provides support for end users to submit problems either as a gate level circuit or as an Ising model or as a pre-curated hybrid and quantum-only use case via the desktop app. The problem will be compiled and optimized to run on the OQC hardware and then executed on the machine. Because of its support for predefined use cases, FirstQ makes it easier for quantum novices to get started with quantum computing because they can submit a problem at a high level using and see the results of running it on a quantum processor without having to bother with low level coding. Initial tests by OQC and Cogniframe have been performed on problems related to the healthcare sectors with additional testing and for other areas planned for the future. A news release provided by the companies announcing their partnership is available here. Users wishing to test out the OQC machine on the FirstQ platform can register here.
July 28, 2023
The EPB Quantum Network Now Accepting Applications to Connect
Last December we reported on a new quantum network that was being set up in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area by EPB, the local electric power and telecommunications company, and using equipment supplied by quantum networking supplier Qubitekk. They have now announced they are accepting applications for customers to connect to the network and start testing their quantum networking applications. Click here for the rest of the article about this new quantum network.
July 28, 2023
Quantum-South Demonstrates Air Cargo Optimization with Amerijet International
Optimizing the loading and air cargo is a very complex task because it need to take into account a large number of constraints such as package size, weight, center-of-gravity, priorities, etc. while simultaneously optimizing other factors such as revenue per flight, service levels, payloads, efficiencies and other things. In the POC, Quantum-South took data from 451 Amerijet flights and used its recently updated advanced Air Cargo Optimization solution to show how their software could increase payload by up to 30% and volume by up to 76% over the load planning tools the company was previously using. Click here for the rest of our article that cover this project.
July 28, 2023
U.S. Department of Energy Awards $11.7 Million to Six Collaborative Quantum Research Projects
A total of 12 organizations will be receiving funding from these awards including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, The Mitre Corporation, and ten universities. Several of these organizations are teaming together to work on a specific project, so there will be a total of six projects. These projects will generally have a four year duration and will look into such topics as the assessment of quantum utility, NISQ computer limits, qubit connectivity, approaches to quantum benchmarking and others. Click here for our article that provides additional details about these awards.
July 28, 2023 – News Brief
Rigetti and ADIA Lab Collaborate to Research Quantum Applications for Probability Distribution Classification for Financial Applications
One of the most promising areas for the usage of quantum computers is for various financial problems. One advantage for financial applications is that a successful algorithm could be deployed in production very rapidly. Other types of applications, such as drug or materials discovery, may take much longer to be put into production either due to requirements for additional testing, field trials, or integration with an existing IT infrastructure and training requirements within an enterprise. For this project, Rigetti Computing will be working with ADIA Lab, an independent Abu Dhabi-based laboratory dedicated to basic and applied research in data and computational sciences, to find an optimal quantum approach for classifying probability distributions. ADIA Lab will provide Rigetti with classical datasets and Rigetti will use its Quantum Cloud Services (QCS™) platform to build and test a quantum solution for the problem. The team will then compare the quantum results against classical results to determine how well the quantum model performed. Additional information about this project is available in a news release posted on the Rigetti website here.
July 27, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Brilliance and Q-CTRL Win Awards of $2.34 Million and $1.44 Million AUD ($1.6M USD and $1.0M USD) from the NSW Quantum Computing Commercialisation Fund (QCCF)
We reported last week that the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) had established a Quantum Computing Commercialisation Fund (QCCF) with a budget of $7 million AUS to encourage quantum research and development, as well as jobs, within Australia. We also indicated that Diraq had received a $3 million grant from that fund to continue its research on silicon spin based qubits. Now two additional grants have been made public from this fund. The first additional grant is to Quantum Brilliance which will receive $1.44 million AUD for development and commercialization of its room temperature NV Diamond based quantum accelerators. The second additional grant is to Q-CTRL for continued development and commercialization of its quantum control and quantum sensing technologies. More information about these awards is available on the Australian website startupdaily and can be seen here.
July 26, 2023 – News Brief
PASQAL to Sponsor a Hackathon with €50,000 ($55K USD) in Prizes
The hackathon being organized by the PASQAL company and an advisory firm called Blaise Pasqal Advisors is called the The Blaise Pascal [re]Generative Quantum Challenge. It will run in multiple phases from October 5, 2023 to November 10, 2023 and will conclude with a virtual demo day scheduled for November 15, 2023 and an awards ceremony on November 28, 2023. The object will be for each team to pick a a use case related to environmental, social, human, or economic issues and show how quantum computing can provide a solution for it. The total prize fund will be €50,000 split into awards of €15,000 for the first place, €10,000 for second place, €5,000 for third place, and twenty awards of €1,000 each for the finalists and shortlisted projects from Phase 1 and Phase 2. The registration for entering will open on August 16, 2023, but pre-registration is available now at this webpage. Additional information about this hackathon can be found in a news release here and also a web page for the hackathon which can be accessed here.
July 26, 2023
NIST Receives 40 New Candidates for Additional PQC Digital Signatures
Last September we reported that NIST was seeking additional proposals for quantum resistant digital signatures for its Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) program. Although NIST selected three Lattice-Based algorithms for digital signatures as part of their Round 3 selection, NIST wanted to standardize a diversity of approaches in case some common weakness was found with the Lattice-Based algorithms. There were several non Lattice-Based algorithms NIST was evaluating during Rounds 1, 2, and 3 of the original PQC selection program, but all of them were dropped due to weaknesses subsequently found that would have jeopardized the security. Click here for more.
July 26, 2023
Duality Accelerator Announces the Companies Selected for Cohort 3
The Duality accelerator at the University of Chicago has selected its third set of companies to participate in the 12 month program. The program will provide these companies with new quantum startup companies with mentorship, facilities, and $50,000 in cash to help them get started and succeed in their efforts. Click here for our article with additional description of the program and a description which companies were selected for this third cohort.
July 26, 2023 – News Brief
SemiQon and Qblox Receive a €2.5 Million ($2.77M USD) Grant to Develop a Spin Qubit Based Quantum Processor
The funds are being provided by the European Innovation Council through their Transition funding program to SemiQon and Qblox for a 30 month duration program called SCALLOP to integrate Qblox’ control electronics hardware with SemiQon’s quantum dot based qubit technology. The team’s goals in this project include improving qubit quality and reducing the need for cooling by implementing low-charge-noise quantum dots and monolithically integrating a cryo-CMOS multiplexer. The work on this progeram will be carried out at SemiQon’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland as well as Qblox’ headquarters in Delft, Netherlands. Additional details about this program can be found in a news release posted on the SemiQon website here.
July 26, 2023 – News Brief
Zapata Computing Receives $4.8 Million in Non-Equity Financing
In a Form D filing earlier this month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Zapata Computing it has received to date $4,857,000 million in either a loan or option or warrant financing. This is different from their previous fund raises with venture capital companies that received equity in the company in exchange for their funds. Overall, the company is seeking to raise up to $20 million with this financing instrument. Additional details of this latest transaction have not yet been made public. The company has most recently been emphasizing its work in Generative AI and is no longer solely focusing on software solutions for quantum computers. The Form D filing can be found on the SEC website here.
July 25, 2023 – News Brief
Silicon Quantum Computing Raises A$50.4 Million ($34.1M USD) in a Series A Round
The investors in this Series A raise for Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) include the Australian Government, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Telstra and the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Interestingly enough, there were no new investors in this round because these same organizations invested in SQC’s seed round in 2017. The company did indicate that the overall company valuation for this round increased to A$195.3 million ($132.3M USD) from the previous valuation of A$82.8 million ($56.1M USD). The company had indicated in a press release in June 2022 that it was ultimately hoping to raise A$130 million ($88M USD), but hasn’t yet met that level. The company will need to raise more in the future, but might be able to obtain even more favorable terms if their valuation continues to increase as they make technical progress. A near term goal for the use of this funding will be to create the industries first logical qubit using a spin qubit technology. SQC has posted a press release on their website announcing this fund raise which can be viewed here.
July 25, 2023 – News Brief
Q-CTRL Adds Morpheus Ventures as a New Investor
In January, we had reported that Q-CTRL had raised $27.4 million in a Series B-1 venture funding bringing the total amount they had raised to $52 million. And today they have announced the additional of Morpheus Ventures as an additional investor in their Series B bringing the total amount raised to $54 million. Morpheus invests in early stage companies and is based in Los Angeles. Previously, Morepheus had invested in Rigetti Computing in the quantum space. Included in the announcement of this new investor, Q-CTRL mentioned that they achieved a cash-flow positive financial results for the first half of 2023. This is an impressive milestone that very few of the quantum startups have achieved, particularly one with over 100 employees located in Sydney, Los Angeles, Berlin, and London. A press release from Q-CTRL announcing that Morpheus Ventures is a new investor has been posted on the Q-CTRL website here.
July 25, 2023 – News Brief
IQM to Partner with Deutsche Telekom T-Systems Subsidiary to Offer Quantum Cloud Access
IQM has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with T-Systems to provide T-Systems customers with access to IQM computers over the cloud. As part of this project, T-Systems plans on offering customers a variety of services to help train the customers and develop use cases. This services can last anywhere from one day for initial training to multiple months for helping a customer develop use cases. T-Systems is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and is one of Europe’s largest IT services companies. They have over 28,000 employees and had revenue of €4.2 billion ($4.6B USD) in 2020. The arrangement is similar to one that T-Systems announced in March where they indicated they will provide their customers with cloud access to IBM’s 127 qubit Eagle processor. This new announcement follows several other announcements for IQM of customer installations including Finland’s first commercial 54-qubit quantum computer with VTT, an IQM-led consortium’s (Q-Exa) HPC quantum accelerator in Germany, and a quantum accelerator in Spain. Additional information about this agreement between these two companies is available in a press release located on the Deutsche Telekom website here.
July 22, 2023
Australia’s Diraq Wins Two Different Grants for $3 Million AUS ($2M USD) Each to Further Develop Its Technology
Diraq has won two different grants that will be used to further develop its technology. The first grant is one from the Australian federal government that the company will be sharing with the University of New South Wales in Sydney and commercial IC design company Perceptia Devices. The grant will fund a four year long program to develop a Quantum Control Unit (QCU) chip which can be directly integrated with Diraq’s Quantum Logic Unit (QLU). The second grant is from the Australian state of New South Wales that will help fund Diraq’s continued development of its semiconductor based spin qubit quantum processor technology which includes its first product, a 10-qubit silicon quantum processor. Click here for our full article that provides more details about these grants.
July 22, 2023
D-Wave Provides an Update to Its Guidance for Fiscal Q2 and Full Year Financial Results
Although D-Wave isn’t scheduled to provide their official Q2 financial results until August 10, 2023, they did provide some preliminary numbers this week to give investors an early sense of what these results will be. Click here for our summary what they reported.
July 22, 2023
D-Wave, Vinci Energies, and QuantumBasel Partner to Study How to Optimize the Design of HVAC Systems
When a new building is being designed, one of the important elements is properly design the Heating, Ventilation, and Cooling (HVAC) systems to maximize user comfort, minimize environmental burden and reduce the cost of materials under the constraints of adhering to required safety and sustainability requirements. These types of optimization problem can get very complex and can become difficult to solve effectively with classical computing technology. The D-Wave quantum annealer is well suited to solving these types of optimization problems so the company is working with Vinci Energies and QuantumBasel to study how D-Wave’s technology can solve this type of problem. Click here for additional details in our article about how these organizations will be working together to research how quantum can help find good solutions to the HVAC design problem.
July 22, 2023 – News Brief
Infleqtion and QinetiQ Win Award from Innovate UK for Quantum Based Combinatorial Optimization
Infleqtion, a quantum startup that provides both quantum and hardware solutions, has teamed up with UK Defense firm QinetiQ to win an award from Innovate UK for a project titled Quantum End-to-end Compilation for Combinatorial Optimisation (QECCO). The three year program will work on developing quantum software tools that will compile end-user applications directly to quantum hardware making it easier for end users to create applications that leverage quantum technology. The QECCO team will be focusing on the logistics and transport areas to solve such problems as job-shop scheduling, packing, routing, and satisfiability problems. For this project, Infleqtion will be utilizing the expertise of its Chicago-based Super.tech software team which it acquired in May 2022. A press release with additional information about this award has been provided by Infleqtion and is available here.
July 21, 2023
SEEQC System Red Runs HQS Quantum Simulations Algorithm
SEEQC and HQS Quantum Simulations announced a successful run of an HQS algorithm on the SEEQC System Red system. According to SEEQC, theirs is the first full-stack quantum computer to run HQS’s Quantum Simulation algorithm, testing for the first time its quantum simulation approach on noisy quantum computers on real hardware. HQS developed a unique way to simulate spin systems on noisy quantum computers and solving inherent spin problems is a valuable step towards serious quantum algorithm design. For more about this collaboration, click here.
July 21, 2023
Eeroq Unveils Details of Its “Wonder Lake” Electron on Helium Quantum Processor Technology
Eeroq, a Chicago based quantum hardware startup has been operating largely in stealth mode up until now, but it has now just taped-out its “Wonder Lake” processor chip for fabrication at an American semiconductor founder and is providing additional details about the chip and its architecture. Eeroq is using a unique electron on liquid helium architecture. Although a few academic groups are researching this technology, Eeroq is the only commercial company that we know of that is working with this modality. Click here for additional details about Eeroq’s technology and their Wonder Lake chip.
July 20, 2023
Atom Computing and the U.S. NREL Partner to Add Quantum Optimization to Electric Grid Operations
A collaboration agreement using quantum computing to better optimize electric grid operations was recently penned between Atom Computing and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). At a recent IEEE Power and Energy Society general meeting, NREL researchers demonstrated how Atom’s atomic array quantum computing technologies were incorporated into the lab’s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) research platform and hardware-in-the-loop testing. The combination created a first-of-a-kind “quantum-in-the-loop” capability. Click here for our full article that provides additional information about this collaboration.
July 20, 2023
Q-CTRL and Oxford Quantum Circuits Partner and Quickly Show Performance Gains with Complex Algorithms
Q-CTRL and Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) have announced a partnership to utilize Q-CTRL’s error suppression software with the OQC’s Lucy processor and have demonstrated impressive results for improved accuracy in early tests. Click here for our full article that provides more details about this collaboration.
July 15, 2023
MUFG Bank Acquires 18% of Groovenauts in Japan
MUFG Bank has acquired approximately 18% of Groovenauts shares and the two companies will be working together to apply Groovenauts’ quantum technology to the financial sector in several different areas as shown below. As part of these efforts Groovenauts will be leveraging its MAGELLAN BLOCKS SaaS software which incorporates cutting-edge technologies and advanced mathematical models, including world-leading use of quantum annealing. Click here for our full article about this investment and the future collaborations between these companies.
July 15, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum-South Introduces an Advanced Version of Its Air Cargo Optimization Solution
Last year, we reported on a quantum solution provided by Quantum-South, a software company based in Montevideo, Uruguay, that utilizes the power of quantum computing to handle multiple variable optimization problems for loading cargo into airplanes. These considerations must take into account load shape, weight, and center of gravity as well as important plane and flight characteristics such as shear and fuselage shape. The company has now introduced a more advanced version of this software that provides Unit Load Device and Pallet Load Optimization, Aircraft Load Optimization, and Fuel Optimization. These are all important considerations because they maximize efficiency, minimize cost, and provide environmental benefits by reducing fuel consumption. The company has been working on this application for several years since its participation in the Airbus Quantum Computing Challenge in 2019. The company indicates that this solution may also be applicable in other industrial areas including maritime cargo operations. A press release about this new release has been posted on the Quantum-South website here.
July 15, 2023
Quantum Xchange Announces CipherInsights Product for Monitoring of Flaws in Network Encryption Traffic
Quantum Xchange has introduced for general availability a new product called CipherInsights™ that will passively monitor network traffic to alert an IT manager for communications traffic which is not quantum safe, or uses outdated cryptographic protocols, or has bad certificates, or is sending messages in clear text that should be encrypted. Click here for more.
July 13, 2023
HSBC–First Bank to Join the UK’s Commercial Quantum Secure Metro Network
HSBC will connect two UK sites using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). The sites include the company’s global HQ in Canary Wharf and a datacenter in Berkshire, 62km apart. Trials will involve financial transactions, secure video communications and one-time-pad encryption scenarios for the secure transmission of test data using fiber-optic cables. AWS edge computing capabilities using an AWS Snowball Edge device in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an important part of the efforts. Click here for our full article.
July 13, 2023 – News Brief
Quobly (formerly Siquance) Lands €19 Million ($21.2M USD) in Seed Financing
Quobly (formerly named Siquance) is a spin-off from CEA and CNRS found in 2022 and located in Grenoble, France. They are developing a quantum processor based upon spin qubit technology that will leverage the French and EU semiconductor fabrication capabilities at CEA and CNRS. The have received a €19 million funding round led by Quantonation, Bpifrance, Supernova Invest, and Innovacom. In addition, Crédit Agricole Alpes Development, CEA Investment, Caisse d’Epargne Rhone Alpes, and BNP Paribas also participated in the round. This amount is the largest “seed” funding round ever for a European quantum company. The company will use the funds to add additional technical talent to their team with a goal of reaching 50 employees by the end of 2024. Additional details are available in a news release (in French) provided by the company here and also a blog posting (in English) on the Quantonation website here.
July 11, 2023
Q-CTRL Partners with the Australian Department of Defence to Develop Quantum Sensors for Enhanced Positioning and Navigation
Q-CTRL has entered into a contract to develop such a sensor with the Australian Department of Defence. Q-CTRL, which created a Quantum Sensor division in 2022, has develop software defined quantum sensor technology that can sense minute changes in gravitational field and also acceleration. Since the earth’s gravitational field is not uniform, a magnetic sensor can help determine the location by comparing the current measured gravitational field with one that had been previously measured and recorded on a map. A key technology that Q-CTRL will be using is their advanced quantum control software which can remove noise from the signal and provide ruggedness so the accuracy won’t be affected when the device installed on moving platforms. Software control also provides flexibility so that the sensor can be changed quickly to measure different things with just a software change. Click here for more information about this program and Q-CTRL’s sensor activity.
July 10, 2023 – News Brief
Alice & Bob Partners with Atos Subsidiary Eviden
French quantum hardware startup Alice & Bob has announced it is partnering with Atos subsidiary Eviden to provide emulation capabilities of the Alice & Bob hardware on Eviden’s Qaptiva platform. This will allow end users to start gaining experience with Alice & Bob’s architecture that utilizes what are known as “cat” qubits. This architecture greatly reduces the presence of bit-flip errors so that users only need to be concerned about phase-flip errors. This would significantly reduce the complexity of error correction codes needed and could reduce the number of physical qubits needed to create a logical error corrected qubits by an estimated factor of 60. Although the access is only provided for emulating an Alice & Bob computer currently, access to a real Alice & Bob quantum processor is planned for the future. Alice & Bob announced a €27 Million ($29.7M USD) Series A funding round a few months ago and has hired over 70 employees. A press release announcing this partnership between the two companies can be found here.
July 7, 2023
Terra Quantum Partnering with Cirdan Capital on Efficient Algorithms to Price Exotic Financial Options
Pricing a financial option for an asset is a complicated job especially when it is an “exotic” option that contains multiple assets and is auto callable. The current method most financial companies are doing this is with compute intensive Monte Carlo simulations. Terra Quantum has been working with Cirdan Capital to come up with an improved options pricing algorithm that is based upon tensor networks. The nice thing about tensor network algorithms is that they can initially be implemented on classical computing hardware including GPU’s, what some people call a quantum-inspired approach. Terra Quantum is indicating that their experience in this project already shows a 75% speedup versus the more traditional methods while still using the same classical computing hardware. Click here for more.
July 7, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Delta NL Receives €60 Million ($65M USD) To Participate in a Trilateral Quantum Program with France and Germany
In December of last year, France, German, and the Netherlands announced an agreement to support a program to join forces and develop European leadership in the field of quantum technology. Now, the Dutch government’s National Growth Fund has allocated €60.2 million to support Quantum Delta NL’s participation in the program. The program is intended to strengthen the R&D cooperation between the different countries and accelerate the development of the European quantum technologies industry. The funds will be used to create shared centers of excellence where researchers from different organizations and countries can work together on joint projects. A second use will be to fund a small number of strategic, international based quantum projects for quantum tech R&D. Additional details about this funding and this program are available in a news release posted on the Quantum Delta NL website here.
July 7, 2023 – News Brief
Delta g Ltd Receives £1,500,000 ($1.9M USD) in Pre-Seed Funding
Delta g is a UK based company that has recently spun out of the UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing at the University of Birmingham. It is a company focused on developing a precision cold atom gravity gradiometer for scanning beneath the earth’s surface for utility mapping, smart cities, smart mining, and building information modelling. The have received a funding round led by Science Creates Ventures, with additional investments from Quantum Exponential, Newable Ventures, Bristol Private Equity Club and angel investors. In addition, they have received a £500,000 ($641K USD) Innovate UK project grant via the ISCF Commercialising Quantum Technologies program. The funds will be used to create a commercial demonstrator of their technology, perform trials with end users, and developing plans for manufacturing and commercialization. Additional information is available in an announcement located on the Quantum Exponential website here.
