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 2021 click here, for 2020 click here, for 2019 click here, for 2018 click here, and for items published in 2015-2017, click here.
November 17, 2022
Algorithmiq Launches Aurora, a Drug Discovery Platform and Will Work with IBM on Drug Discovery Applications
Algorithmiq, a Helsinki, Finland, based quantum software startup, has announced a new software platform for drug discovery called Aurora. They have also announced that they have joined the IBM Quantum Network and will work with IBM to research improved drug discovery algorithms on IBM’s hardware. Click here for our article that covers both of these announcements.
November 16, 2022 – News Brief
Quandela Announces a European Quantum Cloud Service
In what it says is the first quantum cloud service in Europe, Quandela has announced that it has now made available an initial system with 5 photonic qubits for experimentation. The system can be programmed with Quandela’s Percival development toolkit which also supports Quandela’s photonic simulator allowing a user to simulate a program before running it on the real machine. The company plans on upgrading the system to reach 12 qubits by the end of 2023. The service was tested out recently in a quantum hackathon at the Sorbonne which had over 60 researchers and students participating. A user can try out the system for free by visiting Quandela’s Quantum Cloud web page located here. For more information, you can access a press release provided by Quandela which can be accessed here.
November 16, 2022
Microsoft Introduces a Quantum Resource Estimator Tool
One of the questions that a quantum algorithm developer wants to have answered is “How many qubits will I need to execute this program and many seconds (or hours) of runtime will I need to do it?”. This can be tricky, particularly when the currently available quantum processors are not large enough to execute the program in the first place. However, the developers know that quantum processors are constantly improving and in many cases it makes sense to develop something that will run on a quantum processor that may be available a few years from now. To help answer these questions, Microsoft has introduced a tool called a Quantum Hardware Resource Estimator that can give insight to both quantum algorithm designers and quantum hardware engineers on how many resources will be required in a quantum platform to run an algorithm that can provide quantum advantage. Read our full write-up of this new tool here.
November 14, 2022 – News Brief
German Government Funding Construction of a German Quantum Cloud Service for German Industry
The German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (in German: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz or BMWK) will be spending tens of millions of euros to support a three year program to construct a quantum cloud service. Organizations involved in this effort include QMWare, cloud specialist IONOS, the University of Stuttgart, and the Fraunhofer FOKUS research institute. This is one of many quantum computing programs that the BMWK is funding and they are expected to spend a total of 740 Million euros overall. Once this quantum cloud has been put in place, various end users will test out applications in application areas including telecommunications, logistics, finance, automotive and energy. Additional information can be found in a press release available here.
November 14, 2022
Dell Technologies Partners with IonQ to Provide Hybrid Classical/Quantum Solutions
Dell Technologies has introduced new software called the Qiskit Dell Runtime that runs on their PowerEdge classical servers to provide a hybrid/classical quantum solution. This development is an extension of a capability that we reported on a year ago where Dell had interfaced their quantum software with IonQ’s quantum simulator which they called vQPU software. The biggest change with this year’s announcement is that the software can now interface with IonQ real Aria processor over the internet. Click here for more.
November 14, 2022 – News Brief
IonQ Announces their Third Quarter Financial Results
IonQ announced their third quarter financial results and indicated they are on-track for meeting their previous full year 2022 estimates for both revenue and bookings. The revenue in Q3 was $2.8 million, up from the previous $2.6 million they reported in Q2. Bookings in Q3 were $16.4 million which includes the $13.4 million dollar contract that we reported on in September. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $13.4 million which is an increase from Q2’s $11.6 million. And cash, cash equivalents, and investment at the end of the quarter was $555.8 million, a decrease from $571.3 million at the end of Q2. In other news, the company announced that it has improved the performance of their Aria processor from #AQ 23 to #AQ 25 Algorithmic Qubits (AQ) . The AQ performance benchmark is used internally by IonQ for measuring their performance, but has not yet been picked up by any other hardware manufacturer so it is hard to make comparisons. The company also announced a partnership with Dell Technologies to offer end users a hybrid quantum platform based upon Dell PowerEdge servers along with Dell software that can integrate with and utilize IonQ’s quantum computers for hybrid classical/quantum computations. Additional information about IonQ’s third quarter results can be seen in their earning announcement located here.
November 11, 2022
Who’s News: Management Changes at Rigetti, ColdQuanta, Q-CTRL, Diraq, and the UK’s NQCC
There are several management changes announced in the past few weeks. Rigetti will have a change of CEO. ColdQuanta has appointed new Vice Presidents of Quantum Development, Goverment Programs, Sales & Business Development for Quantum Information Platforms. ColdQuanta has also appointed a new Chief Technology Office and added a new Board member. Q-CTRL has announced a Head of Marketing and a Head of Finance. Diraq has announced a new non-executive Director and Chairman. And finally, the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) has appointed a Chief Scientist. Click here for our report on all these management changes.
November 10, 2022
D-Wave Announces Q3 Earnings Showing Continued Growth
D-Wave announced earnings showing $1.7 million of revenue in Q3 and described other advancements at the company on the product, technology customer, and commercial fronts. Click here for our report on their latest earning announcement.
November 10, 2022 – News Brief
Xanadu Raises $100 Million USD in Series C Venture Financing
Xanadu’s Series C financing follows a Series B venture investment in May 2021 that was also for $100 million bringing the total amount invested so far to $250 million with a company valuation of $1 billion. The round was led by Georgian with additional participation from Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Forward Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, and previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Capricorn, BDC Capital, and Tim Draper. The funding will be used to help advance the company’s progress towards their goal of building a fault-tolerant and error-corrected quantum computer that can scale up to one million qubits. A near term goal in this effort will be to build an initial module validating Xanadu’s fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture. Additional information is available in a press release from Xanadu which can be accessed here.
November 9, 2022
IBM Announces 433 Qubit Osprey Processor, Several Additional Advancements, and a 100×100 Challenge
At its annual IBM Quantum Summit today, IBM made several announcements of new advancements in its quantum technology and their quantum network. These include announcement of the 433 Osprey processor, several new software capabilities, an update on IBM Quantum System Two, and a new 100×100 challenge (100 qubits with 100 levels) they intend to demonstrate by 2024. Some of these had been previously mentioned in roadmaps, technical papers, press releases and other venues, but more details on these have been provided today. Click here for our full writeup about these announcements.
November 4, 2022 – News Brief
Quix Quantum Opens an Office in Amsterdam
Quix Quantum, a startup developing photonic quantum processors formed in 2019, announced the opening of a new office in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This new office complements their original office in Enschede, Netherlands near the University of Twente and another office in Ulm, Germany working on DLR’s Quantum Computing Initiative. A key motivation for the company is to make it easier to establish strategic relationships and access talent at other organizations in the Amsterdam area working on quantum technology including QuSoft, The University of Amsterdam, the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, and Quantum.Amsterdam. For more, you can view a news release from Quix announcing the opening that you can see here.