July 6, 2023 – News Brief
Quantagonia Increases Its Seed Funding to €4.3 Million ($4.67M USD)
Quantagonia is a quantum software company headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany that offers a hybrid quantum platform, that provides solutions for compute intensive industrial applications in the areas of AI/ML, simulation and optimization. They have announced that they have added Tensor Ventures as one of their investors which has increased their total seed funding to €4.3 million. The company will be using the funds to continue with the development of their software and to expand their sales efforts. A press release (in German) from Quantagonia announcing the additional funding can be accessed here.
July 6, 2023 – News Brief
Quside Extends Its Series A Round with Additional Investors
We reported in January that Quside had received a Series A round in the single-digit millions in a round led by Trumpf Ventures. They have now announced they have received additional funds in this round including the Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF) and several business angels. This bumps up the total funding to exceed €10 million ($10.8M USD). Quside is a spin-off of the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) of Barcelona and develops Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNG). The company will be using the funds to add additional members to its team, accelerate its sales and marketing efforts, and enhance the scalability of its technology. Additional details are available in a blog entry on its website here.
July 5, 2023
PASQAL, POSCO Holdings and Qunova Computing to Develop Quantum Tech for Traditional Steelmaking and Material Development
POSCO Holdings steel company, PASQAL and Qunova Computing announced they will collaborate to develop quantum-computing technologies for traditional steelmaking. POSCO Holdings’ New Experience of Technology Hub plans to conduct research and development of quantum AI algorithms jointly with PASQAL. The efforts will focus on optimizing the hydrogen reduction steelmaking process (HyREX) and developing secondary battery materials using POSCO Group’s AI technology and PASQAL’s quantum computer technology. Click here for more.
July 1, 2023
Who’s News: Management Updates at Quantonation, Quantum Computing Inc., HQS Quantum Simulations, and Infleqtion
Quantonation has added a new partner. Quantum Computing Inc. has appointed a new CFO. HQS has a new Chair of Its Advisory Board. And Infleqtion has added a new Executive Advisor. Click here for the details on these management changes.
June 30, 2023 – News Brief
BosonQ Psi Partnering with Tech Mahindra to Create Quantum Use Cases for Industrial Applications
BosonQ Psi, a Quantum Software-as-a-Service (QSaaS) startup company headquartered in the U.S. with a presence in India and UK will partner with Tech Mahindra’s Makers Lab to create use cases for many different industries. Tech Mahindra is a large international IT services and consulting firm headquartered in India with revenues over $6 billion USD and over 152,000 employees. The company works with over 1290 customers worldwide and can help open up opportunities for BosonQ’s products. BosonQ Psi has developed a quantum-powered simulation suite called BQPhy and will work to integrate it with Tech Mahindra’s systems. Market segments that the partnership will be targeting to explore the possibilities of utilizing quantum computing include automotive, electric vehicles, life sciences, banking, financial services, and insurance. Additional information about this partnership can be found here.
June 30, 2023
The EuroHPC JU Signs QC Hosting Agreements with Six Different European HPC Centers with a Total Budget of €100 Million ($109M USD)
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a joint initiative between the EU, European countries and private partners to develop a world class supercomputing ecosystem in Europe. They will be funding the installation of six different quantum computers at six different HPC centers in Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. The total costs for these installations will be about 100 million Euro with EuroHPC JU contributing 50% of the total. EuroHPC will be responsible for procuring the machines and has signed hosting agreements with each of the sites define the roles, rights and obligations of each party. The quantum computers will be integrated with other classical HPC systems that are located at these data centers. Click here for additional details on each of these six quantum computer installations planned in Europe.
June 30, 2023 – News Brief
IonQ Signs MOU to Support Quantum Education, Training, and Leadership Expansion in South Korea
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 – News Brief
Tohoku University and NEC Start Research on an 8 Qubit Quantum Annealer
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 (NhC Vector Annealing) that runs on the vector supercomputer “SX Aurora TSUBASA” at Tohoku University. Results of this research will be used for development of more advanced quantum annealers and vector annealing machines in the future. A press release from NEC announcing this collaboration is available on their website here. And another press release from ParityQC with additional details about their contribution to this project can be found on their website here.
June 29, 2023 – News Brief
Terra Quantum Acquires Software Company Named divis intelligent solutions GmbH
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 Science. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. A press release from Terra Quantum announcing the acquisition is available here.
June 29, 2023 – News Brief
Multiverse Computing Will Support Quantum Education Work at the Université de Sherbrooke
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 available here.
June 29, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Machines Signs MOUs with Three Organizations in Korea
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 knowledge exchange, technology transfer, and joint research efforts with a goal of advancing the understanding and deployment of quantum technology at the participating organizations. A press release from Quantum Machines announcing the signing of these MOUs can be accessed here.
June 29, 2023 – News Brief
Q.ANT Develops QRNG for Bundesdruckerei GmbH
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 that these number are non-deterministic and therefore, impossible to guess. A news release provided by Q.ANT with additional detail is available on their website here.
June 28, 2023
Kipu Quantum and QuEra Partner to Create Solutions for Large Scale Optimization Problems
Kipu Quantum is a quantum software company headquarters in Karlsruhe, Germany that is focused on providing near term, commercially useful quantum computing solutions using novel algorithmic compression methods optimized for specific use cases and specific hardware architectures. QuEra is a Boston based hardware company that develops neutral atom quantum processors based upon research from Harvard and MIT. The two companies will be working together to provide solutions for large scale optimization problems. Click here for more details about how the companies will be working together.
June 28, 2023
eleQtron and Infineon Team to Develop Three Generations of Trapped Ion Quantum Processors
eleQtron is a quantum hardware developer formed in 2020 as a spinoff from a research group at the University of Siegen. They are developing trapped ion based processors using a miniaturized high-frequency technology that they call MAGIC (Magnetic Gradient Induced Coupling) to control the qubits. Their MAGIC approach is different from many of the other companies developing ion trap processors that use lasers to control the qubits. Infineon Technologies AG is Germany’s largest semiconductor manufacturer with 2021 revenue over 11 billion Euros and over 50,000 employees. The two companies will be working together to develop a series of three progressively more powerful generations of ion trap processors that will utilize eleQtron’s MAGIC technology along with investigating three dimensional structures for scaling qubits. Their goal is to develop a quantum processor that is capable of running applications by mid-2027. Click here for our full articles with more details about this partnership.
June 28, 2023
IBM to Install a 127 Qubit Eagle Processor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) will be the first university to have an on-premise IBM System One processor and only the second one, after the machine installed at the Cleveland Clinic, that IBM has installed at a non-IBM site. The installation at RPI is expected to be operational by January 2024. Although IBM has installed processors at several international locations, currently these processors have all been located within an IBM facility and local users, for example the University of Tokyo in Japan, access the computer over a communications link. On-premise installations can sometimes be more challenging for a vendor because they need to work out various operational considerations such as facility planning, maintenance, spare parts, security, etc. with the other party. Click here for more.
June 27, 2023
SandboxAQ to Lead an $8.3 Million Quantum Resistant Cryptography Project for the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency
SandboxAQ will lead the project with partners Microsoft and Deloitte to provide the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) with a prototype of a quantum-resistant cryptography solution. SandboxAQ will be providing their SandboxAQ Security Suite which includes agile quantum-resistant cryptography modules while Microsoft will provide the DevSecOps platform and Deloitte will serve as a systems integrator and deliver additional software and support to DISA. DISA’s mission is to provide a globally accessible and secure enterprise IT infrastructure to support joint military operations, national-level leaders, and other mission and coalition partners. So ensuring that their infrastructure is secure against quantum attacks is very important for them. Click here for the rest of our article reporting on this award.
June 27, 2023 – News Brief
Algorithmiq Receives $15 Million in Series A Venture Capital
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 with pharmaceutical companies and provide them with a platform that can deliver a quantum advantage in the future. The company has a partnership with IBM that will allow the Algorithmiq to scaleup their software on IBM’s quantum processors. Additional information about this funding is available here.
June 27, 2023
Q-CTRL Building a New Headquarters in Sydney, Australia
Q-CTRL has initiated a project to refurbish a 1930’s Heritage-listed industrial building into a facility that will contain the company’s administrative headquarters as well as a laboratory for their quantum sensing R&D. The company is receiving funding help from the New South Wales Government’s Jobs Plus program and the Australian federal government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative Translation grant. It will be located in the Chippendale area of Sydney near the cities Tech Central project and the University of Sydney. The company indicates it will be the first commercial facility in Australia dedicated to quantum technology and is expected to be ready for the company by the fourth quarter of 2023. Additional information about this new facility is available in our full article here.
June 26, 2023 – News Brief
Infleqtion Wins Grant from the UK Government for Developing and Manufacturing the UK’s First Optical Atomic Clock
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 a frequency stability of 7×10-14 over a 10 second averaging time. This is about 50 times better than the best commercially available atomic clocks which are packaged in a comparable 3U rack panel size. A very accurate clock has significant potential for use in navigation when satellite based navigation systems, like GPS, are unavailable. It also has uses in situations where very accurate synchronization is needed for certain activities, such as resilient power distribution systems. Infleqtion will be using the funds to expand its manufacturing capabilities in Oxford, UK for these quantum-enabled systems. A press release provided by Infleqtion announcing this award can be accessed here.
June 23, 2023 – News Brief
South Carolina State Government Grants $15 Million to a Non-Profit for Quantum Research, Education, and Workforce Development
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 South Carolina and contribute to the economy. More information about this funding is available in a report on the website of WLTX television here and also in an article posted on the website of The Post and Courier Columbia here.
June 23, 2023 – News Brief
Entropica Labs and Atom Computing Announce a Strategic Partnership
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 announcing the partnership is available here on their website.
June 22, 2023 – News Brief
Pasqal to Establish a Quantum Manufacturing Facility in Sherbrooke, Canada
As part of its expansion in North America, Pasqal will be setting up a quantum computer production facility in a 50,000 square foot (4,600 square meter) building at Espace Quantique 1 of DistriQ – Quantum Innovation Zone in Sherbrooke, Canada. The facility is scheduled to open in early Fall 2023 and will have the charter for building machines for the North American market. Pasqal is a leading provider of neutral atom based quantum processors with a headquarters located near Paris, France. They have demonstrated operation of their processors with as many as 300 qubits and have plans develop a system capable of 1000 qubits within the next year. Their processor supports an analog mode of computation which they believe will allow customer to reach quantum advantage earlier. The company is currently working with customers including BMW, BASF, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, Airbus, LG Electronics, Thales, and others. A press release from Pasqal announcing their plans for this new production facility is available on the Pasqal website here.
June 22, 2023
IonQ to Set Up a European Data Center with QuantumBasel, Raises Its 2023 Bookings Estimate, and Makes Its Forte System Publicly Available
IonQ made three announcements today signaling its progress in developing its technology and expanding access to a wider customer base. The first announcement was for a collaboration to jointly establish a European quantum data center with QuantumBasel, an international competence center for Industry 4.0 located near Basel, Switzerland. The second announcement is an increase of their 2023 bookings forecast to a range of $45 – $55 million. And the third announcement is that IonQ is now making their Forte quantum processor publicly available to worldwide customers on IonQ’s cloud. Click here for our article with additional details about these three announcements.
June 22, 2023
SandboxAQ Creates an AgBioSim Division for AI and Quantum Based Drug Discovery
SandboxAQ has been quietly working for some time on developing drug discovery solutions that can leverage hybrid CPU/TPU (Tensor Processing Units) configurations and AI technology to provide meaningful results for drug discovery. They have now created a new division, called AgBioSim, to provide this to the market. Besides having computer and quantum scientists to work on this problem the company has hired its our own medicinal chemistry team to ensure they can provide a solutions focused perspective. The company has been collaborating with the University of San Francisco’s Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases to test their technology as well as early customers including AstraZeneca and Sanofi. Click here for the rest of our article with additional details about SandboxAQ’s announcement.
June 21, 2023 – News Brief
Q.ANT and the Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart Partner to Produce Quantum Chips
Q.Ant is a quantum startup based in Stuttgart, Germany that is developing both quantum sensors and quantum computing chips based upon their room temperature lithium niobate based photonic technology. The Institute of Microelectronics Stuttgart (IMS CHIPS) is a research institute for microelectronics that is part of the Baden-Württemberg Innovation Alliance. These organizations have signed an agreement to jointly produce quantum chips. Q.Ant will be contributing €14 million ($15.2M USD) to the partnership in the form of machines, process technology, and production expertise. IMS CHIPS will be contributing its existing chip manufacturing infrastructure. The production will initially be small scale and used for Q.Ant’s internal needs. But over the longer term, the parties may also sell chips to externally to other organizations. A news release with additional information is available on Q.Ant’s website here.
June 21, 2023
Microsoft Announces Azure Quantum Elements, Copilot in Azure Quantum, and a Conceptual Roadmap for a Quantum Supercomputer
Microsoft announced a trio of announcements particularly aimed at advancing computational chemistry and material science discovery using their Azure service, HPC, AI, and quantum technologies. The goal of these efforts, as stated by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, is to compress 250 years of chemistry into the next 25. Click here for more.
June 20, 2023 – News Brief
TRUMPF Venture II Investing €1 Million ($1.1M USD) in HQS Quantum Simulations
TRUMPF Venture, the venture capital arm of the TRUMPF Group, a German industrial machine manufacturing company, is investing one million Euros in HQS Quantum Simulation, a quantum software company, located in Karlsruhe, Germany. HQS Quantum Simulations was founded in 2017 as a spinoff from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and develops software to simulate quantum systems for modelling at the quantum level materials and their molecular properties. HQS has a unique approach for these simulations. Rather than using variational approaches, their software software’s architecture utilizes open quantum mechanical systems that interact with their environment, also called the bath, and utilize intrinsic errors as a resource. A press release provided by HQS announcing this investment is available on their website here.
June 17, 2023
Quantinuum Introduces Quantum Origin Onboard for Creating Quantum-Computing-Hardened Encryption Keys for Connected Devices
Quantinuum has introduced a new product for generation quantum hardened fully random, non-deterministic encryption keys called Quantum Origin Onboard. It is based upon the original Quantum Origin QRNG announced in December 2021, but is not cloud-based like the original product. Click here for our article that describes this new product and how it works.
June 17, 2023 – News Brief
U.S. DoD Awards Army Research Laboratory $45 Million for Researching Quantum Applications for Precision Targeting Weapons
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded a multi-service team led by the Army Research Laboratory $45 million for a three-year program named CLAWS (CLassical quantum hybrid constructs to Advance Weapons Systems). CLAWS will investigate how the use of quantum technology can improve kinetic weapons systems to provide greater precision at longer range, lower collateral damage, and greater agility. The Army Research Laboratory will partner with both commercial and academic institutions to research how quantum technology can be utilized for various imaging, positioning, navigation, and timing applications. It is estimated that this program will support at least 20 new graduate and post-doctoral students. The initial investigations will focus on researching hybrid quantum/classical algorithms to see if positive results can be obtained with the NISQ class of processors which are available in the near term. An announcement of this award is available on the Defense Department’s website here.
June 17, 2023
UK Government Launches Two New Quantum Funding Programs Totaling £75 Million ($96M USD)
The first program was announced by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) with funding of £45 million ($57.7M USD) to support research into areas including quantum enabled position, navigation, and timing (PNT), software enabled quantum computation, and quantum computing applications. The second program The second was announced by the UK National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) with funding of £30 million ($38.4M USD) for development of quantum computing testbeds (i.e. prototype quantum computers) in the UK. Click here for our full article about these two new program announcement.
June 16, 2023 – News Brief
Multiverse is Collaborating with Iberdrola to Research Quantum Optimization for the Electrical Power Grid
Iberdrola is a large multinational electrical utility company headquartered in Bilbao, Spain with over €53 billion ($58B USD) in revenue in 2022. They are also the biggest producer of wind power and the world’s second electricity utility by market capitalization. As a step in exploring how quantum technology can be leveraged in their business, they have chosen the problem figuring out the best way of optimizing the number, characteristics, and locations of batteries within their smart power grid. This is an important consideration for systems using wind and solar renewable energy, but is also a very computational complex problem to solve. Iberdrola will be working with Multiverse Computing within the framework of the Gipuzkoa Quantum Program supported by the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council in a 10 month program to see if quantum computer can help provide a solution. A blog article provided by Multiverse announcing this project can be accessed on their website here.
June 16, 2023 – News Brief
Q-CTRL is Making its Boulder Opal Quantum Control Software Free to the Academic Community
Q-CTRL’s Boulder Opal software is designed for quantum hardware developers, experimentalists, and researchers (as opposed to end users) who want to optimize the performance of quantum hardware by characterizing it, designing error robust controls, simulating quantum dynamics, and using AI techniques to automate calibrations and hardware tuning. It includes an automated experiment scheduler that automatically schedules calibration processes to bring up a processor in a short amount of time. Some of the AI based optimization software can be computationally intensive so Q-CTRL also provides a cloud based platform for performing these calculations. Q-CTRL is providing this software to the academic community at no charge to help them accelerate their research efforts. Additional information about this offer can be found in a blog post on the Q-CTRL website here. Also, an overview page that describes the features of Boulder Opal is available here.
June 15, 2023
HRL Laboratories, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, and Intel to Provide Quantum Devices to Academic and Government Organizations as Part of the Qubits for Computing Foundry Program
HRL, Lincoln Laboratory, and Intel are providing early samples of their qubit chips to specific academic and government researchers. This enables the researchers to have hands-on experience with these chips without have to fabricate them on their own. Click here for our article that looks into this Qubits for Computing Foundry program in more detail.
June 15, 2023
Intel Comes Out of Quantum Stealth with their 12 Qubit Tunnel Falls Chip
Intel has announced there 12 qubit Tunnel Falls chips and indicated they will be providing it to select academic and government partners for further research and characterization. Click here for our full report on this development.
June 14, 2023
IBM and UC Berkley Have Published their Own Demonstration of “Beyond Classical” Computing
IBM and the University of California, Berkeley have published a paper in Nature Magazine describing work that compares the performance of an IBM quantum computer versus a classical supercomputer. The paper describes various error mitigation techniques that can potentially be applied to achieve what IBM calls Quantum Utility for useful commercial and scientific applications with near term NISQ level machines. Click here for our full article that describes this development.
June 13, 2023 – News Brief
IQM to Collaborate with Asia-Based Beyond Limits to Advance Quantum AI in the Asia-Pacific Region
Beyond Limits is an enterprise-scale AI company that provides AI based solutions for industries including energy, advanced manufacturing, fintech and healthcare. They are headquartered in Singapore with offices in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Taipei and Tokyo. They have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with IQM to work together in several different areas. The first is to help create an Quantum AI education and training module for the IQM Academy, a free online quantum training program started by IQM earlier this year. The second will be to explore industry use cases that may be able to leverage IQM’s technology in Beyond Limits’ market. And the third is to lay the groundwork for quantum hardware collaboration in Singapore. This announcement follows one made by IQM a few months ago to establish a new office in Singapore to expand their development capabilities and tap into the engineering talent available in the area. A press release announcing this partnership between the companies can be accessed here.
June 13, 2023
Kipu Quantum Collaborates with Pasqal to Work on Hardware Specific Software Solutions Optimized for Pasqal’s Hardware
Kipu Quantum and Pasqalhave signed a two year agreement to have Kipu Quantum develop solutions to problems that can run on Pasqal’s near term computers with a particular focus on leveraging the analog mode in the Pasqal processors. Click here to learn more about this collaboration and how it may provide these companies with a potential competitive advantage.
June 13, 2023
QuantWare and Quantum Machines Partner to Provide Pre-Configured QPUs with Associated Control Electronics and Software
QuantWare is partnering with Quantum Machines to provide a pre-configured package that combines the QuantWare 25-qubit Contralto QPU along with Quantum Machines OPX+ control electronics along with their Qua pulse-level programming language. The integration will include Quantum Machines routines to perform automatic calibration on the QuantWare chipset saving the users from doing this this work manually which could take several days. Click here for the rest of our article covering this collaboration between these two vendors.
June 12, 2023
QC Design Emerges from Stealth with Three Product Efforts Aimed at Fault Tolerance
QC Design is a quantum architecture startup company based in Ulm, Germany that works on error correcting architectures for fault-tolerant quantum computers. The company was founded in 2021 by Ish Dhand, a quantum computing researcher and former architecture team lead at Xanadu, and Martin B. Plenio, the Alexander von Humboldt Professor and Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at University of Ulm. They have emerged from stealth and announced three new product developments including Plaquette, a software package for studying error correction codes, a licensing program to provide hardware manufacturers and end users with error correction architectures the company has developed, and an educational module on Fault Tolerance and Quantum Error Correction which has been incorporated into the IQM Academy. Click here for our full article describing these product efforts in additional detail.
June 12, 2023 – News Brief
Classiq Will Collaborate with Toshiba to Work on Toshiba’s Gate-Based Based Quantum Processor
Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation has been very active research quantum related technology in the areas of QKD based networks and a quantum-inspired optimizer called a Simulated Quantum Bifurcation Machine (SQBM+). They also have been working on developing a superconducting based gate-based quantum processor. Last year, they issued a press release highlighting results from a high performance design that uses a double-transmon coupler. To advance this work, they will now work with Classiq software to explore various use cases and how they can be optimized to run on the Toshiba platform. Classiq provides software that can take as input high-level functional models and turn those into optimized low level quantum circuits which makes developing new applications much easier to develop. This approach can be applied to problems in the areas of quantum AI, optimization, and computational chemistry simulations. A press release provided by Classiq announcing this new collaboration can be accessed here.
June 10, 2023
Who’s News: Chad Rigetti, Venture Partner at QDNL Participations and General Cameron Holt Joins the Infleqtion Advisory Board
Dr. Chad Rigetti has joined the Netherland’s QDNL Participations Fund as a Venture Partner and General Cameron Holt has been appointed to Infleqtion’s Advisory Board after a long career in the U.S. Air Force. Click here for our full article about these management additions.
June 10, 2023 – News Brief
QuSecure Wins SBIR Phase II Award for PQC Solutions from the U.S. Army
After winning a U.S. Air Force SBIR Phase III award last year, QuSecure has received another SBIR award from the U.S. government. This award from the U.S. Army will focus on developing quantum safe solutions to be used in tactical edge and IoT devices that could be deployed on the battlefield. Although QuSecure has not released the exact amount of the award but they did indicate the award allotment will be upwards of $2 million. A press release provided by QuSecure announcing this award is available here.
June 9, 2023
Infleqtion Demonstrates a High Performance, Miniaturized Quantum Sensor Technology for Measuring Acceleration
One of the potential killer applications for quantum sensors is to create a device that can provide accurate navigation without using the GPS satellite system. One approach is to use highly accurate acceleration sensors and timing clocks to create an inertial navigation system. Infleqtion and the University of Colorado, Boulder have been researching quantum based inertial sensor devices using a machine designed optical lattice atom interferometer. This device can perform interferometry in an optical lattice formed by standing waves of light. As can be seen in the picture above the device consists of a one-dimensional array of Rubidium atoms that are evaporated and loaded into a magneto-optical trap (MOT). By shining different lasers onto the array and observing the resulting image with a camera, the system can use AI-based reinforcement learning and control techniques to calculate acceleration. Click here for our full article that describes research performed by Infleqtion and the University of Colorado, Boulder to demonstrate this type of acceleration sensor.
June 8, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Brilliance Releases their Qristal SDK for General Availability
We reported earlier this year about a beta release of a new open source software development kit (SDK) from Quantum Brilliance that could be used with the NV diamond based quantum accelerators they are developing. Rather than being used as standalone quantum processors, the quantum accelerators are designed to be deeply integrated within HPC centers to support hybrid classical/quantum processing. The SDK supports fully integrated C++ and Python API as well as NVIDIA CUDA features and customizable noise models for the built-in high performance emulator called Qristal Emulator. The company has now released this software for general availability and it can be downloaded from GitHub here. Additional information about this release is available in a press release that can be accessed here.
June 6, 2023
University of Chicago and Tohoku University to Collaborate on Quantum Research
The University of Chicago has been very active in establishing collaborations with various entities and has just added one more. This latest collaboration is the Chicago-Tohoku Quantum Alliance with Tohoku University in Japan which will bring to the University of Chicago some capabilities and opportunities that would not be available in the other collaborations it already participates in. Tohoku University will also benefit from University of Chicago’s quantum research capabilities and experience in areas such as workforce development, the Duality Quantum Accelerator, and other things. Click here for our full article that provides more about this collaboration and how each party will benefit.
New Startup Haiqu Receives $4M in Pre-Seed Funding
Haiqu is a new quantum software startup that was originally incubated in the Fall 2022 quantum stream of the Creative Destruction Lab. Their goal is to bring NISQ to life by providing an advanced quantum software layer that will enable scalable quantum applications to run on a modern noisy quantum hardware. They have an internationally based founding team with members based in the United States, Ukraine, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. The $4M pre-seed round was led by MaC Venture Capital, with additional participation from Toyota Ventures, SOMA capital, u.ventures, SID Venture Partners, Roosh Ventures and private investments from Paul Holland, Alexi Kirilenko, and Gordy Holterman. The company has issued a press release announcing this funding which can be accessed here.
June 6, 2023
IBM to Open a Quantum Data Center in Europe in 2024
One of the issues that has received more attention as the trend towards cloud computing continues is one of Data Sovereignty. With the increasing concerns over data security and data privacy a number of laws and regulations have been created by various governments to regulate how data is transferred and stored across political boundaries. This is particularly true in Europe where IBM has over 60 European clients in its IBM Quantum Network who are currently running many of their jobs at the IBM quantum data center in Poughkeepsie, New York. To solve this problem, as well as to expand its overall capacity for processing quantum jobs, IBM has announced it is creating a second quantum data center at its facility in Ehningen, Germany. This data center is scheduled to go online in 2024 and will contain multiple utility scale quantum processors, which IBM defines as those having more than 100 qubits. Click here for more.
June 3, 2023 – News Brief
POLARISqb Releases QuADD, a Quantum Powered SaaS Platform for Drug Discovery
Discovering a new drug has traditionally taken decades long and cost multiple millions of dollars. The reason is that when companies may have a potentially drug library of about 1030 candidate molecules and will want to test which one of these is most effective with a specific protein binding pocket and ligand. Previously this was accomplished by empirical testing candidates in the lab or computer aided drug discovery (CADD) using conventional computers. The lab testing is very costly and time consuming while the CADD approach is also very time consuming. POLARISqb is now providing a quantum based approach which uses a quantum annealer to accelerate the simulation of the roughly 1030 candidate molecules and reduce the number of candidate compounds to something on the order of 1,000 – 10,000 compounds that would show an optimized set based upon binding pocket fit, bioavailability, synthesizability, and other descriptors. The QuADD process typically will take 1-3 days of time. This reduction in the number of candidates make it much easier to move on to the next step, which is testing in the lab. QuADD is now available to users on a subscription-based SaaS platform. A press release from POLARISqb announcing the release of QuADD is available here.
June 3, 2023 – News Brief
China Telecom to Form a China Telecom Quantum Information Technology Group Company with 3 Billion Yuan ($434M USD) in Funding
The company will be located in the city of Hefei in Anhui province, China and will work to further develop the technology and promote its adoption. China Telecom has already been working to develop quantum communications technology and has already help form five quantum communication standards, a quantum security service platform, and created a Hefei quantum secure communication metro network. In addition, they have already launched a 5G phone that supports quantum safe encryption which already has nearly 500,000 users. Additional information about this new quantum subsidiary of China Telecom is available in a news report from Reuters that can be seen here as well as a blog article (in Chinese) on the China Telecom website here.
June 3, 2023
The U.S. National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee Publishes Recommendations for Renewing the National Quantum Initiative
The $1.2 billion U.S. National Quantum Initiative (NQI) was enacted in December 2018 for a ten year period with budget authorizations for science activities specified only for the first five fiscal years which ends on September 30, 2023. There will now be activity to review the activity of the first five years and make recommendations about how to go forward for the next five years and beyond. To that end the U.S. National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee (NQAIC) has just issued a report with their findings. Click here for the rest of the article.
June 2, 2023 – News Brief
D-Wave Collaborates with Interpublic to Optimize Advertising Campaigns
D-Wave Quantum Inc. has announced it will partners with the Interpublic Group (IPG), one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing companies with 2022 revenue of $10.9 billion, to use D-Wave’s quantum technology for optimizing marketing campaigns. There is a large amount of data and parameters associated with advertising campaigns including the myriad number of places an ad can be placed, cost to place an ad, viewer demographics, response rates, etc. and companies like Interpublic constantly work to analyze the data to provide the best results for their clients. They will be using D-Wave’s hybrid classical/quantum solution and the D-Wave’s Leap cloud service along along their own data to find the right ad mix. IPQ has recently started a pilot program to find an optimization solution for one of their top 20 clients in a retail environment. The D-Wave machines have been used before in other advertising optimization applications. In the past, a Japan company called Recruit Communications used D-Wave’s quantum annealer to optimize how an advertiser’s budget is allocated for display advertising. A news release from D-Wave announcing their partnership with IPG can be seen here.
June 1, 2023 – News Brief
Three Chinese Organizations Release a New Quantum Cloud Computing Platform
The new platform is the result of work performed by the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS), Institute of Physics (IOP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Tsinghua University and was announced at the 2023 Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing at the end of May. The platform consists of three chips of 136, 18, and 10 qubits and can be programmed with both an open quantum assembly language and also a graphical user interface. The organizations indicated that they have already been supporting 2000 early users since November and those users have run over 500,000 jobs since that time. A news release with some additional information is available on the Chinese Academy of Sciences website here.
June 1, 2023
Quantinuum Collaborates with HSBC to Research QC Use Cases in the Financial Industry
Quantinuum announced they will be working with global bank HSBC to explore a few different use cases for quantum computing that are important to the financial industry. These use cases include generating strong and random cryptography keys using quantum random number generation (QRNG), quantum machine learning for potential application in uses such as fraud detection, and quantum natural language processing (QNLP) for use in answering customer questions or searching for text similarity. Click here for our full article describing the quantum research that the two companies will be working together on.
May 31, 2023 – News Brief
Chinese Upgrade Zuchongzhi-2 Quantum Computer from 66 to 176 Qubits
We had reported in September 2021 that a team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and other organizations had developed a 66 qubit superconducting based processor and used it to replicate and surpass Google’s 2019 Quantum Supremacy experiment. They are now reporting they have upgraded the machine by adding additional control interfaces to support 176 qubits and the machine went online for public use at the end of May. Additional technical details such as coherence times, qubit fidelities etc. are not yet available. A news report from the Xinhua News Agency is available here.
May 31, 2023 – News Brief
PQShield Partners with Tata Consultancy Services and eShard on Its Post-Quantum Cryptography Products
PQShield is a UK based company formed in 2018 that specializes in providing post-quantum cryptography products and services. They have been a leading contributor to the NIST PQC standardization project and other standards efforts and possess significant IP in both hardware and software cryptography. Their agreement with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading IT consulting company, will allow them to support TCS’ clients wishing to migrate to post-quantum cryptography. Since TCS already engages with a great many enterprises worldwide, this agreement should help PQShield enhance the reach for its products and services. eShard is a French firm that analyzes and validates cryptography systems’ resistance against side channel attacks. They will be evaluating PQShield’s technology to ensure that their technology is resistant to such side channel attacks. PQShield has posted a news release announcing these collaborations and it can be accessed here.
May 30, 2023 – News Brief
VeriQloud Raises €1.9 Million ($2M USD) to Accelerate Its Development of Quantum Communications Solutions
VeriQloud is a company based in Paris, France and founded in 2017 that develops several quantum communications solutions and received this funding from Quantonation and WinEquity, an investment firm that specializes in companies founded or co-founded by women entrepreneurs. VeriQloud has two announced products. The first one is called Qline which provide quantum cybersecurity at the local area level. Qline has been deployed since 2022 by Deutsche Telekom on the OpenQKD testbed network in Berlin. VeriQloud also provide HyQloud which provides hybrid classical-quantum solution for secure data storage. Additional projects that they are engaging with using these products include France QCI (led by Orange), the Quantum Internet Alliance (led by TU Delft), or SecNISQ (led by INRIA). A news release announcing this investment is available on the Quantonation website here.
May 28, 2023 – News Brief
University of Michigan is Creating a Quantum Research Institute with $50 Million in Funding
The Quantum Research Institute will perform research on quantum technologies as well as expand the quantum academic curriculum at the university. It will leverage research strengths the university already possesses in the areas of quantum matter and quantum light. The $50 million in funding will be used to support both people and lab space. Twenty University of Michigan faculty fellows will join the institute with plans to recruit an addition eight new members. The co-directors of the institute will be Steven Cundiff, the Harrison M. Randall Collegiate Professor of Physics, and Mack Kira, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Additional information about this new Quantum Research Institute is available in a news release provided by the University of Michigan here.
May 27, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Machines and ParTec Introduce Qbridge Software for Integrating Classical HPC and Quantum Computing Resources
Quantum Machines and ParTec worked together to create software that will handle the complexities of having multiple HPC users accessing a hybrid classical/quantum infrastructure to run jobs. Qbridge is integrated with Quantum Machines OPX Controller and provides many different functions including scheduling classical and quantum resources, providing low latency connections between the two for hybrid workflows, allowing for dynamic circuit execution (sometimes called mid-circuit measurement) for quantum programs, QPU virtualization, and maximizing the flexibility, transparency, and usability of the stack. Qbridge is scheduled for its first installation in the second half of 2023 at the Israeli Quantum Computing Center (QCC). A press release introducing Qbridge is available on the Quantum Machines website here.
May 27, 2023 – News Brief
NVIDIA, Rolls-Royce, and Classiq Perform Record Largest Classical Simulation of a Quantum Circuit
The quantum circuit utilized 39 qubits with a depth of 10 million layers to analyze the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) properties of a state-of-the-art jet engine. The complex circuit was first designed by Rolls-Royce and Classiq using Classiq’s circuit synthesis software and then run using NVIDIA’s A100 Tensor Core GPUs and CuQuantum software development kit. Additional information about this project can be found in a new release provided by NVIDIA which can be accessed here.
May 26, 2023 – News Brief
UK Government to Award £15 Million ($18.5M USD) In Small Business Research Initiative Grants for Quantum Technologies
The award competition is part of the UK’s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) program to develop new technologies and processes. The aim of this competition is to explore the benefit of using quantum technologies in various areas of interest for the UK Government and accelerate the adoption of quantum solutions by the public sector for the public benefit. The competition is divided into two phases. Phase 1, which will last for 3 months, will provided awards of up to £120,000 ($148K USD), inclusive of VAT and has a total budget of £2 million ($2.4M USD) for all the projects selected. After Phase 1, the UK government will assess the results and invite some of them to proceed on to Phase 2. Phase 2 will last for up to 15 months and will fund each project for an amount between £1 million and £2.5 million ($1.2M to $3M USD), inclusive of VAT. The total combined budget for all the projects in Phase 2 is £13 million ($16M USD). Applications to participate in the program will start being accepted on May 29, 2023 and the application period will close on June 27, 2023 at 11 AM UK time. Additional details about this program and a link to submit an application can be viewed on a website here.
May 26, 2023
Quantum Computing Inc. Receives Follow-On Subcontract to Test Quantum Sensing Solutions and Also Signs LOI to Potentially Acquire an AI Startup
Quantum Computing Inc (QCI)have received a follow-on subcontract to test its proprietary quantum photonic system for remote sensing applications (QLiDAR) and also demonstrate how satellite images can be processed by utilizing its photonic-based reservoir computing technology. They have also signed of a Letter of Intent to acquire AI startup millionways. millionways is developed an emotionally intelligent artificial intelligence agent that can provide feedback to users on their emotional state and personality insights. The hope is that by using QCI’s reservoir photonic computing capability, they can significantly enhance the millionways algorithms to make them much more effective. Click here for our article with additional information about these two company announcements.
May 26, 2023 – News Brief
qBraid Has Now Open Sourced Their SDK
The qBraid SDK can transpile quantum circuits between Qiskit, Cirq, Amazon Braket, PyQuil, PyTKET and OpenQASM, and submit a jos to any IBMQ backend or Amazon Braket supported device. This includes access to 15 QPU devices from IonQ, Oxford Quantum Circuits, QuEra, Rigetti, Xanadu, and IBM, as well as 8 on-demand simulators from AWS and IBM. For those who already have AWS and IBM Quantum credentials, they can use their own and submit jobs using them. For those who don’t have AWS or IBM credentials they can get an account with qBraid and submit jobs the qBraid’s Quantum Jobs facility with no additional access keys required. The ability to transpile programs between different platforms and try out a program on different backend devices provides a user with a good way to compare results and see which one can work best for their application. Additional information about the qBraid SDK is available in a LinkedIn announcement here, a user guide located here, a GitHub page containing demos here, and a GitHub page with the Python source code here.
May 24, 2023 – News Brief
Sony Innovation Fund Invests in Quantum Motion
We reported last February that Quantum Motion had received a venture funding £42 million ($50.5M USD) for continued development of their spin qubit based processors. They have now announced that the Sony Innovation Fund has joined the round. This is the first quantum investment from the Sony Investment Fund. Besides the money, Sony can provide additional assistance to Quantum Motion in the future due to their deep experience in CMOS semiconductor design and manufacturing as well as helping them gain access to the Japanese market. Quantum Motion was founded in 2017 by Professor John Morton of University College London and Professor Simon Benjamin of Oxford University to develop a quantum processor based upon spin qubit technology and manufactured using high volume semiconductor processes. A press release announcing Sony Innovation Fund as a new investor has been posted on the Quantum Motion website and can be seen here.
May 24, 2023
Q-CTRL is Opening Offices in London, UK and Berlin, Germany and Also Announced that IBM will Adopt Q-CTRL Embedded
Q-CTRL has announced it is opening new offices in the UK and Germany in order to obtain additional capability for research and product development, support customers, and tap into the European quantum talent pool. They also announced that IBM will be adopting their Q-CTRL Embedded software that will automatically provide Q-CTRL’s AI-base quantum control software for error suppression and provide significantly improved performance for end users. Click here for our full article that describes these developments.
May 24, 2023
D-Wave Announces Its First Quarter Financial Results
D-Wave achieved revenue of $1.6 million and had bookings of $2.9 million in the first quarter. In comparison, they had revenue of $2.4 million in the previous fourth quarter of 2022 and much lower bookings under a million dollars. The adjusted EBITDA loss in Q1 2023 was $16.9 million in comparison to the loss in the year ago quarter of Q1 2022 which was $9.8 million. Net loss was $24.8 million versus $11.6 million a year ago. Click here for the rest of our article that includes additional information on their cash position, customer expansion, and some technical highlights they recently achieved.
May 23, 2023 – News Brief
Intel and Riken to Work Together on Quantum Computing
As part of a overall agreement to work together with RIKEN, a large research institute in Japan focusing on the natural sciences, on Next Generation Computing including AI and high performance computing, Intel will also be working with RIKEN on quantum computing. RIKEN will be using Intel’s Quantum SDK (see our recent article describing the Intel Quantum SDK) as well as quantum chip testing. Besides their work with Intel, RIKEN is also working with Fujitsu to produce a superconducting based quantum computer with 64 qubits. Additional information is available in a press release provided by RIKEN (in Japanese) that can be seen here.
May 23, 2023
IBM to Provide $100 Million to the University of Tokyo and University of Chicago to Help IBM Develop a 100,000 Qubit Quantum Processor
IBM has a goal to develop a 100,000 qubit Quantum-centric Supercomputer by 2023. Although they have made great progress since their initial introduction of a 5 qubit machine in 2016, they have concluded that there are four critical areas that still needs significant development to achieve this goal. These areas include quantum communication, quantum middleware, quantum algorithms & error correction, and components with the necessary supply chain. To accelerate the progress in developing technologies in these four areas, IBM has enlisted the help of research teams at the University of Chicago and the University of Tokyo and will be providing funding to these universities totaling $100 million over a 10 year period. The University of Tokyo will be working on developing improved algorithms and applications and supply chain issues while the University of Chicago will be working on quantum communication, quantum middleware, and error resilience issues. Click here for the full article.
May 22, 2023
SandboxAQ Tests Quantum Navigation System with the U.S. Air Force
While it’s the go-to technology for applications ranging from military to underground exploration, the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite-based radio navigation system has its challenges—including unavailability and the possibility that it can be intentionally denied or spoofed. Earlier this year, the USAF awarded SandboxAQ a Direct-to-Phase-II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to research quantum navigation technologies. A full eight months ahead of schedule, SandboxAQ successfully tested an advanced, quantum sensor-based magnetic anomaly navigation system with the USAF. Test flights were held at Travis Air Force Base by the 60th Air Mobility Wing as part of an ongoing readiness and modernization effort to augment GPS. The goal is to develop an Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (APNT) solution that delivers uninterrupted navigation. For the tests, SandboxAQ’s quantum navigation prototype was installed aboard a USAF C-17 GlobeMaster III military transport aircraft and it successfully received geomagnetic navigation data on the ground and during multiple in-flight tests. Click here for more.