November 3, 2022 – News Brief
Quandela Partners with French Energy Company EDF for Simulating Hydroelectric Dam Structures
The companies will research using Quandela’s photonic quantum computers to perform numerical simulations of hydroelectric dam deformation. The goal is the improve the accuracy and speed of these calculations while reducing energy consumption. This will leverage Quandela’s expertise in using quantum approaches to solve differential equations and developing algorithms. EDF is a very large French state-owned energy company with sales of €84.5 billion ($83B USD) in 2021 and over 150,000 employees. They have been active in investigated uses of quantum technology since 2018, one of the first French companies to do so. Quandela, founded in 2017 and located near Paris, France, is developing quantum photonic processors and has also create its own photonic computer programming and simulation software package called Perceval. Additional information about this partnership is available in a news release posted on the Quandela website here.
November 3, 2022
D-Wave Introduces New Features in Its Constrained Quadratic Model (CQM) Hybrid Solver
D-Wave has been providing a tool for some time that they call a Solver that can allow an end user to specific a problem at a higher level of abstraction and then have the software automatically reformulate the problem so it can run on the physical machine. They have been regularly been improving this tool with new features over the past few years. Now D-Wave has introduced addition new features in their Constrained Quadratic Model (CQM) Hybrid Solver that provides for specifying weighted constraints and for implementing a presolver that runs on a classical computer to reduce the size and simplify the model before it is sent to the quantum annealer. Click here for our full article that reports on these features.
November 2, 2022
Universal Quantum’s Portion of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Awards Amount to €67 Million ($66M USD)
Last week we reported that the German Aerospace Center (DLR) had awarded €208.5 Million ($208M USD) in contracts for five different projects related to ion trap based quantum computers. Universal Quantum has just issued a press release with additional details about their portion of the program which indicates their portion will amount to €67 Million or about 32% of the total. Their activity will consist of two sub-projects. The first is to build a single chip quantum computer and the second one will be to connect two or more of these chips together to create a multi-chip quantum computer with 100 qubits. These projects will occur over a four year period. Click here for more.
November 2, 2022 – News Brief
eleQtron Receives New Venture Capital Funding
eleQtron, based in Siegen, Germany, is developing an ion trap quantum processor based upon a concept they call MAGIC (Magnetic Gradient Induced Coupling). They received some additional funding from venture organizations Earlybird and Siegerlandfonds. As we reported last week, they are also participating in a program sponsored by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to research how to network individual chips to create a universal quantum computing architecture. It is reported that the total amount of new funds the company will receive will total €50 Million ($50M USD). However, it is not fully clear whether all of this amount will come from the venture capital investments or whether this number also includes funding from the DLR project. Additional information is available in an article posted at Tech.eu that can be accessed here.
November 1, 2022
ColdQuanta Lands $110 Million in Series B Funding
ColdQuanta, a quantum startup headquartered in Boulder, Colorado with additional offices in Chicago, Illinois, Madison, Wisconsin, and Oxford, UK has received a $110 million Series B funding to advance and commercialize its technology. The funding round was led by LCP Quantum with additional participation from In-Q-Tel, Sumitomo Corporation of America, Breakthrough Victoria, BOKA Group Holdings I LP and existing investors Foundry Group, Global Frontier Investments, Maverick Ventures and others. Click here for more.
November 1, 2022
QuEra Launches Their 256 Qubit Analog Quantum Processor on AWS
QuEra is now making their 256 qubit analog quantum processor, named Aquila, available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The companies had announced their intent on doing this last November. This would be one of the first neutral atom based processors available via one of the public cloud vendors. It will be available for ten hours per week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The processor can be programmed with the AWS Braket SDK, and soon QuEra’s own Bloqade software platform based upon the Julia programming language will also support Aquila. Click here for the rest of the article.
October 31, 2022
Zapata Enters the Quantum Cybersecurity Market
Zapata has introduced a new service offering to help customers achieve quantum resilience. Their Quantum Resilience Solution consists of three parts: Assessment, Testing, and Verification which will help customers prepare and validate their quantum resistant activities. Note that Zapata won’t actually implement the code upgrades themselves, but they will partner with consultants, the end user, or other IT service providers who may be more familiar with the end users’ classical computing infrastructure. But the services provided by Zapata could be a big help to those implementers. Click here to learn more about the background behind this new offering.
October 29, 2022 – News Brief
Quantum World Congress is Holding a $25,000 Quantum Startup Pitch Competition
The Quantum World Congress is holding a pitch competition for startup or emerging company that’s utilizing quantum science and technology to develop solutions for the life sciences, biotech, or healthcare sector. Applicants have until November 9th at 11:59 PM Eastern Time to submit a pitch deck that has information on their company including a business summary, the value proposition, a go-to-market strategy and other information that will make the case why their company should be selected as a finalist. Approximately five to seven finalists will be invited to make the pitch live on November 29th at the Quantum World Congress event in Washington, D.C. A winner will be selected from the finalists to receive the $25,000 prize. For additional information and an application form, you can visit a web page about the pitch competition on the Quantum World Congress website here.
October 29, 2022
German Aerospace Center (DLR) Awards €208.5 Million ($208M USD) in Contracts for Ion Trap Based Quantum Computer Development
The German Aerospace Center ( (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt or DLR) has awarded contracts for five sub-projects to eleQtron, NXP® Semiconductors Germany, Parity Quantum Computing Germany, QUDORA Technologies and Universal Quantum Deutschland for development of ion trap processors over the next four years. The goal will be to have quantum processors that have at least 50 qubits along with creation of modular technology that can be scale up modular systems to thousands of qubits. Click here for our full article with more details about these awards.
October 29, 2022 – News Brief
Breakthrough Victoria Will Invest A$29 Million ($18.2M USD) in ColdQuanta to Establish a New Quantum Computing Technology Facility in Melbourne
Breakthrough Victoria is a funding agency for the Australian state of Victoria that funds R&D. The funds provided to ColdQuanta will be used to establish the ColdQuanta-Swinburne Quantum Technology Centre at Swinburne University in Melbourne. The investment will fund the building of an advanced manufacturing capability for certain quantum components including glass cells used in the cold atom technology and creation of an education and training center to prepare the future quantum workforce. Additional information about this investment and the establishment of this new quantum technology center is available in a news release on the Breakthrough Victoria website here.