May 19, 2023 – News Brief
Google Investing $50 Million in a Quantum Computing Partnership with the University of Chicago, and University of Tokyo
Google’s $50 million investment will cover one-half of an overall $100 million, 10 year program during which the team will be researching fault tolerant quantum computing as well as supporting workforce development, fostering quantum entrepreneurship, and exchange of researchers and ideas. Google’s contribution will including access to their latest quantum processor, access to classical computing resources in the Google Cloud, faculty research grants, graduate and undergraduate research funding, workforce development, and support for startup teams from the greater Chicago and Tokyo areas to participate in the Google for Startups bootcamp. Additional information is available in a blog post on the Google website here.
May 17, 2023 – News Brief
IonQ Makes Its Aria Class Processor Available on Amazon Web Services
Last August we had reported that the latest public available generation of IonQ quantum processor, named Aria, was being made available on Microsoft Azure. IonQ has now announced that Aria will also be available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It will join a previous generation Harmony processor and become the second IonQ machine available on AWS. The current machine has a number of improvements and provides a quality metric #AQ (Algorithmic Qubits) of 25. IonQ has published two blog posts providing additional technical details on the Aria. You can view Part 1 here and Part 2 of the blog here. A press release from IonQ announcing the availability of Aria on AWS can be accessed here.
May 16, 2023 – News Brief
Sparrow Quantum Receives 31 Million Danish Kroner ($4.5M USD) in Seed Funding
Sparrow Quantum, located in Copenhagen Denmark, is provider of single-photon components for quantum applications and technologies. The company is a as a spin-off from the Niels Bohr Institute’s Quantum Photonics Lab in Copenhagen, Denmark. The funding, which is the largest so far in a Danish quantum company, was led by the venture capital firm 2xN with additional participation from LIFTT and the European Innovation Council (EIC). The current product is a high performance single photon source that can generate photon streams at a rate of 20 million per second. These are created by a 3mm x 3mm InAs/GaAS chip that has quantum dot structures embedded in photonic crystal waveguides. The device can be used in photonic quantum computers as well as within a quantum internet. A news release from Sparrow Quantum announcing the funding can be accessed here.
May 16, 2023 – News Brief
NSF Engines Program Awards $2 Million for Developing Quantum Ecosystems in Connecticut and the Northern Intermountain States (MT, WY, ID)
The NSF Engines Development Awards program was authorized last year in the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act and is a program designed to turn cutting-edge research into new technologies that create jobs and promote economic growth. The NSF has just announced two planning awards of $1 million each for development of quantum technology and an ecosystem in two U.S. geographic region. The first was made to the University of Connecticut to develop a to formal proposal to establish Connecticut as a regional hub for quantum-related research, technologies, and jobs. The second planning grant was made to Montana State University for similar purposes for a region including the U.S. states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Connecticut already has significant quantum activity with academic research at the University of Connecticut and Yale as well as commercial;devefopments at startup Quantum Circuits Inc. and other large companies. The Northern Intermountain States have several commercial companies involved iwth quantum technology that are particularly relevant to a quantum supply chain. These include Montana Instruments, Teledyne FLIR, Cylynt, Quantel, AdvR, Wavelength Electronics, Micron, and Qubitekk. Additional information is available in an overview of the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines program here, an award abstract for the Connecticut grant here, another award abstract for the Montana/Wyoming/Idaho grant here, and a press release from Yale University with additional information about the Connecticut grant here.
May 16, 2023
Agnostiq Delivers Advanced Computing Resources via Commercial Covalent Cloud
Toronto-based Agnostiq, Inc. unveiled Covalent Cloud, a commercial version of its earlier flagship Covalent open-source workflow orchestration platform. The Covalent Cloud addresses both the demand for powerful advanced computing capabilities and the shortcomings of legacy tooling and its inability to meet the needs of the current Python-based developer ecosystem. Developed to meet the unique challenges of quantum and high-performance computing at scale, Covalent Cloud will provide a simple easy-to-use interface to access an increasingly diverse and complex hardware landscape. Click here for more.
May 15, 2023 – News Brief
QMware and Quix to Set Up a Hybrid Classical/Quantum Data Center in The Netherlands
QMware and Quix will partner to set the data center up in Enschede, Netherlands near Quix’ headquarters. The companies will closely co-locate and integrate Quix’ photonic based technology with QMware’s high performance hardware and software using a shared memory access on the high-performance computer under a unified Linux operating system. The goal is to provide very high performance due to the tight integration. The data center is scheduled to be available for commercial use by August 2023. Additional information about this new data center is available in a news release posted on the Quix Quantum website here.
May 14, 2023
Who’s News: Management Additions at IonQ, Isara, and Riverlane
IonQ has a new Vice-President of R&D, Isara has named a new CEO and Executive Chairman, and Riverlane has appointed a new VP of Product. Click here for our article that provides more information on these changes in management.
May 13, 2023
Quantum Computing Inc. Releases Its First Quarter 2023 Financial Results
Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) reported Q1 revenue of $120,530, an increase from the $31,240 it reported in the corresponding 2022 quarter. Net loss in Q1 2023 was $8.5 million, an increase from the $7.1 million loss they reported in 2022. The company ended the quarter on March 31, 2023 with $6.8 million of cash compared to the $5.3 million they had on December 31, 2022. The increase of cash was largely due to the issuance of shares through the At-The-Market (ATM) facility they had previously negotiated which netted them about $6.6 million in cash. Click here for more.
May 12, 2023
Rigetti Computing Reports its First Quarter 2023 Financial Results
Rigetti Computing reported revenue in its first quarter of 2023 of $2.2 million. This compares with revenue of $2.1 million in Q1 of 2022 and $6.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. Net loss was $23.4 million compared to $17.6 million in the same quarter of 2022 and $22.9 million in the Q4 2022. The company ended the quarter with $122.0 million in cash, cash equivalents, and available for-sale securities down from $142.8 million at the end of 2022. The company indicated that is expected to require additional funding in late 2024 or early 2025 in order to continue its R&D and achieve its business objectives. Click here for the rest of the article.
May 11, 2023
IonQ Reports Its Q1 2023 Financial Results
IonQ reported on its first quarter results and showed good growth in revenue over both its previous quarter and the corresponding quarter in Q1 2022. For Q1 2023 the company achieved revenue of $4.3 million versus $3.8 million in Q4 2022 and $2.0 million in Q1 2022. The company had originally estimated its Q1 2023 revenue would be between $3.6 to $4.0 million but was able to accelerate some additional revenue it thought would occur after the quarter had closed. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter was $15.9 million versus $13.3 million in Q4 2022. Bookings for the quarter were at $4.1 million with an estimate of between $38 million and $42 million for the full year. And the company has raised their estimate for full year 2023 revenue to between $18.8 million to $19.2 million from their previous forecast of $18.4 million to $18.8 million. The company ended the quarter with 525.5 million in cash, cash equivalents, and long term investments which is is among the best of all quantum focused companies and will give them staying power even if the quantum market does not grow as expected. For the rest of the our article summarizing IonQ’s earning announcement, click here.
May 11, 2023 – News Brief
Team Led by Zapata and L3Harris Deliver 30 Quantum Computing Challenge Scenarios to DARPA
Zapata and L3Harris are leading a team that is receiving $7.3 million from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) to develop benchmarks to enable measuring progress of a quantum computer to solve specific sets of challenges. Other members of the team include BBVA Corporation, BP, Copernic Catalysts, Mitsubishi Chemical and the University of Toronto. The 30 scenarios they have drawn up include real-world problems involving new materials, simulating fluid dynamics, real-time machine learning, and engineering design optimization which can be applicable to widely diverse industry including defense, chemistry, finance, machine learning and others. These scenarios will allow researchers to benchmark and compare how various quantum processors make progress in solving these real-world problems. A press release provide by Zapata with additional information about this program is available here.
May 11, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Bridge Receives Grant of $890,000 CAD ($700K USD) for Quantum Repeater Development
The funding came from the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) Quantum Sensors Challenge program. Toronto based Quantum Bridge is developing a all-photonic quantum repeater that will help enable quantum entanglement to be communicated over long distances in a fiber optic cable. Currently, the limitation for long distance quantum communication is the signal degradation that photons incur when travelling through a fiber optic cable. In classical communications, telecom companies use classical photonic repeaters which can measure a signal and then repeat it to the next link in the chain. However, those classical devices do not work in quantum due to fundamental quantum mechanical principles like the No Cloning theorem. So a special quantum repeater device needs to be developed that uses a technique called Entanglement Swapping. The research for this type of device is still in its infancy and Quantum Bridge is one of the early groups working on such a device. A news release announcing this funding can be accessed here.
May 11, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Brilliance Reaches Reseller Agreement for their Qristal Software Suite with Singapore-based PTC
Quantum Brilliance is an Australian provider of room temperature diamond quantum accelerators and also provides their own software development kit called the Qristal SDK and a high performance emulator called Qristal Emulator. They have reached agreement with PTC System (S) Pte Ltd is an organization that specializes in providing enterprise data management solutions and services to enterprise customers for resale of their software products to customers in Asia. PTC is also a distributor of NVIDIA’s DGX platform and customers will be able to purchase both the Qristal Emulator together with the NVIDIA DGX in order to locally achieve high performance quantum simulation without requiring a cloud access. Earlier this year, Quantum Brilliance released a version of their Qristal software that supports NVIDIA’s CUDA Quantum software. Additionally, Quantum Brilliance also announced it is opening of an office in Singapore and will create a Quantum Software Centre of Excellence there. You can access a news release from Quantum Brilliance with these announcements here.
May 10, 2023 – News Brief
Australia’s Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Forms a Partnership with Xanadu
Australia’s Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre (Pawsey) and Canada’s Xanadu have agreed to work together to test hybrid classical/quantum computing. The two will work together to see how Pawsey’s Setonix supercomputer can work in an integrated workflow with Xanadu’s photonic quantum processor. The agreement will also leverage PennyLane, Xanadu’s open-source software framework for quantum machine learning, quantum chemistry and quantum computing. A key focus will also be to facilitate the education of Pawsey researchers so they can gain expertise in leveraging quantum technology. Pawsey has other agreements with quantum hardware providers. Last year, Pawsey installed a small NV-diamond based processor from Quantum Brilliance to explore how supercomputers and quantum processors can best be integrated together for hybrid classical/quantum computing. A news release with additional information about the Pawsey/Xanadu partnership is available on the Pawsey website here.
May 10, 2023 – News Brief
Abu Dhabi’s Quantum Research Center Gains Access to Amazon Braket
Abu Dhabi’s Quantum Research Center at the Technology Innovation Institute (QRC-TII) has a new research agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to explore quantum computing applications. As part of the agreement, QRC-TTI will have access to the quantum processors available on Amazon Braket and also AWS High Performance Computing (HPC) classical computing resources. AWS will provide a spending match for the next three years of all eligible projects using this service and provide workshops, classes, and other support to help QRC-TTI researchers get up to speed. AWS will also help connect local AWS enterprise customers with the TII team to help enable collaborations for end-user applications. This announcement follows a similar one made between IonQ and QRC-TII that we reported on last month. A news release provided by the Technology Innovation Institute announcing this agreement can be accessed here.
May 10, 2023
IBM Introduces Its Quantum Safe Roadmap to Protect Critical Data in the Post-Quantum Era
To help its client protect critical data in a post-quantum era, IBM has introduced a full Quantum Safe Roadmap for its clients to help them with their migration to quantum-safe encryption. The roadmaps consists of three key steps that they call Discover, Observe, and Transform. Click here for our full article that covers IBM’s announcement of their quantum safe roadmap.
May 9, 2023 – News Brief
IBM’s 400+ Qubit Osprey Processor is Now Live for Access
IBM announced their 433 qubit Osprey processor last November as part of their IBM Quantum Summit and indicated that it would be available to members of the IBM Quantum Network in a few months. They have now released this machine for users in what IBM calls an “Exploratory” status. The initial machine of this family is called IBM_Seattle. This particular processor has 413 of the 433 qubits working due to some physical problems in the wiring. Initial qubit quality metrics do not show any improvement over the previous 127 and 27 qubit devices, but achieving that was not a goal for this particular version which they call Osprey r1. Subsequent revisions of the Osprey family, such as Osprey r2, which they testing internally, will incorporate some of the advances they have found with later revisions of the 127 qubit Eagle family with some improved performance. Additional information on this release of the IBM Seattle processor is available in a LinkedIn post from IBM Fellow and VP of IBM Quantum Jay Gambetta here along with calibration data of the device posted on the IBM Quantum website here.
May 9, 2023 – News Brief
IBM Ventures Invests in QunaSys
QunaSys has been a member of the IBM Quantum Network for a while and has collaborated with IBM on research, published joint papers on the research, and beta-tested the Qiskit Runtime service. The company specializes in developing algorithms for quantum chemistry calculations for use in materials discovery, chemistry, drug discovery, and other applications. In 2021, they launched a cloud-accessible quantum computing development platform called Qamuy, a quantum chemistry software service that runs on the cloud and performs computational chemistry calculations for those who don’t have expertise in quantum algorithms. Now, IBM Ventures has made an investment in the company which they will use to further develop their software for easy-to-use quantum chemistry calculations and material research development. The amount of the investment has not been publicly disclosed. Other information about this investment can be found in a news release posted on the QunaSys website here.
May 6, 2023
Australian Government Releases a National Quantum Strategy
The Australian government has released a National Quantum Strategy after many discussions with members of the Australian quantum community and others. Australia believes that quantum will be a major opportunity for the country and has a target of creating 8,700 new jobs in a $2.2 billion AUS ($1.5B USD) industry by 2030 and continuing to grow and generating 19,400 jobs in a $6 billion AUS ($4B USD) industry by 2045. In order to achieve this, they have developed the countries quantum strategy around six key themes. Click here for our full article with highlights from the National Quantum Strategy document they have released.
May 6, 2023
SandboxAQ Will Provide $200K To Sponsor an Undergraduate Photonics Lab at the City University of New York
SandboxAQ will provide funding of $200 thousand to the City University of New York (CUNY) for setting up an undergraduate photonics lab for students to study quantum phenomena including superposition, entanglement, manipulation, measurement, and long-range quantum communication. In addition, the company will sponsor a series of in-person quantum workshops at the CUNY Graduate Center that will cover quantum-related topics from leading industry and academic experts. A press release announcing the funding and launch of this new photonics lab can be found on the SandboxAQ website here.
May 6, 2023
PsiQuantum Expands Relationship with Skywater Technology for Production of Silicon Photonic Chips
SkyWater Technology is a U.S.-owned semiconductor manufacturer located in Bloomington, Minnesota that provides wafer foundry services for diverse categories of devices including mixed-signal CMOS, ROICs, rad-hard ICs, power management, MEMS, superconducting ICs, photonics, carbon nanotubes and interposers. One of their longstanding quantum clients has been D-Wave which has been using the SkyWater foundry for many years to manufacture the superconducting chips they use in their quantum annealing. Now PsiQuantum has chosen them to produce silicon photonics chips for their photonic based quantum computer. Click here for more.
May 6, 2023 – News Brief
U.S. Department of Defense Makes MURI Award of $6.25 Million to University Researchers for Investigating Quantum Error Correction and Quantum Control
The Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) award was provided to Professor Daniel Lidar, the Director of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology, who will collaborate with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Iowa State University, Dr. Robert Kosut, a quantum control expert at the company SC Solutions, and a separately funded team based in Australia led by Professor Kavan Modi to investigate over a five year period how quantum error correction intersects with quantum control. Additional information about this award can be found in a press release posted on the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering website here.
May 5, 2023
AFRL Issues Broad BAA to Solicit Quantum Research Proposals with $500 Million in Potential Funding
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory/Information Directorate (AFRL) is expected to have $500 million in anticipate funding over a five year period to support quantum research in five focus areas including Quantum Algorithms and Computing, Memory-Node-Based Quantum Networking, Quantum Information Processing, Heterogeneous Quantum Platforms, and Quantum Information Sciences. They will be making multiple awards with individual awards expected to normally range from $500 thousand to $27 million in funding with a potential to make awards as high as $99.9 million. For additional information about this AFRL Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) and how to submit a proposal, click here for our article that provide more information about the BAA and a link to the full announcement on the SAM.gov website.
May 5, 2023 – News Brief
planqc Awarded a €29 Million ($31.9M USD) Contract to Install a Quantum Computer at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)
The quantum computer will be built using planqc’s neutral atom based technology over the next 3.5 years and will have 100 or more qubits. Helping planqc with this project will include Menlo Systems and ParityQC that will be providing critical components for the laser systems and the software architecture. This award is one of several that the DLR has made to procure different types of quantum computers. In October of 2022, the DLR award contracts of €208.5 Million ($208M USD) for five sub-projects involving various types of ion trap based quantum computers. Like some of the other projects, planqc will have a dedicated lab and office space at the DLR Innovation Center in Ulm. Additional information about this award can be found in a press release posted on the planqc website here and another press release (in German) on the DLR website here.
May 1, 2023 – News Brief
Hong Kong Neutral Atom Startup QUANTier Receives Early Funding
QUANTier is a neural atom startup company that spun off in 2022 from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). They have received early stage funding from ParticleX, a Hong Kong based venture fund, and the HKUST Entrepreneurship Fund. QUANTier is developing neutral atom based quantum processors that operate at room temperature and are targeting to provide cloud services to universities and medium-sized businesses. The amount of funding was not disclosed. You can access a press release announcing the funding here.
April 29, 2023 – News Brief
Strangeworks Announces an Expansion of Its Advanced Compute Platform
Strangeworks, an Austin, Texas based software startup, has updated and expanded its platform to add additional functionality. Besides offering access to over 60 different hardware platforms, the company has now added algorithm libraries from both internal and external sources that their customers can utilize to accelerate their application. Click here for the rest of our article covering Strangeworks’ announcement.
April 28, 2023 – News Brief
IonQ to Provide the UAE’s Quantum Research Center with Access to Its Aria Processor
IonQ, a developer of ion trap based quantum processors, has agreed to provide access to its Aria quantum computer for Abu Dhabi’s Quantum Research Center – Technology Innovation Institute (QRC-TII) in the United Arab Emirates. QRC-TII developers will be using this access to develop, benchmark, and optimize new quantum algorithms. They will also be studying quantum device characterization and quantum error mitigation techniques. This agreement will help further IonQ’s efforts to expand internationally. More recently they established two international subsidiaries in Germany and Israel and also acquired Canadian based Entangled Networks, a developer of hardware and software solutions for connecting multiple quantum processors within a data center. IonQ’s news release announcing this agreement with QRC-TII can be accessed here.
April 28, 2023 – News Brief
U.S. and South Korea Sign Statement of Cooperation on Quantum Technology
This statement is similar to others that the U.S. has made with the Netherlands, France, Denmark, United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, and others. It calls for promoting joint research in quantum information science and technology (QIST), personnel exchanges, sharing of QIST related methodologies and data, and developing a news generation workforce of scientists and engineers. The statement also calls for discussion of important issues including standardization efforts and technology protection considerations. For additional information you can view a posting on the U.S. Quantum.gov website here and the full text of the agreement on the U.S. Department of State’s website here.
April 28, 2023 – News Brief
SEEQC Demonstrates System Red, the First Quantum Computer Built in Italy
The SEEQC System Red is a full-stack superconducting based quantum processor with 5 algorithmically available qubits that the company developed in its laboratory in Naples, Italy. The SEEQC technology has a number of advantages including very fast two-qubit gate times of 39 nsec. with average gate fidelities of 98.4%. The current system is a first generation system that uses room temperature electronics that are connected via wire to the qubits inside the dilution refrigerator, similar to the current approach from other superconducting processor manufacturers. However, the company’s next generation system planned for release within 12 months will use SFQ (Single Flux Quantum) logic circuits for control. SFQ technology implements digital logic using Josephson Junction devices that make it extraordinary fast (up to 40 Ghz. operating speed), low power, improved performance, and compatible with the very cold temperatures that are inside the dilution refrigerator. The system is available to try now via both the cloud and private beta. Additional information about this new quantum computer in Italy can be seen in a press release provided by SEEQC here.
April 27, 2023
Riverlane Raises £15 Million ($18.7M USD) in a Series B Round
The Series B round was led by Molten Ventures with additional participation from Altair and returning investors Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), Amadeus Capital Partners and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF). This follows a £3.25 million ($4.4M USD) round they received in June 2019 and a $20 million Series A round they received in January 2021. For more about Riverlane’s new funding and product directions, click here.
April 22, 2023
Launch of UK’s NQCC Software Lab
The UK NQCC (National Quantum Computing Centre) has partnered with the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh to launch its first dedicated NQCC Software Lab. Following the publication of the UK National Quantum Strategy and the UK government’s commitment of £2.5B for the quantum sector over the next ten years, we are now starting to get some initial indications of how that money will be spent. For the rest of the article about this new software lab, click here.
April 21, 2023
Quantinuum Releases λambeq (pronounced “Lambek”) Version 0.3.0 with PennyLane Integration
λambeq is an open source, Python-based software development tool for quantum natural language processing (QNLP). It was originally released in October 2021 and was the first software package available for QNLP. This newest release from Quantinuum, version 0.3.0, has been designed to make it easier to use and provide better support for new users starting to experiment with QNLP. Click here for the rest of the article.
April 21, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Sandbox for Near-Term Applications Act Introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives
The bipartisan bill, Quantum Sandbox for Near-Term Applications Act (H.R. 2739), was introduced in the U.S. Congress by representatives Jay Obernolte, Haley Stevens (D-MI), Randy Weber (R-TX) Richard Hudson would be an amendment to the National Quantum Initiative Act to encourage and accelerate near-term quantum application development. It is seeking to have near term use cases developed and deployed within 24 months. The bill calls for the National Institute of Standards to establish a public-private partnership for this quantum sandbox to accelerate the application development. No additional funding amounts have been cited so far in the proposed bill. Additional information about the bill can be seen in a press release put out by Congressman Jay Obernolte’s office here and the text of the proposed bill is available here.
April 21, 2023
Canadian Government Awards $51 Million CAD ($37M USD) in Quantum Grants to 75 Recipients
The awards were made by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to provide finding for four different classes of funding opportunity programs. These awards were made as part of Canada’s National Quantum Strategy which has a Budget 2021 allocation of $360 Million CAD ($266M USD) to provide advanced training to potential workforce of graduates and postdoctoral fellows, encourage research collaborations both domestically and internationally, and to secure Canada’s leadership in quantum science and technologies. For additional information about these awards, click here.
April 21, 2023 – News Brief
IBM and Moderna Agree to Work Together Using Generative AI and Quantum Computing Techniques to Help Develop Future mRNA Medicines
Under the arrangement, Moderna will join the IBM Quantum Accelerator program and the IBM Quantum Network and access to IBM’s quantum computing systems, along with IBM’s expertise in using the technology. In addition, Moderna and IBM’s scientist will work together to use IBM’s MoLFormer, a pretrained AI model that infers the structure of molecules from simple representations to predict a molecule’s physical properties. A key goal for Moderna is to optimize the lipid nanoparticles, which encapsulate and protect the mRNA as it travels within the body and design mRNA medicines with optimal safety and performance.. Additional information about this collaboration is available in a news release provided by IBM here.
April 21, 2023 – News Brief
Oxford Quantum Circuits Partners with Fujitsu to Install a Quantum Processor at Spain’s CESGA
We reported last January about the €14 Million ($15M USD) deal between the Galician Supercomputing Center (CESGA or Centro de Supercomputación de Galicia) and Fujitsu to provide several pieces of HPC and quantum related hardware at CESGA’s data center in Galicia, Spain. Now Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) has been added to the collaboration and will be installing their upcoming 32 qubit quantum computer at CESGA. The machine will be part of a cluster that includes several other items including Fujitsu’s 34 qubit quantum simulator, a Fujitsu PRIMERGY server, a Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX700 supercomputer, and a Fujitsu Digital Annealer. For more information about these computers being installed at CESGA’s HPC data center, you can view a press release posted on the OQC website here.
April 20, 2023
Government of India Approves a National Quantum Mission with a Budget of Rs. 6003.65 Crore ($730M USD)
The government of India has approved an eight year program to develop quantum technology and make India one of the leading nations in the world for the development and application of quantum technologies. It will involve the development and research of quantum computers, quantum communication, quantum sensors, quantum materials, and quantum components. Click here for more details describing some of the activities of this National Quantum Mission.
April 20, 2023 – News Brief
Quanscient Raises a €3.9 Million ($4.27M USD) Seed Round
Quanscient is a quantum software provider company based in Finland and founded in 2021. They provide a cloud and quantum powered multi-physics simulation platform that can perform simulations of materials for characteristics such as electromagnetics, mechanics, and fluid dynamics. People utilize their platform to develop products that are more energy efficient, sustainable, and bring accelerate the time it takes to bring a product to market. In one example, they have taken a superconductor simulation that would take months on a classical computer and reduced the runtime to a few hours. The company contents that their Quanscient.allsolve product is the fastest multi-physics simulator on the market and is accessible via the internet with any browser. The €3.9 Million in funding was provided by Maki.vc. In addition, the company has received additional support with a research grant and loan totaling €446 thousand ($488K USD) from Business Finland. A press release announcing this new funding can be accessed on their website here.
April 20, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Source Receives a $12 Million Seed Extension Funding Round
This funding round for Quantum Source was led by Dell Technologies Capital with additional participation from 10D and existing investors Eclipse VC, Grove Ventures, and Pitango First. The company had previously received seed funding of $15 million so this brings the total amount of seed financing for the company to $27 million. Quantum Source was found in 2021 and is located in Rehovot, Israel. They are working to develop large scale, fault-tolerant, photonic quantum computers that will scale to millions of qubits. The company’s includes semiconductor industry veterans and accomplished physicists who have co-founded companies and subsequently sold them to larger corporations including Apple, Broadcom, and Sony. Additional information is available in a press release provided by Quantum Source that is available here.
April 19, 2023
SandboxAQ Unveils Security Suite for End-to-end Cryptographic Vulnerability Scanning and Remediation
SandboxAQ just unveiled its SandboxAQ Security Suite, an end-to-end cryptographic-agility platform providing cryptographic vulnerability scanning and remediation. SandboxAQ claims that its Security Suite is the industry’s first complete solution for cryptographic inventory that includes analysis and inventory of filesystems, applications, and networks. For more about this new security suite, click here.
April 18, 2023
QC Ware Introduces Prometheum for Quantum Chemistry Calculations
QC Ware has now made their Prometheum platform available as Software as a Service (SaaS) on the AWS Marketplace. The software is an ab initio platform for the discovery of new drugs, chemicals, catalysts, and materials. It offers key capabilities of calculating molecular properties, interaction energies, and reaction paths in a manner that QC Ware indicates will provide high accuracy, the capability of handling chemical systems as large as 2000 atoms, and performance that can exceed other commercially available and open source platforms by over an order of magnitude. Click here for more of our article about this new quantum chemistry platform.
April 15, 2023 – News Brief
Microsoft Partners with Johnson Matthey to Research Better Catalysts for Hydrogen Fuel Cells
The Azure Quantum team at Microsoft is working with Johnson Matthey to improve hydrogen fuel cell technology, which would be very helpful for achieving a zero-carbon future. A catalyst is used in hydrogen fuel cells to help facilitate the chemical reactions in the full cell to create electricity. Today, the best catalytic material is platinum, but it is expensive and not easy to produce. One of the goals of the research is to find cheaper and more available materials that can do an equivalent job of being a catalyst. The team is using predictive modeling tools to simulate the chemical reactions to understand how different materials will perform. Currently, the team is working with classical supercomputers and have already shown significant progress with a 50 percent improvement in the speed of a chemistry calculation. As more powerful quantum processors become available, the goal of this research will be to move to a hybrid workflow with classical and quantum processors working together in order to gain an even more significant speedup. Additional information about this research can be seen in a blog posted on Microsoft’s Azure Quantum website here.
April 15, 2023 – News Brief
Japanese Government to Provide ¥4.2 Billion ($31.4M USD) to Fund Cloud Computing Access in Japan
The funding is being supplied by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry over the next five years to support quantum cloud computing access to a collective led by the University of Tokyo. Currently, the university has a 27 qubit IBM Q System One processor installed in 2021 with plans to upgrade it to the 127 qubit model later this Fall using part of this new funding. The processor is currently being used by several commercial companies including Toyota Motor, Mitsubishi Chemical and Mizuho Financial Group with additional ones expected to join soon. Additional information about this funding is available in an article from Nikkei Asia posted here.
April 14, 2023 – News Brief
Florida State University Plans a $20 Million Investment in Quantum Science and Engineering
The university will make this investment over a three year period. It will include hiring eight or more new faculty members, and provide dedicated equipment and lab space in the university’s Interdisciplinary Research and Commercialization Building. The program will build upon previous research that was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and related to quantum performed at the school. These include a project to develop high performance software, research to develop a new qubit platform, and research related to energy frontiers. For more, click here to see a news release posted on the Florida State University (FSU) website.
April 14, 2023 – News Brief
Qunnect Announces an Expanded Facility, a new Entangled Photon Source Device, and a 34 km Fiber Loop for Testing their Technology
Qunnect, a Brooklyn, NY company developing components for quantum networking, made several announcements about their progress in celebration of Quantum World Day. The first is an expansion of their facilities at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to include a 4000 square foot R&D facility and a 1500 sq. ft. Network Research Hub for the GothamQ Network. The second is a high performance entangled photon source. The device, called Qu-Source, produces 795 and 1324 nm photon pairs at a rate exceeding 10 million pairs per second with a Bell state fidelity greater than 95%. The company contends that this performance is significantly higher than any other previously reported atomic source. The 795 nm source provides low loss interfacing with atomic devices while the 1324 nm source is compatible with wavelengths commonly used in telecom fiber optic networks. Like their other products, Qu-Source is designed to operate at room temperature to make it easy to deploy the devices in the field. The company is testing the Qu-Source product, along with some of their others over a 34 km fiber optic loops that travels through Brooklyn and Queens. The fiber optic loop is part of a metropolitan fiber optic network they are putting together called GothamQ. Additional information about these developments can be viewed in a press release provided by the company here. Also, more information about Qu-Source is available in a technical paper posted on arXiv here as well as a product page for all of Qunnect’s devices here.
April 14, 2023
D-Wave Announces Year End Financial Results and a New $50 Million Loan Agreement
D-Wave Quantum Inc., has finished 2022 with revenue of $7.1 million for the year and showed continued progress in customer traction, technical developments, and securing additional lines of credit. Click here for our article summarizing the key points of their press release.
April 14, 2023 – News Brief
Qureca Announces the Qureca! Box to Teach Quantum Tech in a Simple and Fun Way
Qureca has introduced a Qureca! Box educational toolkit to teach students the fundamental concepts of quantum computing. Targetted for high school and undergraduate students, the kit includes Powerpoint links, video links as well as physical objects including a Qubit Box, Compucards, and 3D Bloch Sphere that a student can hold to gain an intuitive grasp of the quantum concepts. The course currently consists of five modules that start with a game experience for the student to discover the quantum world, and allow a student to implement and simulate quantum circuits in the last module. Additional modules to supplement the existing ones are already in development. These kits have already been tested in over 10 pilot workshops that have taught over 200 students resulting in a 93% improvement in student’s knowledge. For additional information about this quantum education tool, you can view Qureca’s press announcement for it here and to see additional details and pre-order one of these kits, you can go to the web page for it here.
April 11, 2023
Who’s News: Management Additions at Quantum Computing Inc., Duality, Oxford Quantum Circuits, Qrypt, and IQM
Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) has added a third person to their Technical Advisory Board, the Duality Quantum Accelerator has a new Director, Oxford Quantum Circuits has appointed a new Chief Operating Officer, Qrypt has recruited a new Vice-President of Engineering, and IQM has appointed a new Head of their Asia-Pacific Business and also a new Head of Marketing and Communications. Click here for details on these new management additions.
April 6, 2023
Q-CTRL Introduces a new QAOA Solver Feature in their Fire Opal Error Mitigation Software
The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is a popular iterative classical/quantum algorithms that uses an iterative approach with the two processors working together to find an optimized solution for a problem with a given set of inputs. Although the algorithm may not be too hard to program, it is much more challenging to use it and get an accurate solution. Q-CTRL has introduced a new feature in their Python-based Fire Opal Error Mitigation software package that can automate and substantial improve the answer quality when running a QAOA program on an actual quantum computer. It simplifies the input process because a user only needs to input a graph and a goal, or a cost function rather than submit a quantum circuit. Click here for more.
April 5, 2023 – News Brief
KPMG and Classiq Will Collaborate to Provide Quantum Solutions to their Enterprise Clients
KPMG’s Global Quantum Hub provides various services, including quantum strategy, use case discovery and implementation of quantum computing solutions to their clients while Classiq provides a quantum software platform that automatically converts high-level functional models into optimized quantum circuits. The two companies have announced they will team up to use their collected expertise and technology to accelerate easier and faster end user adoption of quantum computing solutions. Targetted industries include financial services, automotive, pharma, energy, telco and logistics. Additional information about this new collaboration can be found in a press release here.
April 5, 2023 – News Brief
Agnostiq Receives an Additional $6.1 Million in Funding in a Seed Extension Round
Agnostiq, a Toronto based quantum software developer that is developing Covalent, an open-source workflow orchestration platform, has received a $6.1 million seed extention venture investment. This follows a $2 million seed investment they received in May of 2021. The investment was led by Differential Ventures with additional participation from Scout Ventures, Tensility Venture Partners, Green Egg Ventures and Rob Granieri, Principal at Jane Street Capital. The company indicates they will be using the funds to continue development of Covalent Cloud, a commercial offering that will work with the Covalent software and make it easier for end users to integrate the activity of classical and quantum processors working together in a heterogeneous computing environment to solve their computational problems. Additional information about this additional funding can be found in a press released posted here.
April 4, 2023
IQM Opens an Office in Singapore
IQM has announced it has opened its first office in Asia and is locating it in Singapore. This will be the company’s fifth office after Espoo, Munich, Madrid, and Paris. The purpose of the office will be to build quantum computers for placement in the region and to work with the quantum community and national initiatives in Singapore including the National Quantum Computing Hub, the National Quantum Fabless Foundry, and the National Quantum-Safe Network. Raghunath Koduvayur, the former Head of Marketing and Communications, will become the Head of Asia-Pacific Business. Additional information about this new office is available in a news release provided by IQM here.
April 4, 2023
Quantum Computing Inc. Announces 2022 Financial Results and Starts Transition to Commercialization
Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) reported 2022 total revenue at $135,648 versus no revenue in 2021. Operating expenses were $36.5 million versus $17.1 million in the prior year due to impact of its merger with QPhoton, increase in engineering personnel, non-stock based compensation, and other factors. The net loss was $38.5 million versus $10.7 million in the prior year. The company ended the year with Cash and Cash Equivalents of $5.3 million versus $16.7 million at the end of 2021. After the end of the year, the company has received $6.4 million from sales of $3 million of their shares via an at-the-market facility managed by Ascendiant Capital. Click here for more on QCI’s financial results and the company’s status and plans.
April 3, 2023
Rigetti Computing Releases Q4 and Full Year 2022 Financial Results
Rigetti Computing reported on a significant increase in Q4 revenue achieving $6.1 milllion versus $1.8 million in Q4 2021. They also showed an increase in operating expenses ($32.0 million versus $12.2 million) and net loss ($26.7 million versus $11.1 million). The increase in operating costs were attributed primarily due to increases in research and development expenditures, a $5.4 million goodwill impairment charge, and higher costs due to being a public company. For the full year the company achieved revenues of $13.1 million versus $8.2 million in 2021 and a net loss of $71.5 million versus $38.2 million in 2021. Click here for more.
April 3, 2023
European Quantum Flagship Launches PasQuans2 Project with €16.6 Million ($18M USD) Funding to Find a Path for Simulating 10,000 Atom Systems
PASQuanS2 (Programmable Atomic Large-Scale Quantum Simulation) has the goal of building a quantum simulator capable of handling simulations of up to 10,000 atoms. It is a follow-on to the previous European Flagship program PASQuanS which initially explored the concept of quantum simulation with smaller arrays. Although a quantum simulator is not as general purpose as a full-fledged programmable quantum processor, it can be very effective for solving certain computation problems beyond the capability of a classical processor, particularly for problems involving quantum chemistry. Click here for the rest of the story.
March 31, 2023
Who’s News: Management Updates at Quantum Brilliance, Terra Quantum, QuSecure, Quantum Computing Inc., and SandboxAQ
Quantum Brilliance has made some changes in the company’s CEO and CTO roles, Terra Quantum has created a new position for a CFO/CSO, QuSecure has recruited a new Executive Vice President of Engineering, Quantum Computing Inc. has added to its Technical Advisory Board, and SandboxAQ has named a senior advisor to the company’s Global Public Sector team. Click here for more details about these management changes.
March 31, 2023
IonQ Releases Their Q4 and Fully Year 2022 Financial Results
IonQ showed continued growth in revenue achieving $3.8 million in the fourth quarter versus $2.8 million in the third quarter and $1.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. For the full year, they achieved a total of $11.1 million versus $2.1 million in 2021. Click here for more information summarizing their financial results.
March 31, 2023 – News Brief
Horizon Quantum Computing Receives $18.1 Million USD in Series A Funding
Horizon Quantum Computing is a Singapore based quantum software company that is developing software to allow users take programs written in a classical computer language and compile and convert them to run them efficiently on a quantum computer. They have a very unique goal to enable a much larger user base gain the performance advantages of quantum without having to learn quantum mechanics or a new programming language. The investors in this round include Sequoia Capital India, Tencent, SGInnovate, Pappas Capital and Expeditions Fund. This funding brings the total amount of capital raised to $21.3 million including the previous Seed and Seed+ rounds. The funds will be used to staff up a new engineering center in Dublin, Ireland as well as to launch an early access program for its software scheduled for later this year. Additional information about the funding is available in a press release posted on the Horizon website here. In addition, a nice presentation made at Q2B by CEO Joe Fitzsimons that provides additional technical details about their approach has been posted on YouTube here.
March 30, 2023
QC Ware and JP Morgan Chase Team Up to Explore Use of Quantum Technology for Deep Hedging
In the finance industry a common practice is to use something called hedging to reduce risk of an existing position by taking an offsetting position in a different asset. For example, an investor can use a derivative such as a Put or a Call to offset potential losses in the future change of price in the underlying asset. Although classical hedging algorithms can do well in idealized markets, they may not perform as well in real world markets that can incur account transaction costs, liquidity issues, trading restrictions, and other issues. In recent years, a framework called Deep Hedging has been developed to deal with these issues using an approach called reinforcement learning. This research performed by QC Ware and the Global Technology Applied Research center of JPMorgan Chase & Co. explored using quantum deep learning algorithms to implement a more efficient quantum reinforcement learning technique for Deep Hedging. Click here for more.
March 29, 2023 – News Brief
QuSecure and Accenture Demonstrate Multi-Satellite PQC Communications
QuSecure and Accenture have demonstrated a space-based quantum-resistant post-quantum cryptography (PQC) using a network of both Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO) satellites using QuSecure’s QuProtect software based PQC solution. What is interesting about this demonstration is that a transmission is first sent to a LEO satellite from an earth station and then transferred to the GEO satellite for subsequent delivery to another earth station. No special software or hardware was required for the satellites because all the encryption and decryption activity takes place at the ground stations so the satellites were only handling encrypted classical data. The system also included redundant features because the transmissions could take place over multiple satellite orbits should there be a failure or threat to one of the satellites in a single orbit. Additional information about this test is available in a press release provided by QuSecure which can be accessed here.
March 29, 2023 – News Brief
Alice & Bob Selects Quantum Machines OPX+ Quantum Control Platform
Alice & Bob is a French quantum processor startup that is pursuing a superconducting based quantum computer that uses a different type of qubit called a cat qubit. The potential advantage of this approach is that it may be able to eliminate one type of common error in a quantum computer called a Bit Flip. Although there is a second type of error still present called a Phase Flip, if a design doesn’t have to be concerned about Bit Flips it can simplify an quantum error correction algorithm and significantly reduce the number of physical qubits to form one logical qubit. To control the qubits, the Alice & Bob computer requires electronics to form the pulses that control the qubits and process the quantum error corrections and error mitigation in real time. This is where the Quantum Machines OPX+ quantum control platform comes in. It will generate the necessary control signal waveforms, acquire measurements from the qubits, provide real-time classical processing, and and manage the control flow of the computer. More information about Alice & Bob’s selection of the Quantum Machines platform for their quantum control solutions can be found in a press release located here.
March 28, 2023 – News Brief
Atlantic Quantum Wins $200K Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Award from the U.S. Department of Energy
The Phase 1 STTR award will cover research to develop open-source software that can define, schedule, and executing automatic qubit calibration and benchmarking for quantum processors ranging from tens to hundreds of qubits. Atlantic Quantum will partner with the Engineering Quantum Systems group at MIT to develop the software and test it on a variety of platforms. The software will be designed to work with different types of quantum processors and can be modified to customize it for a particular machine. Additional information is available in a news release provided by Atlantic Quantum which is available here.
March 25, 2023
European Union Initiates a OpenSuperQPlus Program with €20 Million ($21.5M USD) in Funding to Develop a 1,000 Qubit Processor
The OpenSuperQPlus program is a successor to the previous OpenSuperQ program that will be coordinated by Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH and involve 28 partners from 10 different countries. It has a first stage goal of developing a 100 qubit system within 3.5 years and a second stage goal of developing a 1000 qubit system within seven years. The funding will come from the European Union’s Horizon Europe framework program. Click here for more.