October 28, 2022
Multiverse Computing and Mila to Advance AI and Machine Learning
Multiverse Computing and Mila just announced a partnership designed advance artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) using quantum computing and quantum-inspired methods. The partnership will also focus on developing new leaders in the high-tech fields of quantum computing and ML. Mila represents a global hub of scientific advancement in Montreal with approximately 1000 researchers specializing in AI and ML. Click here for the rest of the article.
October 27, 2022
Aliro Launches AliroNet for Building Entanglement-Based Quantum Networks
Aliro, a Boston based quantum networking company, has launched a suite of software and services that will allow customers to configure, simulate, and build a quantum network. Although Aliro doesn’t manufacture quantum networking hardware themselves they will work with hardware partners to help their customers select, test, and configure appropriate hardware for their needs. Click here for the full article.
October 22, 2022
D-Wave Offerings Are Now Available through the AWS Marketplace
Although access to D-Wave’s quantum annealer has been available on the Amazon Braket service for some time, D-Wave is now making available access to their Leap quantum cloud service and additional services through another facility at AWS called the AWS Marketplace. The Leap quantum cloud services will be moved from Amazon Braket to the AWS Marketplace soon and Amazon Braket users will be redirected to the AWS Marketplace to use this service. The change will allow D-Wave to offer additional services to AWS Marketplace customers and simplify procurement, provisioning, and governance for these customers. Click here for our article with more details about this change.
October 21, 2022
Rolls-Royce and Classiq Partner on Quantum Approach to Computational Fluid Design
Classiq and Rolls-Royce are partnering to design novel computational fluid dynamics (CFD) algorithms. CFD is widely used in automotive design, wherever there’s an interaction of a component with gas, fluid, or even solid. CFD enhances the process of component design and assembly, as well as the development of the whole vehicle. Specifically, it improves performance, enables design efficiency to minimize aerodynamic losses, optimizes design for better aerodynamic response and enables designers to tackle the aesthetics of vehicles, given any existing constraints. Click here for more.
October 20, 2022
Amazon Braket Adds Two New Software Capabilities Called Amazon Pulse and OQpy (OpenQASM3 to Python
Amazon has added new capabilities to allow users to program some of the quantum processors on Amazon Braket at the pulse level in addition to the gate level. They have also create an open-source library designed to make it easy to generate OpenQASM 3 programs in Python. Read about these new enhancements to Amazon Braket in our full article here.
October 20, 2022
VW and Xanadu Create Quantum Battery Materials Simulation Effort
The basic goal of the multi-year joint effort will be to improve quantum algorithm performance, reduce computational cost and accelerate VW’s use of quantum computers focusing on batteries and battery materials. The resulting materials are expected to be not just more cost effective, but also safer and lighter. In addition, the program will also investigate other materials discovery computational problems, where quantum computing can have a major impact. Click here for more.
October 19, 2022 – News Brief
PsiQuantum Receives a $22.5 Million Contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory
PsiQuantum will work with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to co-develop quantum photonic chips that will be manufactured at GlobalFoundries’ semiconductor fab in Malta, N.Y. This contract was enabled by the $25 million funding that was provided by the government earlier this year to help fund manufacturing investments at GlobalFoundries for developing and building components for PsiQuantum’s photonic quantum computer. For more about this new contract, you can view the press release provided by PsiQuantum here. You can also review our previous article titled A Closer Look at PsiQuantum here that provides more details about their technology. Our previous article that describes the $25 million funding for manufacturing investments at GlobalFoundries can be found here.
October 18, 2022 – News Brief
Quantinuum and Mitsui Partner to Expand Quantum Computing Usage in the Japan and Asia-Pacific Markets
Seeking to expand its business in Asia, Quantinuum has signed an agreement with Mitsui to help develop the market as well as collaborate on potential applications for quantum computing in Japan and the Asia-Pacific. The Mitsui Group is one of the largest keiretsu in Japan with FY2022 revenue of $96.4 billion USD, offices in 63 countries and regions, and over 44,000 employees on a consolidated basis. Mitsui will help promote Quantinuum’s offerings to external customer as well as potentially use quantum technology internally within their 16 business units. Product areas this partnership will focus on include computational chemistry, quantum cybersecurity, optimization applications, and quantum natural language processing and artificial intelligence. For more about this partnership announcement, you can see a press release posted on the Quantinuum website here.
October 17, 2022 – News Brief
Quandela to Use CEA-Leti to Manufacture Its Photonic Chips
French start-up Quandela announced that it will use the Information Technology Laboratory of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA-Leti) to manufacture its photonic chips to help provide them with a more controllable domestic supply chain. The first chips from this partnership are expected to be available in early 2023. Quandela is working on a 6-qubit NISQ processor which they intend to make available as a web service through OVHCloud by the end of the year. Also, Quandela has a photonic computer programming and simulation software platform named Perceval which allows users to simulate, model, and test their software that enables users to immediately use the hardware when it becomes available. Quandela announcement of their agreement with CEA-Leti to serve as a manufacturing partners can be accessed here.
October 15, 2022 – News Brief
QuantrolOx Secures €10.5 Million ($10.2M USD) in Funding
The funding is being provided to QuantrolOx by the European Innovation Council which is providing the funds as an upfront grant of €2.5 million ($2.4M USD) and an additional €8 million ($7.8M USD) as a matching equity investment when the QuantrolOx receives an equivalent investment from an outside source. QuantrolOx is developing automated machine learning based control software that will tune, stabilize, and optimize qubits for better performance. The software can monitor and adjust dozens of different parameters every microsecond and is intended to be technology agnostic and applicable to all types of quantum technologies. The company is expected to formally launch its product in 2023. Additional information is available in a LinkedIn posting from QuantrolOx that you can see here.
October 11, 2022 – News Brief
European Infrastructure for Rydberg Quantum Computing (EuRyQa) Project Launches with a Budget of €5 Million ($4.86M USD)
The EuRyQA project is being funded over 3 years by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe program to establish Rydberg quantum processors as a leading platform for scalable quantum computing in Europe. The project will have eleven partners from seven countries. It will be led by the University of Strasbourg with other participants including PASQAL, QM Technologies, the University of Stuttgart, Qruise GmbH, EURICE GmbH, the University of Amsterdam, the Technical University of Eindhoven, Idryma Technologias Kai Erevnas, Associação Portuguese Quantum Institute, and Università degli Studi di Padova. The team will work to combine four complementary European Rydberg platforms and provide a common quantum computing stack for Rydberg atoms including a cloud service, solutions to concrete computational problems, and key technologies for fault-tolerant quantum computing with Rydberg qubits. Additional information about this project is available on the Quantum.Amsterdam website here.
Quantum Xchange Partners with Warpcom to Provide Quantum-Safe Networking to Customers in Portugal and Spain
Quantum Xchange is a Maryland based startup that provides a crypto-diverse management platform called Phio TX (Trusted Xchange). Phio TX uses a variety of techniques that enable its users to implement quantum safe networking without bearing a risk of having a single point of failure. Quantum Xchange has agreed to work with Warpcom, an Iberian technology integrator for networking and infrastructure with offices in Portugal and Spain, to promote the Phio TX technology to its clients in those countries. Warpcom was acquired in November 2021 by Evolutio, a Spanish IT firm headquarters in Madrid, and now operates as a subsidiary of the parent company. Additional details about this partnership are available in a press release provided by Quantum Xchange that can be seen here.
October 8, 2022 – News Brief
The EuroHPC JU Selects Six European Sites for Quantum Computer Installation with a Total Budget of €100 Million ($97M USD)
In March of this year, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) issued a call for proposals for European supercomputing centers to host the installation of a quantum computer at their facility. They have now announced a selection of six sites in the countries of Czechia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Poland that will have quantum computers installed and available by the second half of 2023. The total budget for the project will be €100 Million ($97M USD) with half of the funds contributed by the European Union through the EuroHPC JU and the other half contributed by the host countries. The project is intended to only incorporate European technology and leverage various European investments in quantum through EU-funded quantum initiatives, national research programs, and private investments. More information about this program can be found in the official announcement from the European Union here and related announced from the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Centre in Czechia here and the Leibniz Super-computing Centre (LRZ) in Germany here.
October 7, 2022 – News Brief
Zurich Instruments Launches LabOneQ, a Software Framework for Controlling Zurich Instruments’ Hardware
The LabOneQ software from Zurich Instruments allows users to design and visualize complex quantum experiments with a Python based programming environment. The software makes it easier and faster for an end user to generate and upload waveforms, synchronize pulses between multiple instruments, visualize the results, verify experimental sequences and pulses before execution and track the results and calibration data. It can handle anything from a single qubit to 100 qubits or more. The software works to enable high duty cycles by minimizing communications overhead, optimizing control instructions, pipelining, queuing experiments, and utilizing automation. Additional information about LabOneQ can be seen in a web page for the product located here, a software user manual that can be found here. and a video here.
October 7, 2022 – News Brief
Multiverse, Protiviti, and Ally Financial Release Study on Using Quantum Annealers for Financial Index Tracking
The purpose of the study performed by Multiverse, Protiviti, and Ally Financial was to construct a portfolio of assets that would track the returns of the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 indexes with a much smaller subset of assets. The research was able to accomplish this by reducing the number of assets in the new index tracking portfolios by 4x and 10x respectively. The advantage of limited the number assets, known as cardinality constraints, is that it makes the portfolio much easier to manage. The team also reported that they were able to reduce the risk profile of the target index by a factor of up to 2x. The team was able to achieve these results using D-Wave LEAP Hybrid solver. Future work in this area will be to include additional factors in the analysis such as dividend reinvestments, transaction costs for re-balancing and including other types of assets for building advanced ETF products. Additional information is available in a news release posted on the Multiverse website here as well as a technical paper posted on arXiv here.
October 6, 2022 – News Brief
QCI and VIPC Partner to Use Quantum for Determining Optimal Flight Trajectories for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
Calculating an optimal flight trajectory for a UAV turns out to be a complex optimization problem. But Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) and the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC) will be working on this problem to see if a quantum approach can provide a valuable solution. Their plan is to take sensor, airspace information of other aircraft, desired destinations for the craft, and micro-weather data collected by the Virginia Flight Information Exchange (VA-FIX) in order to calculate the optimal time, speed, cost, and route for the UAV to reach its destinations. The project will be using QCI’s Entropy Quantum Computing (EQC) photonics-based quantum processor along with their Qatalyst optimization software for this project. Additional information about this project is available in a news release provided by QCI that is available here.
October 6, 2022
Qunnect Receives $8 Million in Series A Funding
The funding was led by Airbus Ventures with additional participation from Quantonation, SandboxAQ, NY Ventures, Impact Science Ventures, and Motus Ventures. Qunnect, based in Brooklyn, New York, provides several different components for use in the quantum internet. In September of last year, they were the first company to sell a Quantum Memory which is a key device needed for extending the distance of a quantum communications link. Click here for more.
October 5, 2022 – News Brief
Intel Describes Its Second Generation Silicon Spin Test Chip
At the 2022 Silicon Quantum Electronics Workshop in Orford, Québec, Canada, Intel described its second generation silicon spin test chip and some results in testing it. In the chip business yield is everything and Intel announced that they achieved a yield rate of about 95% across the 300 millimeter wafer in a recent test. You might ask whether yield is really critical in a quantum processor chip. After all, these are not like microprocessors that are made in the millions per week. A company only needs to obtain a handful of chips when it wants to build up its next quantum computer. But high yield is also a good indicator of process uniformity, which is critical for maintaining high qubit quality metrics for all the qubits on the chip. Intel also described usage of their new cryoprober which was able to characterize the performance of hundreds of devices on the 300 mm wafer at a temperature of 1.7 Kelvin within a 24 hour period. The company indicated they will continue using these tools along with other standard semiconductor process control tools such as statistical process control to work on continued improvements in qubit quality. You can access Intel’s announcement about this development on their website here.
October 4, 2022
Q-CTRL Launches Black Opal Enterprise to Help Enterprises Get Their Employees Quantum Ready
Q-CTRL has launched a new version of its Black Opal quantum learning platform that is specifically designed for use by enterprises that wants to educate groups of their employees on quantum technology. It includes additional administrative features that allow enterprises to implement a seat licensing structure, track their progress, award co-branded certificates of completion, and obtain dedicated customer support Click here for more details about this new version.
October 2, 2022
Who’s News: Management Updates at Quantinuum, Classiq, Aliro Quantum, and Zapata Computing
Quantinuum has a new Chief Commercial Officer, Classiq has a new Vice-President of Business Development, Aliro Quantum has hired its first Chief Marketing Officer, and Zapata Computing has added a new advisor. Click here for more information about these management additions.
September 30, 2022 – News Brief
Stony Brook University Professor Wins $400,000 Grant to Study Quantum Witnesses
The two-year $400,000 grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to fund research examining the power of quantum witnesses. The award is part of a $15 million initiative from the DOE called Exploratory Research for Extreme‐Scale Science. The principal investigator for this project will be Supartha Podder, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at Stony Brook University. In the context of this project a witness is a piece of data that certifies the answer to a computation. This research can potentially help understand when and why quantum computation outperforms traditional classical computation. Additional information about this award is available in a news release issued by Stony Brook University and posted on their website here.