March 25, 2023 – News Brief
Ericsson Canada Establishes a Quantum Research Hub in Montreal, Canada
The hub will collaborate with the University of Ottawa and the Université de Sherbrooke to study quantum-based algorithms for acceleration of processing in telecom networks and distributed quantum computing. Ericsson Canada’s researchers will work with post-doctoral fellows at the universities and will provide telecom and networking competence and facilities for this research. In additions, the Mitacs organization will also support this effort through internships and professional skills development. Interns will work with researchers at Ericsson Canada and the universities. A press release from Ericsson announcing the establishment of this new Quantum Research Hub can be found here.
March 25, 2023 – News Brief
IQM Launches IQM Academy, a Free Online Quantum Training Course
IQM Quantum Computers has developed the free course aimed at high school and university students, educators, and enthusiasts who want to start learning about the fundamentals of quantum computing. The self-learning lessons are accessible worldwide and no prior quantum computing experience is needed to start using the modules in the course. It includes interactive web pages that cover the Foundations, Applications, Algorithms, and other modules that are sill in development. To learn more about the IQM Academy, a readers can access the press announcement about its formation here and the web pages for the IQM Academy here.
March 24, 2023 – News Brief
QuEra Will Make Its Neutral Atom Processor Available to the U.S. National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is a high performance supercomputing facility operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science for use by 9,000 scientists at national laboratories and universities around the country. Starting later this Spring, those scientists will have access to QuEra’s Aquila neutral atom quantum processor which contains 256 qubits. The Aquila processor is currently programmed in an analog mode which QuEra indicates provides more robust characteristics against noise and has other advantages. The machine will be used by NERSC users to explore its ability to solve problems in quantum dynamics, chemistry, high-energy physics, and other fields. For more information, you can view a news release posted on the QuEra website here.
March 24, 2023
IBM Completes Installation of an IBM Quantum System One at the Cleveland Clinic and Announces Another One to be Deployed in the Basque Country, Spain
IBM has announced completion of the deployment of a previously announced IBM Quantum System One processor and announced another international installation that will occur in a new IBM-Euskadi Quantum Computational Center to be located at the main campus of the Ikerbasque Foundation in San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain. Click here for our full article.
March 22, 2023 – News Brief
Pasqal Introduces a Quantum Discovery Platform to Acquaint Users with Neutral Atom Quantum Computing
The purpose of this platform to give news users a sampling of what quantum computing is, how it works, and help a identify/prioritize user cases. As part of this program, Pasqal will be providing users access to Pasqal’s quantum emulators and their 100 qubit neutral atom processor. It consists of three modules including an onboarding module to explain core concepts and present pre-recorded videos, an ability to adjust and run pre-determined algorithms on the quantum hardware and emulators, and help a user identify and prioritize potential use cases. It is designed to be the first level of interaction a user would have with Pasqal’s technology with a potential follow-on for users to work with Pasqal to develop proof-of-concept demonstrations of their applications and develop a roadmap for ultimately moving their applications to a commercial quantum advantage. The platform is currently under a limited release. For more information about it, you can view a press release available on their website here and to request a demo, you can fill out a form located here.
March 21, 2023 – News Brief
Strangeworks Closes $24 Million in Series A Funding
Strangeworks has received $24 million in a Series A investment round led by Hitachi Ventures, with additional investors IBM, and Raytheon Technologies (RTX Ventures) and follow-on investments from seed investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Great Point Ventures, and Ecliptic Capital. The company will be using the funds to expand its employee base as well as expanding their product efforts to additional areas including quantum-inspired, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence. Strangeworks has formed a syndicate of over 40 companies that they partner with to provide access to a large number of quantum, quantum-inspired, and software providers. They also provide a number of managed applications of their own and other sources. Their platform allows users to access resources, integrate workflows, measure results, and control quantum resources, spend, usage, and teams. Their goal is to removes the barriers to quantum with the most complete quantum ecosystem available, so that their customers can turn what if into what is. Additional information is available in a press release posted on their website here.
March 21, 2023
NVIDIA Partners with Quantum Machines to Provide a High Performance Classical/Quantum Hybrid Architecture
NVIDIA and Quantum Machines have introduced a new system called DGX Quantum that combines technologies from both companies for providing programming and control of a quantum processor. The Quantum Machines portion is the OPX+ Quantum Control Platform which provide the waveforms for controlling the qubits with the low level waveforms and measurement to operate the qubits. The NVIDIA portion will include a new Grace Hopper Superchip that couples a very high performance GPU (Hopper) with a very high performance CPU (Grace) on the same module. The system is expandable and multiple Grace Hopper Superchips can be connected to the OPX+ through the PCI bus. This module is connected by a very high speed PCI bus to the Quantum Machines OPX+ that can provide real time latencies of a few hundred nanoseconds. The system can be controlled with NVIDIA’s CUDA Quantum programming model, formerly called QODA which was introduced last year. Click here for more.
March 20, 2023 – News Brief
D-Wave Introduces a New Hybrid Solver Plug-in to Provide Feature Selection for Machine Learning Applications
The new plug-in for D-Wave’s Ocean™ SDK provides functionality to perform feature selection for machine learning (ML) workflows. It integrates with scikit-learn, a Python library that features various classification, regression and clustering algorithms. Feature selection is a process of determining the most important features of a model for use in model training and overall performance. AI applications are providing increasing value to businesses and D-Wave’s goal is to make the use of AI with their Leap hybrid cloud service easier and faster for end users. Additional information about this plug-in can be found in a news release announcing its introduction here and readers can access the code for the plug-in on a GitHub site here.
March 17, 2023 – News Brief
QC Ware and Roche Team Up to Use Quantum ML for Image Analysis to Detect Diabetic Retinopathy
QC Ware worked with the Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) group to use a quantum neural network architecture to scan retinal images to detect and diagnose the stage of diabetic retinopathy. The study was performed with up to six qubits on an IBM 27-qubit quantum processor along with classical simulations of the algorithms that used up to 100 qubits. The study indicated that the quantum algorithms would perform better than their classical counterparts because they required smaller models, were easier to train, and less resource intensive. Part of the advantage stems from the nature of the quantum algorithm which could analyze a data element from a more global context rather than a classical neural network which might focus only on its more local context. For additional details about this study, you can view a news release provided by QC Ware here and also the technical paper posted on arXiv here.
March 16, 2023 – News Brief
OVHCloud Purchases a Photonics Quantum Processor from Quandela
We had previously reported in June 2022, that OVHCloud, a leading European cloud provider, was partnering with Quandela to make available to its customers access to Quandela’s photonic quantum computer emulator called Percival. This would allow OVHCloud’s customer to start developing and subsequently emulate quantum programs that could eventually run on a future Quandela photonic quantum computer. OVHCloud has now gone to the next step and purchased a Quandela Mosaic processor so that customers can try out their programs on real hardware. The Mosaic is a modular and upgradeable platform which combines Quandela’s eDelight sources with active demultiplexing from their DMX modules to create an integrated circuits photonic processor that is fully reconfigurable and operates at room temperature. The Mosaic is upgradable and can support anywhere from 2 to 12 photonic qubits. The initial version being installed at OVHCloud will have 2 qubits, but is upgradable to higher capacities depending upon customer demand. For additional information, you can view a news release from OVHCloud announcing this purchase here.
March 16, 2023 – News Brief
MathWorks Introduces a MATLAB Support Package for Quantum Computing that Can Run Circuits on Amazon Braket
The MATLAB Support Package for Quantum Computing allows users to build, simulate, and run quantum algorithms for prototyping quantum programs. It will allow a user to input a quantum program and then do a local simulation to display the results and includes additional capabilities to plot a histogram, display state formulas, and query possible states. A key feature is that it will also allow a user to run their quantum circuit on one of the several quantum processors or high performance quantum simulators that are available on Amazon Braket for those who have an AWS account with access to Amazon Braket. For more information about this new package, you can view a web page for it here and also a page with instructions on how to set it up and use it here.
March 16, 2023
SEEQC Developing a Quantum Chip with a New Approach for the Control Electronics
SEEQC has developed a prototype quantum processor called the SEEQC System Red that is based upon superconducting qubits along with a cryogenic control chip based on SFQ (Single Flux Quantum) logic that is placed on the same multi-chip module as the superconducting qubit chip. This approach can potentially help solve two significant mechanical engineering issues, cable routing and excess heat generation, that make it challenge to scale up a processor to a large number of qubits. Click here for our full article covering this development.
March 15, 2023
UK National Quantum Technologies Program Unveiled with £2.5 Billion ($3M USD) in Funding
The UK National Quantum Technologies Programme has been a globally pioneering initiative in the quantum sector due to its scope and explicit focus on translating research into commercial applications. It has influenced many subsequent initiatives around the globe. As we approach the 10th anniversary of its conception, the UK’s push for science and innovation driven success is entering a new phase. The UK government has announced plans to spend £2.5B over a 10 year continuation of its quantum programme. In an increasingly geopolitical arena, GQI feels the UK is an attractive quantum partner and investment destination. GQI will have a detailed report of the UK quantum program available later this week. Click here for an Executive Summary of this report along with details on how you can obtain the full 38 page report.
March 14, 2023 – News Brief
Cisco Systems to Open a Quantum Research Lab in Santa Monica, California
The new Cisco Quantum Lab, part of the Cisco Research group will research in quantum technologies, optics, and photonics as part of their Emerging Tech and Incubation (ET&I) initiatives. The researchers at this facility will collaborate with universities on joint quantum research projects and also collaborate with Cisco’s business units as various projects move from a research to a product development and commercialization phase. Cisco’s announcement of the opening of this new quantum research lab can be accessed here on the Cisco website.
March 14, 2023 – News Brief
Oxford Quantum Circuits to Partner with Equinox Inc. and Install a Machine at an Equinox Data Center in Tokyo
Equinox Inc., is a leading internet connection and data center company headquartered in Redwood City, California with 2022 revenue of over $7 billion and over 12,000 employees. Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) develops superconducting based quantum processors that provides Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS) through their own private cloud, Amazon Web Services, and data centers such as one from Cyxtera. The companies will be partnering to install one of OQC’s processors at Equinix’s TY11 Tokyo International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center to provide worldwide access to Equinox’s customers via their Equinix Fabric® interconnection solution. The companies expect to complete the installation in late 2023. More information about this new partnership can be seen in a press release provided by Equinox available here.
March 14, 2023
SemiQon to Develop Affordable and Scalable Quantum Computers
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland just launched quantum computing spinout SemiQon with a mission to power the scale up of quantum computers with silicon-based quantum processors. This new quantum processor chip is made from silicon semiconductors versus a variety of non-standard materials. In this case, the use of easy-to-replicate silicon quantum dot-based technology provide both scalability and manufacturability, while functioning at warmer temperatures for greater operability and sustainability. According to SemiQon, this capability could enable quantum processors requiring millions of qubits for fault-tolerant operation. Click here for more.
March 11, 2023 – News Brief
AWS Tests Out Its First QKD Secured Network in Singapore
We reported in June of last year that Amazon Web Services (AWS) had created a fourth initiative related to quantum technology for research into quantum networks. They have completed their first demonstration which implemented a communications network secured by QKD (Quantum Key Distribution) keys between the Centre for Quantum Technologies and Horizon Quantum Computing that implements a VPN tunnel between the two locations. The communication used standard telecom fiber optic cable with a length of 16 kilometers (about 9.9 miles). In the diagram above, the yellow portions shows the quantum devices used to exchange the encryption keys which are then used for the encrypted message transmissions using a classical network shown in pink. The white boxes in the middle are Fortinet Firewall devices which help management the network and the areas in blue are the two computer hosts which the network ties together. Additional information about this test can be found in a blog posting on the AWS website here as well as a technical talk made at Q2B last December by Joe Fitzsimmons, CEO of Horizon Quantum Computing.
March 11, 2023 – News Brief
QUADRATURE Consortium Receives €4 Million ($4.2M USD) from the European Innovation Council to Research Distributed Quantum Cores
The QUADRATURE consortium is comprised of Equal1, Barcelona Supercomputer Center, Delft University of Technology, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Technical University of Catalunya, Technical University of Valencia (project coordinator), University College Dublin, University of Catania, and University of Siegen. They will research how to develop a massively scalable quantum computer by connecting multiple individual quantum processor through coherent quantum communication links. The funding will be provided by the European Innovation Council (EIC) through their EIC Pathfinder program. Additional information about this program is available in a press release provided by Equal1 located here.
March 9, 2023
Microsoft Introduces Integrated Hybrid Processing Feature for the Quantinuum Processor
It is well understood in the quantum industry that successful quantum programs will require the integration of classical and quantum processors. But there are different architectures on how this can be implemented. Microsoft has introduced a new feature in their Azure Quantum service called Integrated Hybrid Quantum Architecture that can take advantage of the mid-circuit measurement feature available on the Quantinuum family of processors. Click here for our full article that explains this feature and its benefits.
March 9, 2023 – News Brief
QuantWare Raises €6 Million ($6.3M USD) in Seed Funding
QuantWare, a Dutch provider of superconducting quantum processor chips, has received €6 million in seed funding in a round led by led by Forward.One with additional participation from the QDNL Participations Fund and Graduate Entrepreneur. The company, whose goal is to become the “Intel of quantum computing”, sells standalone quantum processor chips for organizations that want to build up their own quantum computer and achieve an acquisition cost which the company claims will be 1/10th of the price of buying a full quantum computer from one of the suppliers. They recently announced a 64 qubit QPU called Tenor. (See the QCR report on it here.) This new chip uses a QuantWare’s patented 3D architecture which may make it easier to scale future products to higher capacities. The company was also selected to provide processor chips for Israel’s first fully functional quantum computer. Additional information is available in a news release posted on the QuantWare website which can be accessed here.
March 8, 2023 – News Brief
Fujitsu Announces a $100,000 Quantum Simulator Challenge
Fujitsu has developed 39-qubit CPU-based state vector quantum simulator system consisting of 512 FX700 nodes with by using A64FX processors. The quantum simulator utilizes an enhanced version of “Qulacs,” one of the world’s fastest quantum simulator software developed by Osaka University and QunaSys Corporation. They have also prepared a software development kit (SDK) partially compatible with Qiskit, one of the major development tools for quantum computer software. Fujitsu is seeking users to utilize the simulator and provide them with feedback on performance and stability for real world applications. Prospective Participants must be a legal entity, such as a company or an institution and need to apply to become a Participant in this challenge. Participants will be selected based upon elected problem innovation, breadth of applicability and resulting customer impact. The challenge will run through June 30, 2023 and at its conclusion Fujitsu will award $50,000 for the first place entry, $30,000 for second place, and $20,000 for third place. For more information about this challenge and to learn how to apply to become a Participant, you can visit the web page for this Quantum Simulator Challenge here.
March 8, 2023 – News Brief
PsiQuantum Receives £9 Million ($10.6M USD) in Funding to Open an R&D Facility in the UK for Developing Advanced Cryogenic Technology
PsiQuantum has received a £9 million grant from the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to set up a research group at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Daresbury Laboratory to develop more advanced cryogenics that will increase PsiQuantum’s the cooling capability by a factor of 100. One of the benefits of this location is that it gives PsiQuantum access to one of Europe’s largest liquid-helium (approx. -270°C) cryogenic plants. Although much of PsiQuantum’s system may not require cooling, they do require it for their ultra-sensitive single photon detectors. The cooling apparatus will be using liquid helium which runs at a few degrees kelvin. While cold, it is not as cold as the millikelvin temperatures required for superconducting processors and the cooling apparatus will be much lower in cost than the dilution refrigerators that superconductors use. Additional information about PsiQuantum’s new research effort is available in a news release here.
March 8, 2023
U.S. Department of Energy Requesting Proposals for a $12 Million Quantum Testbed Pathfinder Program
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement for a Quantum Testbed Pathfinder program to fund research groups that will perform basic research investigations to improve understanding of whether, when, and how quantum computing might advance the frontiers of computational science. They will be funding multiple projects in this regard that are expected to be performed over a four year period. Click here for our full article that describes this funding opportunity in more detail.
March 3, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Delta NL Creates a €15 Million ($15.9M USD) Quantum Investment Fund for Startups Based in The Netherlands
As part of its efforts to create a thriving quantum industry in The Netherlands, Quantum Delta NL has create a new fund called the QDNL Participation Fund. Its goal will be to provide early funding to companies working to commercialize quantum research at Dutch universities including TU Delft; Eindhoven University of Technology; Leiden University; the University of Twente, and the University of Amsterdam. A typical investment for a new startup would be about €1.5 million. In addition, funding in the form of a convertible SAFE note of €50,000 will be available to research teams even before they have incorporated to get them going. Quantum Delta NL also offers a free service called Infinity that will advise university researchers on the process of spinning-out from the university and how to raise an initial seed funding round. For additional information, you can view a news release from Quantum Delta NL announcing the program here and also a website for the QDNL Partipation Fund with additional details about the program here.
March 2, 2023 – News Brief
UIUC, UT Austin, and Rutgers University Win a $5.8 Million Grant to Research Fluxonium Qubits and Modular Quantum Processor Architectures
The award was provided by the Army Research Office, a directorate of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory. The research will cover a four year period at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Rutgers University, and the University of Texas at Austin. The superconductor based fluxonium qubit is a newer approach than the superconductor based transmon qubit which combines features of flux and charge qubit circuits. Part of the research will look at how this qubit type along with multimode cavities can be optimized to achieve much higher coherence times and performance than the current transmons. The other part of this research will investigate how multiple multimode cavities connected by entangled fluxonium qubits can create a modular design that could potentially be scaled up rapidly to provide a large number of high quality qubits. Additional information about this award can be seen in a news release located here.
March 2, 2023
Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech, IQM and GMV Will Partner to Install a Quantum Computer at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre
Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech, IQM, and GMV are partnering to install two quantum processors at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) that will be integrated with the upcoming MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, slated one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. The timeline is to finish the installation of MareNostrum 5 by July of this year and install the infrastructure of the quantum process in Q3 of this year with completion by the end of the year. Click here for more about this project.
March 2, 2023
Who’s News: Management Updates at Infleqtion, Quantum Motion, Quantum Brilliance, QuSecure, planqc, and Quantum Exponential
Infleqtion has added a new President of Infleqtion Australia. Quantum Motion has added a VP of Product. Quantum Brilliance has a new Chief Revenue Officer, QuSecure and planqc have recruited an additional member of the respective Board of Directors, and Quantum Exponential has hired a Chief Operating and Strategy Officer. Click here for details on the additions to these companies’ management teams.
March 2, 2023
Quantum Brilliance Releases a Beta Version of Their Own Quantum SDK and Quantum Emulator
Quantum Brilliance has a slightly different vision of how quantum computers can be configure than other companies. They see the devices they are building as quantum accelerators that will be deeply integrated within an HPC data center rather than as standalone quantum mainframes. For this reason, they have developed their own software development kit called the Qristal SDK and a high performance emulator called Qristal Emulator. Click here for more information about these new software tools.
March 1, 2023
Q-CTRL Releases a New Version of Boulder Opal with More AI and Better Performance
Q-CTRL has released of the new version of the Boulder Opal quantum hardware optimization software to use more AI that can provide improved performance and automate more tasks. Click here for a full article that describes some of the key features in this new release.
February 28, 2023
Intel Releases Version 1.0 of their Quantum SDK
Last September we reported on Intel’s beta version release of a Quantum SDK for developing and simulating quantum programs. Now, they have released a version 1.0 of this software with some new features. Click here for our article that describes some of the new features in this release.
February 28, 2023 – News Brief
Aliro Quantum Chosen as the Controller for the EPB Quantum Network
We reported last December on how utility company EPB was setting up a commercial quantum network in the Chattanooga, Tennessee metropolitan area using quantum communication equipment provided by Qubitekk and others. The EPQ Quantum Network will be made available to government, industrial, academia, and others who wish to experiment with utilizing quantum communications for various applications. EPB has now chosen Aliro Quantum’s AliroNet™ software to provide the quantum network control capabilities. The software provides a network operator’s interface, to allow EPB operators to manage and monitor the physical quantum network infrastructure and enable end-users to define, validate, schedule, run and control EPB Quantum Network services. The software will also will be responsible for managing and scheduling access to the pooled quantum hardware resources, routing traffic across the quantum network, and executing the end-user service workflows. For more, you can view a press release that announces Aliro Quantum’s selection for this project here.
February 25, 2023 – News Brief
PASQAL Introduces a New Emulator to Simulate Neutral Atom Quantum Processors
The new emulator from PASQAL, called EMU-TN, that has been integrated into the PASQAL Cloud Service that will mimic the function of the PASQAL QPUs and allow for the estimation of resources needed for a particular algorithm. This emulator uses a simulation technique called Tensor Network simulation which can provide more efficient and larger simulation capabilities for certain simulations than the more common State Vector approach. The simulator can also simulate a PASQAL processor running in an analog mode which is a mode that isn’t supported by many other quantum processors which only support digital mode. This provides some interesting capability such as dynamically placing the qubits in a unique topology optimized for the particular problem rather than a fixed 2D grid or other fixed configuration. The simulator can also simulate the affects of noise in a processor so a user can take that into account. For more information about this new emulator, you can read a blog posting describing it here and also look at a technical pre-print paper that describes it here.
February 24, 2023 – News Brief
QuantLR Introduces Its LoQomo 1 QKD Product for Quantum Cybersecurity
The LoQomo 1 product is a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) solution intended for telecom operators, data center service providers, critical infrastructure facilities, and government institutions. QKD used the laws to quantum physics to send unbreakable messages that are provably unbreakable. Israeli-based QuantLR believes that ultimately, this will be the only means to ensure secure encryption key distribution because the classical software based PQC approaches cannot be proven to be completely secure and might eventually be broken in the future. A key strategy for the company is to provide the most cost-effective QKD solution amongst all the other choices in the market. For additional information about LoQomo 1, you can access a press releasing announcing the launch of the product here.
February 24, 2023
planqc Receives a Seven Figure Euro Investment from European Deep Tech Fund Amadeus Apex
Amadeus Apex was very recently formed by two venture capital firms, Amadeus Capital Partners and Apex Venture, specifically targeting early-stage start-ups in the deep-tech space. They have made a seven figure investment in planqc as one of their initial investments bringing planqc’s total funding to about €6 million ($6.3M USD) so far. The company had previous had a funding round of €4.6 Million ($4.82M USD) in June of 2022. In addition, Dr. Hermann Hauser, a co-founder and venture partner of Amadeus Capital has been added to planqc’s Board of Directors. Dr. Hauser has a long and successful track record in helping to set up and invest in deep tech startups including Acorn Computers and Arm, among others. Planqc is a company located in what is called the Munich Quantum Valley and was formed as a spin-out from the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. They are developing a quantum processor based upon neutral strontium atom technology. Additional information can be found in an announcement posted on the planqc website here.
February 24, 2023 – News Brief
QuantWare Introduces a 64 Qubit Superconducting Quantum Processor Chip
QuantWare is a supplier of components for those organizations that want to build up their own quantum processors. Their goal is to become the “Intel of Quantum Computing” and their customer base currently includes government labs, universities and others. The company indicates that customers who can build up a quantum processor using QuantWare’s technology and other purchased components can do so at one-tenth the cost of purchasing a complete system from a vendor. Their latest announcement is a 64 qubit superconducting chip call Tenor. To handle all the signal wires that would be needed to control these qubits, QuantWare has moved to a 3D fabrication technology that routes the signal wires vertically. Additional information about this chip can be found in a news announcement that you can access here. There is also a web page for the device which you can see here and a short video here.
February 23, 2023
Quantinuum Sets a New Record for Quantum Volume
Quantinuum has increased their previous Quantum Volume (QV) record of 8,192 by a factor of 4 and now has demonstrated a QV of 32,768 (215) on their H1-1 ion trap quantum processor. This would represent a quantum circuit of 15 qubits with a gate depth of 15. The QV measure was developed by IBM to come up with a quantum processor metric that combines not only qubit count, but also qubit quality and other factors. Although it is not the only metric out that has been proposed to measure the goodness of a processor, it is thoroughly specific and would be hard to game by creating special software or hardware specifically to look good on this metric. Click here for the rest of the article.
February 23, 2023 – News Brief
European Commission Grants €5.6 Million ($5.95M USD) to the QTIndu Project for Quantum Workforce Training
The project will be coordinated by QURECA SPAIN SL and will also include ten other academic, government, professional network, and industrial partners. In addition, two industrial consortia, the Quantum Valley Lower Saxony, and QuiC, the European Quantum Industry Consortium, will serve as advisors to the QTIndu project. The program will have the objectives of developing a nucleus of an end-to-end short-term training program in quantum technology for enterprises, developing tailored training programs specifically to the needs of companies in different business sectors, and providing a roadmap for scaling this to a wider scale in Europe. The Quantum Flagship program has developed a Quantum Technology Competence Framework and the QTIndu project will be aligned to this framework. The project also will be consistent with other initiatives of the Quantum Flagship including the QUCATS (Quantum Flagship’s Coordination and Support Action) and DigiQ (Digitally Enhanced Quantum Technology Master) efforts. Additional information about this project can be found in a news release posted on the Quantum Flagship website here.
February 21, 2023
Quantum Motion Receives £42 million ($50.5M USD) in Venture Funding for Continued Development of Their Spin Qubit Based Processors
The round was led by Bosch Ventures (RBVC) with additional participation from Porsche Automobil Holding SE (Porsche SE), British Patient Capital and existing investors from earlier rounds Oxford Science Enterprises, Inkef, Parkwalk Advisors, Octopus Ventures, IP Group and NSSIF. This investment is the largest single investment for a quantum company in the UK that we are aware of and brings the total amount invested in the company so far to around £62 ($75M USD). Click here for our full article about this new funding.
February 18, 2023 – News Brief
United States and The Netherlands Sign Joint Statement of Cooperation on Quantum Information Science and Technology
The statement of cooperation on quantum is similar to other agreements the United States has signed with the United Kingdom, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and France. The cooperation will include collaborating in venues including workshops, seminars & conferences, sharing research methodologies, infrastructure & data, collaboration amongst various institutions, building a global market & supply chain, workforce development & personnel exchange, pursuing ways to address relevant regulatory, standardization, & certifications, and promoting democratic values & equal opportunity. Both countries participate in the Entanglement Exchange program which helps to facilities exchanges of researchers, students, and professionals in the quantum field. A news release announcing the signing of the statement can be seen here and the statement itself is available here.
February 17, 2023
Toshiba’s SQBM+ Quantum-Inspired Optimizer is Now Available on AWS
A significant amount of the potential use cases for quantum computing lies in the area of optimization. And people are working on a large number of different technologies including pure quantum, hybrid quantum/classical, and quantum-inspired approaches to provide solutions to these problems. (You can obtain GQI’s recent report on Quantum Solver – Optimization to see a review of many of the different solutions currently available.) Toshiba has been working on a solution called SQBM+ which uses a classical software algorithm known as the Simulated Bifurcation Machine (SBM) developed by Toshiba to implement a solver for quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problems based on the Ising model. In June 2022, Toshiba made the SQBM+ available on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Platform and now they have also made it available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. Click here for more information about SQBM+ including some of its key features and availability.
February 16, 2023
D-Wave Adds Feature Enhancements, Access in Israel, and $20 Million Dollars
D-Wave made several announcements pertaining to its services and financial position. These including a new feature selection offering for training machine learning models, making access available to its Leap Cloud Service in Israel, work with external auditors to achieve SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, and $20 million in additional funding via a previously established Equity Line of Credit (ELOC). Click here for our full article describing these announcements in greater detail.
February 15, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Machines Introduces New Chip Carrier Package for Superconducting Quantum Processor Chips
Quantum Machines, an Israeli based provider of quantum control hardware and software, acquired Denmark based Qdevil last year. Qdevil develops and manufactures auxiliary electronics and specialized components for quantum processors. They have announced a new product from the Qdevil subsidiary which is a chip carrier called QCage.64 designed to provide a high amount of isolation from the external environment, yet good connectivity for control lines for superconducting processor chips. The aim is to help the chip minimize losses and maintain a longer coherence time because of the improved isolation. The carrier has a low-loss PCB with 64 embedded coplanar transmission lines and can handle superconducting chips with up to 30 qubits and also provides enclosure of the chip with EMC tight superconducting shielding with a flux biasing magnet inside the shielding. Additional information about this new product is available in a blog posting on the Quantum Machines website here and a product page for the QCage.64 carrier here.
February 15, 2023 – News Brief
memQ Receives Seed Funding of $2 Million
memQ has received seed funding from the lead investor Quantonation, Exposition Ventures, and the George Schultz Innovation Fund to develop of an on-chip quantum repeater built on the company’s solid-state platform for the quantum internet. A repeater is needed to send a quantum photon over a long distance over fiber optic cable and a key component for a quantum repeater is a quantum memory which can store a qubit’s state for an extended period of time. memQ is using a rare earth based (Erbium) technology with their silicon-on-insulator platform to create this quantum memory. The company is currently being incubated at Chicago’s Duality Quantum Accelerator. Additional information can be seen in a press release provided by memQ here.
February 15, 2023
SandboxAQ Raises $500 Million in a Series D Round
SandboxAQ initially was spun off from Alphabet Inc. (parent company of Google) in March of 2022. At that time, they disclosed that they had raised a 9 figure funding round, e.g. something above $100 million, from investors including T. Rowe Price, Eric Schmidt, Breyer Capital, Guggenheim Partners and Thomas Tull. We have learned that they continued to raise additional funds after the spin off and have closed their Series D round in December 2022 with a total of $500 million in funding. The company has not disclosed the names of any additional investors beyond the ones originally participating last year, but they did indicate that Alphabet is not a shareholder because SandboxAQ wanted to be able to work with other cloud providers that compete with Google. Click here for more.
February 15, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Brilliance Has Raised $18 Million USD in Funding to Further Develop Its Room Temperature NV-Diamond Quantum Accelerators
Quantum Brilliance is an Australian quantum hardware startup that is using Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) diamond to create qubits that have long coherence times, run at room temperature, have low power requirements, and can be miniaturized to fit into a 19 inch rack panel. Rather than saying they are developing a quantum computer, they are marketing their devices as quantum accelerators as devices that can be integrated into an HPC data center or used for edge computing. This new funding has come from investors including include Breakthrough Victoria, Main Sequence, Investible, Ultratech Capital Partners, MA Growth Ventures, Jelix Ventures, Rampersand and CM Equity Partners. The company will be using the funds for R&D, improve manufacturing, and expand its international operations beyond its current locations in Australia and Germany. The company previously raised about $11 million in previous rounds and in April 2022 established a the Research Hub for Diamond Quantum Materials in Victoria, Australia. They currently have a two qubit device available for integration testing and last year installed one of these devices at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth, Australia. Additional information about this funding can be found in a news release available here.
February 14, 2023 – News Brief
Quantinuum Has Recruited Rajeeb (Raj) Hazra as Its New CEO
Quantinuum has added to its management team by recruiting Rajeeb (Raj) Hazra to be its new CEO. Dr. Hazra has a strong background in supercomputing and high performance computing. Previously he was the Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Computing & Networking Business Unit at Micron Technology. Before that he spent almost 25 years in senior position at Intel Corporation with the last being the Senior Vice President & GM Enterprise & Government, Data Center Group. Quantinuum’s former CEO Ilyas Khan will remain with the company and will become Vice Chairman and Chief Product Officer. He will also remain on Quantinuum’s Board of Directors. A press release provided by Quantinuum announcing these changes can be accessed here.
February 13, 2023
Quantum Computing Inc.’s New Subsidiary Will Support NASA Climate Change Monitoring
Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) has established a news subsidiary called QI Solutions based in Arizona to market QCI solutions to government and defense organizations. This new subsidiary has already received their first award which is a subcontract from Science Systems Applications, Inc. (SSAI) to support NASA in testing a proprietary quantum photonic system for remote sensing. Click here for our full article covering these two developments.
February 12, 2023
Who’s News: Management Changes at Quantum Computing Inc. and Rigetti Computing
Quantum Computing Inc., is forming a new Technical Advisory Board and has appointed its first member. They have also added a new member to their Board of Directors. And Rigetti Computing has appointed both a new CFO as well as a new CTO. Click here for details on these management changes.
February 11, 2023
Classiq Academia Program Announced with Microsoft Azure as Its First Launch Partner
Classiq is launching its Classiq Academia program targeting for educational institutes providing courses or doing research on quantum programming. This program is currently free-of-charge and is intended to make it easier for researchers and students to start programming quantum computers at a higher level rather than at the low quantum assembly level so that they can focus on the application development. Once a program has been designed it can be submitted to Microsoft’s Azure Quantum system for using the Azure Quantum Resource Estimation Service, simulating the program, or running it on quantum hardware. The program is currently free, but you must have an academic email domain address to register and have a priority position on the waiting list. More information about this program and the collaboration between Microsoft and Classiq is available in a blog posted on Microsoft’s website here and a page on Classiq’s website that describes the Classiq Academia program here.
February 11, 2023
Quantum Xchange Launches a Partner Program
Quantum Xchange has launched a Phio Partner Program (P3) for managed connectivity providers, networking-as-a-service vendors, SD-WAN and VPN original equipment manufacturers (OEM), managed security service providers (MSSP), and other value-added resellers (VARs) servicing the network infrastructure market. These organizations will be able to offer the Phio TX solution to their own customers and these providers will be supported by Quantum Xchange with training, co-marketing programs, deal registration, discounts, and other programs that will help ensure the partner’s success. For the full article with additional details, click here.
February 10, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Bridge Wins $1 Million CAD ($748K USD) Contract from Innovative Solutions Canada for Trialing Quantum Bridge’s Quantum Resistant Security Products
Quantum Bridge has developed a encryption key distribution technology that they call Distributed Symmetric Key Exchange (DSKE) that provides for the distribution of symmetric encryption keys without the use asymmetrical algorithms like RSA or PQC. The technique relies on pre-shared random numbers between DSKE clients and a group of Security Hubs. Innovative Solutions Canada is a Government of Canada innovation program that provides funding to Canadian innovators. They will be testing two Quantum Bridge products that use this DSKE technique called Key Management Entity and Black Phone. The Key Management Entity uses DSKE to deliver keys to network hardware in any layer of the communications stack. Black Phone an application that uses pre-shared keys on mobile devices to protect and authenticate all the devices voice and data communication. Additional information about this contract is available in a news release available here. And additional information about Quantum Bridge’s DSKE technology is described in a preprint paper which can be accessed here.
February 9, 2023 – News Brief
BASF Joins the SEEQC-led QuPharma Project to Research Using Quantum for Simulating Chemical Reactions
Merck KGaA in Darmstadt, Germany is one of the world’s largest chemical companies and has an active quantum research efforts ongoing. They have partnered with several quantum companies already including a partnership with Multiverse to explore foreign exchange optimization and another one with Pasqal to look at the potential impacts of climate change. The QuPharma consortium was formed in 2021 with funding of a £6.8 million ($9M USD) from Innovate UK to build a commercially scalable application-specific quantum computer designed to tackle prohibitively high costs within pharmaceutical drug development. It is led by SEEQC with additional partners including Riverlane, Oxford Instruments, the University of Oxford, Medicines Discovery Catapult, and members from the Science and Technology Facilities Council, including the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre and the Hartree Centre. The specific problem that BASF will research with this group involves the quantum simulation of dissolved catalysts also known as homogeneous catalysis. Additional information about this new collaboration can be found in a press release provided by SEEQC which can be accessed here.
February 9, 2023 – News Brief
Terra Quantum Receives an Investment from Investcorp
Investcorp is a global private equity firm founded in Bahrain in 1982 with 510 employees and over $50 billion in Assets Under Management (AUM). Their investments range across a broad range of private equity, real estate, credit, and other areas. Last year they launched a global institutional blockchain fund from Abu Dhabi. They have invested an undisclosed amount in Terra Quantum. Terra Quantum has expertise in quantum security and quantum cryptography when can have uses for development of quantum resistant blockchain and other crypto algorithms. Besides providing Quantum Security as a Service which they consider as one of their core areas, they also participate in two other core areas including Quantum Algorithms as a Service and Quantum Computing as a Service. A news release from Terra Quantum announcing that Investcorp is a new investor is available here.
February 8, 2023 – News Brief
Indian State Government Signs MoU with Innogress to Set Up a Quantum Data Center in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
Innogress will work with partner GAN Tech. UK. to set up a quantum data center in Greater Noida. Noida is short for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority and is a satellite city of Delhi and is a part of the National Capital Region (NCR) of India. The data center will be called ‘IQDC’ standing for Indraprastha Quantum Data Center. It will join several other classical data centers that have been set up in the Noida/Greater Noida area. Innogress also has another project to set up a quantum technology park called the Greater Karnavati Quantum Computing Technology Park (GKQCTP) in the Gujarat state of India. That project is planned to host 10-15 firms working to develop various areas of quantum tech and will include facilities for materials processing, R&D, manufacturing, and other activities. Additional information about the MoU to construct the quantum data center is available in an article posted on the India Education Dairy website here.
February 7, 2023 – News Brief
Nanofiber Quantum Technologies Receives a Venture Investment of 200 Million Yen ($1.5M USD)
Nanofiber Quantum Technologies (NanoQT) is a quantum hardware startup located in Japan that is pursuing a technology of nanofiber-based Cavity QED (Quantum Electrodynamics) based upon research by Professor Takao Aoki of Waseda University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering. The funding came from Waseda University Ventures, a new fund set up last year that specializes in startup investments in the deep tech area based upon research created at universities and other research institutes. This investment was made last August, but was only made public recently. NanoGT’s Cavity QED (quantum electrodynamics) technology is a hybrid system of atoms and light. It can provide fully connected qubits and the company claims that it can be easily scaled to 10,000 qubits in a single cavity. In addition, they indicate that the nanofiber resonators can be coupled with optical fibers for communication with low loss to create a quantum network for additional scalability. Additional information about this investment is available in a blog posting on the Waseda University Ventures’ website here (in Japanese). Additional information about NanoQT and their technology can be seen on their website here.
February 6, 2023 – News Brief
Quantinuum Partners with Japan’s Cybertrust to Provide Hardened Private Keys for IoT Devices
Cybertrust has integrated the Quantum Origin quantum random number generator (QRNG) product from Quantinuum into their certificate issuance and distribution platform for use by IoT (Internet of Things) devices. Cybertrust is Japan’s first commercial certificate authority and will use this technology along with the NIST-selected post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms for the certificates that IoT devices use to authenticate their connection to other devices. The Quantum Origin product uses quantum mechanical principles to develop very strong non-deterministic random numbers that can be used as cryptography keys. It is a cloud-hosted platform that makes it easy for an end user to use and integrate with the rest of their cybersecurity platform. Additional details about this partnership can be found in a new release provided by Quantinuum which is located here.
February 3, 2023 – News Brief
OQC Raises About £869,000 ($1M USD) in Second Round Funding
This investment funding for Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) follows a £38 Million ($46M USD) Series A round that they raised last year. The investors include Quantum Exponential whose portion was £299,997 and also Japanese private equity firm HiJoJo Partners. The funds will be used by OQC for R&D and also to expand the company’s effort in Asia with a focus on Japan. OQC currently has available an 8 qubit processor named “Lucy” which uses their proprietary 3D Coaxmon technology and Lucy can be accessed through Amazon Braket or OQC’s own private quantum cloud. The company is also partnering with Cyxtera install one of OQC”s superconducting processors in Cyxtera’s Reading Data Center Campus LHR3. Additional information about this investment is available in a news release posted on the Quantum Exponential website here.
February 2, 2023 – News Brief
QIC, QED-C, Q-STAR and QuIC Form a Consortium of Quantum Consortiums
Several quantum industry consortiums have been established in the past few years to help promote the advancement of quantum technology within their country or geographic reason. Four of them have been meeting together informally for over a year and have now signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish the International Council of Quantum Industry Associations to have a more formal structure. The consortiums include Quantum Industry Canada (QIC) in Canada, the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) in the U.S., the Quantum Strategic industry Alliance for Revolution (Q-STAR) in Japan, and the Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC) in Europe. Each of the consortiums has similar individual goals to develop supply chains, open markets, exchange talent, develop international standards, protect intellectual property, and enhance access to funding. And by working together to collaborate on various projects and improve communications between them they can help each other become even more effective in achieving their goals. A press release announcing their signing of the MOU is available here.
February 1, 2023 – News Brief
SandboxAQ Wins an SBIR to Research Quantum Navigation Sensors
SandboxAQ has won a Direct-to-Phase-II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) from the U.S. Air Force to research and develop a quantum navigation sensor that can be used in GPS-denied environments. Phase II SBIR’s typically are awarded in amounts up to $1,000,000 and typically last 24 months. SandboxAQ has been working on ultra-sensitive magnetic sensors that could potentially detect minute changes in the earth’s magnetic field in different locations. By creating a map that records the magnetic fields ahead of time, an airplane flying over a particular area can later sense the field and compare it with the information on the map. This type of approach would not depend upon satellites and be resistant to jamming. There are other approaches to creating quantum based navigation including those based upon inertial navigation and precision timing devices. SandboxAQ will be leveraging its expertise in both AI and quantum technologies for this program. SandboxAQ’s announcement of this award can be accessed here and a page on their website that describes several of their quantum sensing activities can be seen here.
January 31, 2023 – News Brief
PsiQuantum, Atom Computing, and Microsoft Chosen for DARPA’s US2QC Program
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has initiated a new program called Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) to determine whether any underexplored and revolutionary approaches to quantum computing are capable of achieving utility-scale operation much faster than conventional predictions. The program is anticipated to be a five year program consisting of four phases. DARPA first posted a funding opportunity announcement seeking proposals for this program in February 2022. The goal will be to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer that can ultimately provide utility-scale quantum computing. They have selected PsiQuantum with their photonic based approach, Atom Computing with their neutral atom based approach, and Microsoft with their topological qubit approach to participate in this program. The first phase will be to have each company develop a design concept with subsequent phases to design, construct, and test system based upon the design concept to see if they can meet the utility-scale requirements. Additional information about the selection of these three companies is available in press releases from DARPA here, from PsiQuantum here, from Atom Computing here, and from Microsoft here.