September 30, 2022 – News Brief
IonQ Wins a $13.4 Million Contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory
The IonQ contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is for providing access to IonQ’s trapped ion quantum processor as well as the development of quantum algorithms and applications. The AFRL has been researching quantum technology for some time and currently has labs located in New York, Ohio, and New Mexico that research various areas associated with the quantum technology. You can view IonQ’s announcement of this award on their website here.
September 29, 2022 – News Brief
Atom Computing Officially Opens a New R&D Center in Boulder, Colorado
With the help of Colorado Governor Jared Polis, Atom Computing officially opened its new R&D center in Boulder, Colorado. Although the company has a facility in Berkeley, California, it decided to add to its development capabilities with an additional facility in Colorado so they could tap into the talent and resources at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) as well as JILA, formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, a joint institute of the university and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The new facility will have room to contain multiple quantum processors and the company expects to invest over $100 million in the Colorado operation over the next three years. They currently have a prototype 100 qubit quantum processor codenamed Phoenix and are now working on the development of a second generation system. Additional information about this new facility is available in a news release provided by Atom Computing that can be accessed here.
September 29, 2022 – News Brief
GSMA Announces a Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce with IBM and Vodafone as Initial Members
GSMA is a worldwide industry trade group with about 1200 members of mobile cellular network operators. As one might expect, the topic of quantum safe communication is becoming a topic of concern for them with approximately 100 Zettabytes (or 1023 bytes) of information transmitted each year and revenue in the neighborhood of $2 trillion worldwide. Data security is a priority for them so any failures that would result from a quantum computer breaking the encryption would be very serious matter. In order to mitigate the potential risks of quantum computing they have created a news Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce to define requirements, identify dependencies and create the roadmap to implement quantum-safe networking. IBM and Vodafone will be the initial members of this taskforce with other members of GSMA invited to join. In addition, providers of quantum safe cybersecurity products who are not members of GSMA will have opportunities to get involved with this task force to help the task force identify the best technologies that can help them achieve a quantum safe goal. More information about this news post-quantum telco network taskforce is available in a news release posted on the IBM website here as well as a blog post provided by IBM located here.
September 28, 2022 – News Brief
OQC to Install a Quantum Processor in a Cyxtera Colocaton Data Center
Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) and Cyxtera, a leading company providing data center colocation and interconnection services that has than 60 data centers in over 30 markets, have agreed to partner and install one of OQC”s superconducting processors in Cyxtera’s Reading Data Center Campus LHR3. This will enable Cyxtera’s customers to utilize OQC’s processor and work with classical computers located in that facility. This could potentially improve latency times and allow Cyxtera’s customers direct access to our OQC’s quantum computer without going through a public cloud. Since the classical and quantum processors will be colocated rather than in separate locations, this can substantially improve program runtime by reducing the transit delays of shuttling data back and forth multiple times. Frequently exchanging data between the classical and quantum systems is a common requirement for some of the popular hybrid classical/quantum algorithms in use today. More information about this collaboration is available in a news release posted on the Cyxtera website here.
September 28, 2022
Intel Releases Their Own Quantum SDK for Beta Test and They are Funding Universities to Develop Curricula Using It
Intel has been developing its own quantum SDK based upon the C++ programming language that uses the LLVM intermediate level description from classical computing as a base. It is optimized to work with hybrid classical/quantum variational algorithms and will work with other components of Intel’s quantum stack including Intel’s high performance quantum simulators and, eventually, Intel’s spin-qubit based quantum processor. They are providing funding to universities wishing to develop curricula using this SDK so that students can start developing applications with it. Click here for our full article describing this announcement from Intel.
September 27, 2022
Quantinuum Announces Reaching Quantum Volume of 8192, an Additional Type of Two-Qubit Gate, and 500,000 Downloads of TKET
Quantinuum has announced a new record for the Quantum Volume metric reaching 8192 from the previous 4096. This is helped by an addtional type of two-qubit gate called the “Arbitrary Angle Two-Qubit Gate”. They also announced that they have now reached over 500,000 downloads of the TKET quantum software. Click here for additional details.
September 26, 2022 – News Brief
Brightcom and Qulabz to Set Up a Quantum Innovation Lab in Hyderabad, India
Brightcom is a digital marketing company headquartered in India with offices in 25 locations and 2020 revenue of about $340 Million USD. Qulabz is a quantum startup with offices in New Jersey and Hyderabad with a vision to create a quantum future by using quantum principles for engineering solutions to extremely complex problems in computing, communications, sensing, chemistry, cryptography, imaging and mechanics. The two organizations have set up a joint venture called the “Brightcom Qulabz Innovation Labs” to perform quantum research and innovations in both software and hardware domains. Additional details are available in a new release located here.
September 24, 2022 – News Brief
2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Awarded to Four Quantum Scientists
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation sponsored by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki awards yearly prices of $3 Million for each of several different categories for fundamental discoveries in their respective field. The 2023 award for the fundamental physics category was awarded to Charles H. Bennett, Gilles Brassard, David Deutsch, and Peter W. Shor for their foundational work in the field of quantum information. These gentlemen are very well known within the quantum community for their ground-breaking discoveries. Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard created the BB84 protocol initiating the field of quantum cryptography. David Deutsch defined the quantum version of a Turing machine and designed the first quantum algorithm that surpasses the best equivalent classical algorithm. And Peter Shor invented Shor’s algorithm to factor large numbers exponentially faster than any classical algorithm which was the first algorithm to demonstrate potential usefulness of quantum computing in the future. A press release announcing the winners of the Breakthrough Prizes can be seen here and a short video about the achievements of these physicists can be viewed here.
September 24, 2022 – News Brief
The Chicago Quantum Exchange Adds Six New Partners
Five new corporate partners and one non-profit partner have joined the Chicago Quantum Exchange to work with them to advance the science of quantum technology and develop practical applications. The five corporate partners include State Farm, QuEra Computing Inc., PsiQuantum, qBraid, and QuantCAD LLC. And the non-profit partners is Le Lab Quantique (LLQ), a Paris-based think tank. They will join over 30 other partner organizations from corporate, non-profit, international, and regional sectors. A news release from the Chicago Quantum Exchange announcing the new partners can be seen here.
September 24, 2022
South Korea and the U.S. Open Several Centers to Collaborate on Quantum Research
The Korea-U.S. Science Cooperation Center (KUSCO) announced five different centers to foster collaboration between U.S. and Korean universities on various quantum research projects. Click here for information about these centers and the topics that these universities will research.
September 24, 2022 – News Brief
Quix Quantum Secures a €14 ($13.57M USD) Million Contract to Deliver a 64 Qubit Photonic Quantum Computer
Quix will work with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) over a four year program to install 8- and 64-qubit quantum computers based on photonics at the DLR Innovation Center in Ulm, Germany. Using the Quix processors, DLR research their use for such problems as post-quantum cryptography, quantum machine learning, planning optimization for satellite operations, and simulation of chemical redox reactions for the development of battery systems. Previously, the largest photonics chip that Quix had delivered was a 20 mode low-loss, multimode, fully reconfigurable interferometers for quantum computing that operate at room temperature. Additional information about this contract is available in a news release provided by Quix and located here.
September 22, 2022 – News Brief
Novo Nordisk Foundation Awards $200 Million (1.5 Billion Danish Krone) to Develop Quantum Systems to Solve Life Science Problems
The project will be led by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and is scheduled to run for the next 12 years. The first seven of those years will focus on developing materials and hardware to build qubits to ascertain the best quantum platform to use. The last five of those years is expected to involve scaling up the chosen quantum platform and show it can solve relevant life science problems which cannot be accomplished using classical computers. The end goal is to create Denmark’s first fully functional generally applicable quantum computer by 2034. The program will involve many other participants from industry and academia with key participants expected to include researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Aarhus University, and University of Toronto. Additional information about this program is available in a press release issued by the Novo Nordisk Foundation which located here as well as another press release provided by the Niels Bohr Institute which can be accessed here.
September 21, 2022 – News Brief
Quantum Computing Inc. Announces a Subscription Services for Its Dirac Entropy Quantum Computer
We had previously reported in May that Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) had acquired quantum photonic startup QPhoton and we also reported in July that Quantum Computing Inc. had used the QPhoton device to optimize vehicle sensor placement for a BMW/AWS Quantum Computing Challenge. The company has now announced that it will make the processor, which it now calls the Dirac 1 Entropy Quantum Computing (EQC) system, publicly available over the web through a subscription service. The device is designed to solve optimization problems and works with QCI’s Qatalyst™ software to provide a complete solution. The company will offer several different plans for access that ranges from an introductory program that provides 10 hours of access to a plan that offers full dedicated access to a Dirac 1 machine. The Dirac 1 Entropy Quantum Computer works differently from the gate model machines we see today from the other vendors. The company indicates the devices uses backaction with the environment to evolve the quantum system into a coherence-free sub-space. You can view a video with additional explanation here. The company also indicated that in Q4 of this year, they will launch an even larger processor dubbed Dirac 2 that will be able to solve even larger and more complex optimization problems. Additional information about the processor and QCI’s new subscription plan is available in a news release announcement the launch of the subscription plan here as well as a web page that provides additional information about the Dirac 1 subscription services here.
September 20, 2022 – News Brief
Classiq Adds Another $13 Million to Its Series B Round
Classiq, an Israeli quantum software company, has expanded its Series B funding round to $49 million from the previous $36 million that we reported on last May. The investor for this latest portion is Awz Ventures, a Canadian-Israeli venture capital firm. The company will be using the funds to open new offices in Japan and Europe as well as doubling the size of the R&D team to about 100 people by 2023. The company will also be expanding its customer collaborations. Previously, they had disclosed partnerships with Amazon, ColdQuanta, Nvidia, The Fraunhofer Institute, and the Chicago Quantum Exchange. Additional information about this new funding is available in a press release provided by the company and available here.
September 19, 2022 – News Brief
Zyvex Announces an Extremely Precise Lithography System for Use in Fabricating Quantum Processor Chips
Zyvex new product, called ZyvexLitho1TM uses scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to achieve line widths of 0.768 nanometers which is much better than the DUV or EUV systems used in the most advanced semiconductor fabs. It uses a technology called Hydrogen Depassivation Lithography which is a form of Electron Beam Lithography (EBL) that achieves atomic resolution. Uses of this machine include making extreme precise structures for quantum dot based qubits in order to achieve the highest qubit quality. The product can be used in other non-quantum related applications such as constructing nanopore membranes used in biomedical and other chemical separation technologies. The drawback of the product is that throughput is quite low. So although it might be suitable for the manufacture of low volume quantum processor chips, it would not be a good solution right now for high volume consumer electronics products. A press release from Zyvex announcing the product can be seen here and blog article that explains the physics of the device can be found on the Zyvex website here.
September 18, 2022 – News Brief
Quantum Delta NL Awards €7.87 Million ($7.86M USD) as Part of Its “Quantum SME Call”
Quantum Delta NL issued a call to quantum SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) for proposals to receive funding for innovative projects related to quantum technology. Those selected would receive grants ranging from €500,000 to €2 million. They received 18 proposals and selected 10 of them for funding. The companies receiving the funding include Appsilon Enterprise BV, Delft Circuits, Fermioniq, Leiden Space Imaging, Onnes Technologies BV, Orange Quantum Systems, Qblox, QphoX, QuantWare and a quantum cryptography lab. Quantum Delta NL intends on making this Quantum SME call an annual process in its efforts to help encourage quantum technology leadership in the Netherlands. Additional information about these awards and the companies that received them can be seen in a news release provided by Quantum Delta NL here.
September 17, 2022 – News Brief
Quantware Awarded €1.1 Million ($1.1M USD) to Develop Develop Superconducting Quantum Processors with Novel Materials
The funding has been provided to Quantware by Quantum Delta NL to find novel materials for a superconducting quantum processor that will help improve coherence times. The goal will be to improve coherence times by an order of magnitude. Quantware has a unique business model in that they create quantum processor chips that they sell to universities and other organizations who want to build up their own quantum processors. It is similar to how Intel or AMD sell microprocessor chips to OEMs who then use the microprocessor chips as components in their own computers. Quantware’s goal is to enable their customers to build their own QPUs for 1/10th the cost of purchasing a full quantum system externally. More information about this grant to Quantware is available in a news release on the Quantware website here.
September 17, 2022 – News Brief
Kipu Quantum Secures €3 Million ($3M USD) in Venture Funding
The round was co-led by Quantonation, Entrada Ventures, and First Momentum Ventures. Kipu Quantum is based in Karlsruhe and Berlin, Germany and is working to provide utilize application-specific quantum computing solutions to provide commercial advantages to customers as soon as possible. They have developed novel algorithmic compression methods along with efforts to create co-design hardware that will slash the number of qubits needed for commercial useful solutions in the NISQ era. The co-founders of Kipu Quantum include Chief Visionary Officer Professor Enrique Solano, Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Tobias Grab, and CEO Dr. Daniel Volz. They will be commercializing ideas that members of the team have been developing during two decades of quantum research. Additional information about Kipu Quantum and this investment is available in a new release posted on the Quantonation website here.