January 31, 2023
Q-CTRL Raises $27.4 Million USD in Series B-1 Funding
Q-CTRL, a company developing quantum infrastructure software, received $27.4 million in B-1 funding bringing the total raised to date to $52 million. The company asserts that this is the largest fund raise of any quantum software company. Investors participating in this round include Salesforce Ventures, Alumni Ventures, ICM Allectus, Mindrock Capital, former General Dynamics Vice President Bill Lightfoot, global rugby legend John Eales and continuing investors Airbus Ventures, Data Collective, Horizons, Main Sequence Ventures, and Ridgeline Partners. Click here for more.
January 30, 2023 – News Brief
Shanghai Based TuringQ Receives Series A Investment of Hundreds of Millions Yuan
TuringQ is a quantum startup in Shanghai, China that is developing photonic based quantum processors and an associated quantum operating system. They were formed in February 2021. Although the specific amount of funding wasn’t made public, it was characterized to be in the hundreds of millions of yuan, which would likely equate to somewhere between $15 and $100 million USD. The investors included the China Internet Investment Fund, Tsinghua Holdings Capital, Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group, and Orient Securities. This round of funding follows earlier Pre-A+ funding rounds that totaled 500 million yuan ($73 million USD). The funds will be used to continue development of their full-stack products, build capacity for mass production of their chips, and promote commercialization of industry applications. The company has been working with several customers including the Bank of China and China Merchants Bank. Additional information about this funding is available in an article published by EqualOcean here.
January 28, 2023 – News Brief
U.S. Department of Energy Announces $9.1 Million in Funding for 13 Projects in Quantum Information Science (QIS) with Relevance to Nuclear Physics
The projects include development of next generation materials and architectures for superconducting qubits, solid state quantum simulators, quantum sensors, quantum optomechanical sensors for improving measurements of optical decay, and others. The projects can have a duration of up to three years and were selected through a competitive DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement titled Quantum Horizons: QIS Research and Innovation for Nuclear Science. A news release announcing the award funding is available on the DOE website here and a list of the awardees and their project can be seen here.
January 28, 2023 – News Brief
QuSecure Signs Agreement with Arrow Electronics to Distribute QuSecure’s QuProtect™ Quantum Cybersecurity Software
Arrow Electronics is one of the world’s largest distributors of electronic components and related services with over 20,000 employees and 2021 revenue of about $34.5 billion. They have over 220,000 commercial and federal channel partners and will work through these channels and QuSecure to distribute QuSecure’s QuProtect quantum security solution to help customers secure their IT systems from quantum attacks on their encrypted communications. They will be the first large technology distributor to broadly offer a PQC (Post Quantum Security) solution. More information about QuSecure and their agreement with Arrow can be found in a press release available here.
January 27, 2023
Crédit Agricole CIB, Multiverse, and Pasqal Partner to Explore Potential QC Applications in Finance
Crédit Agricole CIB is the corporate and investment banking arm of Credit Agricole Group based in Paris, France with over 8900 employees worldwide. They have been investigating potential finance use cases for quantum computing and have been working over the past year and a half with Multiverse Computing and Pasqal on two different ones. The goal was to develop Proof-of-Concept implementations using the currently available quantum processors with about 50 qubits and then scale the implementations up for production use when larger processors with roughly 300 qubits are available in the next one to two years. Click here for details on the two use cases they investigated and an assessment on how they might be able to provide a quantum advantage for the bank in the near future.
January 27, 2023 – News Brief
Multiverse Computing and IBM Partner with PINQ2 to Accelerate Quantum Computing Efforts in Quebec
Platform for Digital and Quantum Innovation (PINQ2) is a non-profit organization initiated by the University of Sherbrooke and the Canadian Ministry of Economy and Innovation to provide companies in Quebec, Canada with technical expertise and IT infrastructure to accelerate their digital transformation. They will be working as part of the Quantum Sherbrooke Innovation Zone to develop an innovation ecosystem around quantum technologies which will include installation of both classical and quantum computers within their infrastructure. This will include a 127 qubit IBM System One quantum processor which will be installed at an IBM facility in Bromont, Quebec, Canada, about 50 miles West of Sherbrooke. Multiverse Computing will partner with them by contributing to the PINQ² platform as part of customer projects and providing technical training on Multiverse products and solutions. Additional information about Multiverse’s partnership is available in a news release provided by Multiverse here and information about IBM’s first quantum system System One installation in Canada can be found in a news release here.
January 26, 2023
Infleqtion Collaborates with World View to Show How Quantum Can Be Used Not in the Cloud, but Rather Above the Clouds
Infleqtion is teaming up with World View to understand how Infleqtion’s quantum based sensors could be used in such an environment. They will be working together to demonstrate how Infleqtion’s cold atom based quantum sensor products, such as their precision timing and ultrasensitive RF sensors, can be used in applications for the defense and commercial markets. The aim of these initial tests is to demonstrate the usefulness of using the two companies’ technologies together so that they can convince prospective customers to look at using the quantum sensor and stratospheric balloon technologies together to provide advantages in a customer’s commercial application. Click here for our full article with additional information about this collaboration.
January 26, 2023 – News Brief
University of Sussex to Offer an Online Masters in Quantum Technology Applications and Management
The University of Sussex will start offering an online Masters in Quantum Technology Applications and Management which will be the first fully online version available in the UK and possibly worldwide. The program will combine scientific theory with practical business skills and is aimed at professionals who are looking to advance their scientific knowledge to conduct research, commercialize a quantum technologies and set up or manage a quantum division within their company, or to develop their quantum literacy to more effectively support colleagues in quantum-focused roles. The first course will start teaching in May 2023 with subsequent entry points in January, March, May, July, September, and November each year. The full course would consist of three carousels consisting of eleven different modules including a final project. It would be completed within a 2 to 4 year time period and have a tuition cost of £12,240 (about $15,100 USD). The program also offers other pathways that would consist of fewer modules, provide a certificate of completion instead of a full Masters degree, and be less costly. Applications are now open and additional information is available in a press release here and a web page with the course details here.
January 24, 2023 – News Brief
Chalmers University Receives 102 Million Swedish Krona ($10M USD) to Make Available a Quantum Computer for Swedish Industry
The Wallenberg Centre for Quantum Technology (WACQT) at Chalmers University has developed a 25 qubit quantum processor which they are using and experimenting with internally. However, it is not available for use by external users in industry because the Chalmers researchers are constantly working with it. To solve this problem, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation will be providing Chalmers with a grant of 102 Million Krona to build a second processor and make it available to other users in Sweden over the cloud. The purpose of this second processor will be to serve as a test bed and raise Sweden’s competence level in quantum technology and also to provide a significantly cheaper way for Swedish users to access a quantum processor than other alternatives. The funding will also be used to establish a Quantum Helpdesk to support users. A test bed for testing components will be ready in 2024 with cloud access for running algorithms scheduled for 2025. The initial machine will have 25 qubits but the plan will be to upgrade it to 40 qubits in a few years. A news release announcing this new project has been posted on the Chalmers University website here.
January 24, 2023
PASQAL Receives a €100 Million ($108M USD) Series B Funding Round
PASQAL, a leading French-based quantum hardware providers developing quantum processors based upon neutral atom technology, raised €100 million in Series B funding to bring the total amount raised so far to about €125 million. The round was led by new investor Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore with additional participation from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Wa’ed Ventures and Bpifrance, through its Large Venture Fund, and continuing investors Quantonation, the Defense Innovation Fund, Daphni and Eni Next. This investment is the largest private quantum fund raise that has occurred in Europe so far. Click here for more.
January 23, 2023 – News Brief
Welinq Receives a €5 Million ($5.4M USD) Pre-Seed Round Funding
Welinq is a Paris, France based startup founded in 2020 that is developing quantum memory technology which would be critical for extending the range of a quantum communications network and could also be used in connecting multiple quantum computers together for scaling up quantum computing. Their product is based upon a laser-cooled neutral-atom technology which allows them to achieve high qubit fidelities. The funding round was led by Quantonation with additional participation from Luxembourg-based Runa Capital and support from the Paris Region, the French National Quantum Initiative, the French Banque Publique d’Investissement (BPI), and the European Commission. Additional information is available in a news posting on the Quantonaton website that can be accessed here.
January 23, 2023 – News Brief
Xanadu Receives $40 Million CAD ($29.8M USD) from the Canadian Government’s Strategic Innovation Fund
Announced during a visit to Xanadu by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the investment will help the company build and commercialize a photonic-based, fault-tolerant quantum computer. The investment is part of the Canadian Quantum Strategy that we reported on earlier this month. Almost half of the $360 million CAD budgeted for that program is intended for commercialization. Additional information about this Xanadu investment can be found in a press release posted on the website of the Canadian Prime Minister here.
January 21, 2023 – News Brief
QuSecure Introduces QuEverywhere, a Quantum-safe Orchestration Solution
QuEverywhere is an end-to-end feature of the QuProtect software solution from QuSecure that is designed to provide quantum resilient connections without any user installations. It would be particularly handy for mobile or IOT installations where doing a software upgrade on all the devices in an enterprise could be particularly laborious. The solution utilizes PQC (Post Quantum Cryptography) algorithms which are compliant with NIST’s latest recommendations and the solution is also designed to be crypto-agile so that the algorithms can be upgraded in the future if better ones are needed. QuSecure indicated that Swiss based VeroWay, a company that delivers high-performance, blockchain powered core banking solutions, is a recent customer that currently services 15 million users and they will be leveraging QuSecure’ solutions to protect their communications of digital asset storage and transaction. Additional information about QuSecure’s announcement of QuEverywhere is available in a news release posted on their website here.
January 20, 2023
Who’s News: Management Changes at QC Ware and Quix Quantum
QC Ware has added a new Director of Marketing. Quix Quantum has appointed a new Chairman of their Supervisory Board and promoted two individuals to Chief Technology Officer and Chief Science Officer roles. Click here for more details on these changes.
January 20, 2023 – News Brief
IonQ to Open a 65,000 Square Foot Manufacturing Facility in Washington State
IonQ previously mentioned a plan to establish a manufacturing facility in the Seattle area in their Q2 Earning Release and conference call and they have now announced it will be located in a 65,000 square foot (about 6,000 square meter) facility in Bothell, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. This facility will become IonQ’s primary production engineering facility and will also house the company’s second data center. This location makes a lot of sense for IonQ since their machines are already available on the cloud services of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google which also have facilities in the area. IonQ is also working with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), also located in Washington state, to develop a sustainable, perpetual source of barium qubits which will be used in IonQ’s next generation quantum processors. There is also a good potential talent pool available from nearby universities including the University of Washington, Washington State University, and the Westerm Washington University. In addition, their is a vibrant high tech and photonics industry based in the Pacific Northwest that could be helpful to IonQ’s efforts in the future. Additional information about IonQ’s plans for this facility can be seen in a press release available here.
January 19, 2023 – News Brief
Quside Receives Venture Investment from German Firm TRUMPF Ventures
Although the exact amount of the investment from TRUMPF Ventures was not specified, it is said to be in the single-digit millions of euros. Quside is a startup located near Barcelona, Spain and founded in 2018 as a spinout from ICFO. They provide very high speed quantum random number generators (QRNG) with performance in the Gb/second range. Their devices are used to create highly random number streams for use in encryption and certain simulation applications. The devices provide random numbers with high entropy since they are based upon quantum mechanical properties and they are also low in power because they are built with photonic integrated circuit technology. In some applications the energy consumption can be as much as 20X lower. A news release provided by TRUMPF Ventures announcing this investment can be accessed here.
January 18, 2023 – News Brief
Quantum Machines Receives Another $20 Million in Venture Funding and Continues to Grow Their Customer Base
Quantum Machines has disclosed they have received another $20 million in funding late last year. This funding was added to the $50 million Series B funding that the company originally announced in 2021 and it brings total company funding to $100 million. The company is not disclosing the names of the investors for these additional funds, but did indicate that it includes both new and existing investors. The company also announced they are now serving 280 customers worldwide and had substantial revenue growth in 2022 with sources indicating that it exceeded $10 million. The company now has 140 employees including the personnel at QDevil, a company they acquired last year. The company also announced in 2022 a project to lead the establishment of the Israel Quantum Computing Center and partnerships with Toyota Tsusho, the European EuRyQa project, and others. Additional information about Quantum Machines venture funding and other recent developments are available in a press release that can be accessed here.
January 18, 2023 – News Brief
Xanadu and Rolls Royce Collaborate to Add New Functionality to Xanadu’s Pennylane Software
Pennylane is a Python-based open-source software framework that provides algorithm libraries for applications including quantum machine learning, quantum chemistry, and quantum computing. It is hardware agnostic and supports many different quantum hardware backends. Xanadu and Rolls-Royce will be working together to develop new functionality that supports a new algorithm for Pennylane called the Quantum Singular Value Transformation (QSVT). This algorithm may be useful for a number of important potential aerospace quantum computing applications including materials chemistry and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This is the second such partnership related to quantum software that Rolls-Royce has been involved in. Last October, software company Classiq announced that they were working with Rolls-Royce on leveraging the quantum HHL algorithm to solve a linear set of equations that are used in hybrid classical/quantum implementation of CFD. Additional information about the collaboration between Xanadu and Rolls-Royce can be found in a press release provided by Xanadu located here.
January 17, 2023
D-Wave Announces Continued Technical Progress and Customer Traction at Its Annual Qubits 2023 Conference
At its annual Qubits 2023 conference being held in Miami, Florida, D-Wave Quantum Inc. announced continued progress on its Clarity product roadmap as well as continued progress with customers developing solutions that can run on their quantum annealer. Click here for our full article summarizing some of the highlights.
January 16, 2023 – News Brief
Qrypt and Megaport Demonstrate Quantum Secure Communications Using Qrypt Key Generation Technology
Megaport is a global digital networking company that provides a Network as a Service (NaaS) platform. They connect about 795 data centers worldwide including major cloud services from AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and many others. Qrypt is a startup developing quantum secure solutions using its own technology based upon never directly transmitting keys and ensuring that all keys are completely random using Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNG) to ensure complete entropy. Their approach to providing quantum secure communications is different from some of the others since they do not use the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and their approach is based upon the generation of identical symmetric keys at multiple endpoints, without ever needing to distribute that key over the wire. For an end user, the Qrypt solution is available as a software download and does not require the installation of any additional hardware. The demonstration included file sharing applications using Qrypt’s solution between several global data centers, including AWS in San Francisco, Azure US East in Virginia, and Google Cloud in Tokyo. This quantum secure communications capability is now available to be used with any type of data as an option for Megaport’s customers. Additional information about this is available in a news release provided by Qrypt which can be accessed here.
January 16, 2023 – News Brief
Australian New South Wales Government to Provide $7 Million AUD ($4.6M USD) in Funds for Quantum Commercialization
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 funds would need to be eventually paid back. The applications will be awarded on a competitive basis with an application deadline of 10 AM (AEDT) on February 2, 2023. The successful applications will be announced later in February, March, and April. Additional information about this award program is available on the website of the NSF Chief Scientist & Engineer and can be viewed here.
January 13, 2023 – News Brief
Canadian Government Unveils Quantum Strategy with $360 Million CAD ($269M USD) in Funding
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 Dr. Stephanie Simmons, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Canada Research Chair in Silicon Quantum Technologies at Simon Fraser University and founder and Chief Quantum Officer of Photonic Inc. serving as co-chairs. The Government of Canada has already invested $1 billion CAD $745M USD) since 2012 to support quantum research and this new program will help to continue to the momentum and several efforts and funding grants are already underway. Additional information can be found in a news release provided by the Canadian Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry that can be seen here and also a video of the program announcement event held at the Perimeter Institute here.
January 12, 2023
IBM Announces Third Annual Open Science Prize Contest with $50,000 in Prizes
Every year, IBM announces a quantum programming challenge and awards prizes to those who can solve it best. This year’s problem asks participants to prepare the ground state of a Heisenberg spin-1/2 Hamiltonian on a kagome lattice using IBM Quantum’s 16-qubit ibmq_guadalupe system. The deadline for submitting an answer is April 15, 2023 and the winner will receive a prize of $30,000 and the runner up will receive $20,000. For more, click on the full article here.
January 12, 2023
Deloitte’s Quantum Climate Challenge 2023
Deloitte is holding a quantum climate challenge that seeks to have participants use quantum computers to simulate materials that filter carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to help reach the 2°C temperature rise goal for minimizing the affects of global warming. They will be awarding a total of 12000 Euros ($12900 USD) to the top five finalists who submit solutions. Click here for our full article with more information about this challenge .
January 11, 2023 – News Brief
Xanadu Partners with the Korean Institute of Science and Technology
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 this project. In turn, KIST will help Xanadu leverage South Korea’s industrial infrastructure and manufacturing expertise to help the development of quantum processor hardware. A press release provided by Xanadu announcing this partnership is available here.
January 11, 2023 – News Brief
Fujitsu to Supply CESGA with a €14 Million ($15M USD) Quantum Computer
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 Galicia set up with €30 million ($32.2M USD) in funding that will be active in five area academia; research, technology and singular entities; the economy and enterprises; society; and infrastructure and help establish Galicia as a key hub for quantum activity in Europe. Additional information is available in a news release (in Spanish) provided by CESGA here.
January 11, 2023
Duality Quantum Accelerator Now Taking Applications for Cohort 3
Duality is now accepting applications for Cohort 3 which will start on July 17, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. They are a quantum accelerator led by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago and the Chicago Quantum Exchange which provides 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. Click here for our full article with more details about this program and information on how to apply.
January 10, 2023
IonQ Acquires Assets of Entangled Networks
Entangled Networks is a Canadian startup company started in February 2021 that specializes in developing hardware and software solutions for connecting multiple quantum processors within a data center to create a larger system. The Quantum Computing Report just posted a podcast last month with two of the founders of this company that provides greater insight into their plans. This fits in well with IonQ’s technical strategy because they have long planned to scale their quantum computers using a modular quantum computing approach. Click here for the rest of the article.
January 9, 2023 – News Brief
Oxford Ionics Picks Up a £30 Million ($36.6M USD) Series A Venture Round
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 so they have a solid partner for that. Leading the round was Oxford Science Enterprises and Braavos Investment Advisers with additional participation from Lansdowne Partners, Prosus Ventures, 2xN, Torch Partners and Hermann Hauser. The company currently has 10 PhDs on staff and will be using the funds to expand their staff to continue developing their technology. You can access Oxford Ionics press release announcing this funding here.
January 7, 2023
New Product Releases: Pasqal’s Pulser Studio, IBM’s Sherbrooke Processor, and Google Cirq v1.1.0
Several interesting new product releases were made over the past few weeks including Pasqal’s Pulser Studio no-code development platform, IBM’s 127 qubit Sherbrooke processor, and a new release of Cirq version 1.1.0. Click here for additional information about these new releases.
January 7, 2023 – News Brief
European Union Authorizes €19 Million ($20.2M USD) Specific Grant Agreement (SGA) for Pilot Quantum Fabrication Infrastructures
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 Euros with the other participants receiving the rest. The program is scheduled to begin on March 1, 2023. More information about it can be found in a news release located on the VTT website which can be accessed here.
January 6, 2023 – News Brief
D-Wave and Davidson Technologies Announce a Multi-Year Reseller Agreement
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 contacts should be able to help D-Wave expand its business in this area for certain use cases important to this sector such as supply chain optimization, logistics management, weapon system optimization, and vehicle routing. Additional details are available in a press release posted on the D-Wave website here.
January 3, 2023
Quantum Delta NL and NWO (Dutch Research Council) Award €5.3 Million ($5.6M USD) to Sixteen Dutch Quantum Research Projects
These 2022 awards were made by Quantum Delta NL in collaboration with the NWO (Dutch Research Council). It is part of an overall Dutch government budget of €42 million ($44.3M USD) for scientific research and innovation over a seven year period. There will be a similar call for awards in 2023 with additional projects selected for funding at that time. Click here for a listing of the projects being funded.
January 3, 2023 – News Brief
The Netherlands, France, and Germany Sign Statement to Cooperate on Quantum Technology
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 1, 2023 – News Brief
Israel Innovation Authority Providing 115 Million NIS ($32.6M USD) for Developing Israeli QC Technology
The funding of 115 million New Israeli Shekels (NIS) is being provided by the Israeli Innovation Authority to five Israeli companies including IAI Group’s Elta Systems division, Quantum Art, Classiq, Qedma, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The consortium will also receive additional support from academic researchers in Israel. The three year program will pursue developing of two different quantum processors, one based upon superconducting technology and the other based upon ion trap technology with sizes in the dozens of qubits. Additional information about this award can be found in a news article in the Israeli website Calcalist available here.