September 17, 2022
Final Deadline for Qubit by Qubit “Intro to Quantum Computing” Course is September 23, 2022
Qubit by Qubit is an initiative by The Coding School with a goal to make quantum computing education available to anyone who wants to learn. They are offering both a one or a two semester course targeted for students at the high school level and above to teach them about quantum computing. Semester 1 from September 18 – December 17, 2022 will cover the Fundamentals of Quantum Computing while Semester 2 will continue the lessons through April 16, 2023 and will cover Applications of Quantum Computing, going into Quantum Finance, Quantum Chemistry, and more. Students will have the option of signing up for just Semester 1 or for both Semesters 1 and 2. The final deadline for applying is September 23, 2022 at 12 noon Eastern time. For additional information about the program and links to where you can register for the course, click here.
September 17, 2022 – News Brief
Moody’s Sets Up a Quantum Analytics Group for the Financial Services Industry
One of the more significant applications for quantum computing will be within the financial industry to create financial models for credit ratings, risk, portfolio optimization, credit analysis, fraud detection and many other things. Moody’s, with over 2021 revenue of over $6 billion and over 13 thousand employees, is one of the largest service firms that provides such information to the financial and other industries. As part of their efforts, the Moody’s Analytics subsidiary has set up a new quantum computing team under the direction of Sergio Gago Huerta, Managing Director of Moody’s Quantum Computing, to explore how quantum computing can be leveraged for their business. The initial use cases they will explore include proprietary models for economic capital, risk modelling, and portfolio management in banking, insurance. The will also work on buy-side solutions the company has in the market. Moody’s already has powerful classical computing models for these use cases, but by working to improve their implementation through the use of quantum computing Moody’s is seeking to provide solutions which are even faster and more accurate with greater capabilities. Additional information about the activities of this new Moody’s Analytics Quantum Computing Team is available here.
September 16, 2022
Rigetti Announces Detailed Product Roadmap and New Partnerships
In a comprehensive Investor Day presentation, Rigetti Computing described a detailed product roadmap that covers all aspects of their activities and announced new and enhanced partnerships that will help them achieve their goal of quantum advantage. Click here for all the details.
September 14, 2022 – News Brief
Aegiq / Fraunhofer CAP Receive £500,000 ($577K USD) Grant to Develop a Deployable Quantum Light Source
The grant was provided by Innovate UK, part of UK Research & Innovation, to create a high-purity single-photon output rate with an output rate exceeding currently available commercial lasers. Potential applications include high-speed quantum key distribution, quantum information processing, and serving as a brighter source for imaging or sensing applications. AegiQ is a spin-off from The University of Sheffield that was founded in 2019. The Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics (CAP) in Glasgow, Scotland is a world-leading center in the field of applied laser research and development. Additional information about this grant can be found here.
September 14, 2022 – News Brief
SandboxAQ Acquires Cryptosense
Cryptosense is a company headquartered in Paris, France in 2013 that has a leading platform for cryptography lifecycle management. It provides an automated means for organizations to get full visibility into their cryptography during development and cryptography assets in production. It also helps IT organizations to resolve compliance issues and resolve vulnerabilities. SandboxAQ has acquired the company for an undisclosed amount as part of their Strategic Investment Program. The Cryptosense technology will complement SandboxAQ’s own Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) solutions and allow the combined team to deploy solutions at a faster pace and an expanded customer base. This is the second deal resulting from SandboxAQ’s Strategic Investment program. In August, the company announced its participation in a Series A investment round with evolutionQ, another quantum cybersecurity firm based in Waterloo, Canada. You can access SandboxAQ’s news release announcing the acquisition of Cryptosense here.
September 13, 2022 – News Brief
AWS and Harvard to Collaborate on Quantum Networking Research
Amazon Web Services (AWS) will provide funding to the Harvard Quantum Initiative for a three year program of faculty-led research into key technologies used in quantum networking including quantum memories, integrated photonics, and quantum materials. Part of the funding will also be used to upgrade the quantum fabrication capabilities of the NSF-supported Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard. Associated with these efforts at Harvard, AWS will also be researching quantum memory technology at the newly formed AWS Center for Quantum Networking. Quantum memories are a particularly important component for quantum repeaters which are needed to enable the long distance transmission of photonic qubits. In a separate grant, additional support from the AWS Generation Q Fund will also be provided to Harvard to help train post-baccalaureates, graduate students, postdocs with a particular focus on scientists and engineers from underrepresented backgrounds. More information about the collaboration between AWS and Harvard is available in a press release provided by AWS located here and another press release provided by Harvard which can be seen here.
September 10, 2022
NSA Releases Commercial National Security Algorithm (CNSA) Suite 2.0 and Recommended Timelines for Converting to Quantum Resistant Algorithms
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) publishes a Commercial National Security (CNSA) document which specifies which encryption algorithms should be used for owners, operators and vendors to use when working with classified information critical to military and intelligence activities. Up until now, their original document, which they now call CNSA 1.0, used classical encryption algorithms which were not necessarily quantum resistant. Now that NIST has made their initial Round 3 PQC selections, the NSA has updated this document to what they call CNSA 2.0 along with guidance on what algorithms to use along with an expected time table for conversion. Click here to read our full article that describes more about NSA’s announcement of the CNSA 2.0 suite.
September 10, 2022 – News Brief
Team Led by Wave Photonics Receives £500,000 ($580K USD) Award for Packaging of Quantum Photonic Integrated Circuits
The award was made by the Innovate UK project to a team led by startup Wave Photonics with partners Alter Technology TUV NORD UK, Senko Advanced Components, University of Southampton, and the University of Bristol. The project will last for one year as the team works to create design templates and simplify the development of packaging for Quantum Photonic Integrated Circuits (QPICs). QPICs can be manufactured using semiconductor manufacturing techniques which can allow them to be made reliably at high volumes. However, up until now the packaging of these QPI devices has not been standardized so customization of the packaging is required which slows down the development time and increases the cost. So this project, named QPICPAC, aims to change that with a design template based approach. The project already has a trial customer, Quantum Dice, a UK startup that is developing a Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) using QPIC technology. Additional information about this award is available in a post that you can find here.
September 9, 2022
IBM Demonstrates Successful Cool Down of Their Goldeneye Supersized Dilution Refrigerator
In September 2020, IBM announced it was developing a large sized dilution refrigerator codenamed Goldeneye that they may use for future quantum processors. This fridge is roughly 10 feet x 6 feet in size and designed to provide an experimental volume for cooling of 1.7 cubic meters (about 60 cubic feet). In comparison, the current generation of dilution refrigerators available from commercial vendors contains about 0.4 to 0.7 cubic meters (about 14-24 cubic feet) for the devices. IBM has just announced that they have built a Goldeneye and have cooled it down to 25 millikelvin and successful installed and ran one of their quantum processor chips inside of it. Click here for more.
September 8, 2022 – News Brief
Northeastern University Receives a $3.5 Million Grant to Establish the Experiential Quantum Advancement Laboratories (EQUAL)
The award was provided by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Collaborative Research and Development Matching Grant program managed by the Innovation Institute at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech). It will be used to create the Experiential Quantum Advancement Laboratories (EQUAL) at Northeastern University’s Innovation Campus in Burlington, Massachusetts. This laboratory will focus on researching quantum sensors and related technologies and they will seek partnerships with other researchers in industry, government, and academia. The project will also help provide workforce training and will help Northeastern’s efforts to offer new Ph.D. and Master’s degree programs in Quantum Information Science and Engineering, as well as to create Quantum Information Science certificate and retraining programs. Additional information about this grant and quantum activity at Northeastern University, you can view a news release here.
September 8, 2022 – News Brief
Unitary Fund Announces a Quantum Open Source Software Survey
The Unitary Fund team is announcing its first Quantum Open Source Software (QOSS) survey to get a better understanding of the quantum computing community’s needs, background and to improve their products/services/events and educational material. The survey will cover information on demographics, experience, community, research, tech stacks and encourage specific feedback. The Unitary Fund is also releasing a related survey understand the state ofDiversity & Inclusion of the Quantum Open Source Software (QOSS) community. They are encouraging everyone who codes or wants to code for and with quantum computing technologies to fill out both of these surveys so they can get a better idea of the collective opinion of these issues within the quantum community. The deadline for filling out this survey is September 23, 2022. After analysis of the input data, they will be publishing and sharing the anonymized and aggregated results with the entire quantum community. The link for filling out the Quantum Open Source survey is here and the link for filling out the Diversity & Inclusion survey is here. Additional information is available in an announcement blog they have posted on the Unitary Fund website here.
September 7, 2022
NIST Issues Call for Additional PQC Digital Signature Algorithms
As mentioned in our article last month about NIST’ Round 3 selection for Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms, they are now formally issuing a call for additional PQC algorithms to use for digital signatures. NIST is concerned that the three digital signature algorithms selected in Round 3 do not provide enough diversity for protection against possible weaknesses that might be found in the future. Their primary interest is to identify general-purpose signature schemes that are not based on structured lattices. And for certain applications, such as certificate transparency, NIST may also be interested in signature schemes that have short signatures and fast verification. Read our full article here to learn more about this new Call for Proposals from NIST.
September 6, 2022
Archer Signs Up GlobalFoundries as a Manufacturing Partner
Archer Materials has announced they will be working with GlobalFoundries, a leading semiconductor manufacturing foundry. GlobalFoundries will be fabricating Archer’s 12CQ quantum chip technology with a goal of achieving high volume chip fabrication. Archer is the fourth quantum company that GlobalFoundries is supporting. Archer has been developing their chip technology at the University of Sydney Research & Prototype Foundry Core Research Facility at the Sydney Nanoscience Hub. Click here for more.
September 3, 2022
Who’s News: Management Updates at Q-CTRL, Zapata, Kipu Quantum, and the U.S. National Quantum Coordination Office
Both Q-CTRL and Zapata have hired new Heads of Product at their companies, Kipu Quantum has a new CEO, and the U.S. National Quantum Coordination Office has a new Deputy Director. Click here to see the details.
September 2, 2022 – News Brief
Qphox Signs A Second Deal to Network Superconducting Processors; Now with IQM
We reported in June that Qphox is collaborating with Quantware to provide a way to network muiltiple superconducting processor chips together. They call their technology a Quantum Modem™, a quantum transducer that will couple microwave and optical photons through a mechanical intermediary resonator. This allows qubit information to be routed through a room temperature fiber optic cable to a separate quantum processing chip. Qphox has now announced a partnership with Finnish company IQM, one of the leading quantum processor startups in Europe. Several companies are pursuing various forms of multiprocessing in order to scale up the number of qubits needed to provide quantum advantage solutions for commercially relevant problems. Besides Quantware and IQM, other superconducting based processor companies that are pursuing this approach include IBM and Rigetti. This approach can be particularly helpful for superconducting based processors because there are limits in the number of qubits that can be contained within a single dilution refrigerator due to constraints on heat load and wiring. Additional information about the partnership between Qphox and IQM is available in a news release that can be accessed on the IQM website here.
August 31, 2022 – News Brief
Multiverse and Objectivity Partner to Bring Quantum Solutions to Companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa
Multiverse is a leading quantum software company headquartered in San Sebastian, Spain that provides quantum and quantum-inspired solutions to companies in the finance, mobility, energy, life sciences and advanced manufacturing verticals. Objectivity Ltd. is a UK headquartered company with over 1000 employees and additional branches in Poland, Germany, Mauritius that delivers custom software solutions, digital transformation, and IT consulting. The two companies will be collaborating to bring quantum solutions such as Multiverse’s Singularity platform to Objectivity’s clients in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. They will be initially planning to focus on industry sectors including finance, manufacturing, healthcare and life sciences, retail and others. Additional information is available in a press release provided by Multiverse and available here.
August 30, 2022 – News Brief
Finland and Singapore Agree to Collaborate on Quantum Technology
The National Quantum Office of Singapore, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, IQM Quantum Computers and CSC – IT Center for Science (Finland) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreeing to work together to explore and promote research and development in quantum technologies. This cooperation will encompass areas including technology hardware components, algorithms and applications, quantum-accelerated high-performance computing and both terrestrial and satellite quantum communications. A press release with additional information about this agreement is available on the VTT website here.
August 29, 2022 – News Brief
$100,000 Quantum & Photonics Pitch Competition for Early Stage Startups
Qubits Ventures and Luminate Accelerator are sponsoring an online pitch competition for early stage quantum and photonics startups. The winner will receive an investment of at least $100,000 from a group of investors including the Luminate Accelerator and Qubits Ventures. And runners up will receive a fellowship to the Quantum & Photonics Accelerator managed by the Founder Institute. Startup companies that have raised less than $2.5 million in funding are eligible to apply for the competition before the application deadline of September 11, 2022. Seven finalists will be selected for the live online pitch competition to be held on September 20, 2022. The event will stream on Zoom and audience members can watch the presentations live by RSVPing to the event by registering at https://fi.co/e/284003/pr. The rules and selection criteria for the competition, as well as an application form, is available on a webpage for the competition here.
August 28, 2022 – News Brief
Multiverse Computing Introduces a New Version of their Singularity Portfolio Optimization Software
We reported in August 2021 about a new software program from Multiverse Computing called Singularity. This program has an interesting characteristic in that it is implemented as an Excel plug-in that make it easy and quick for an inexperienced end user to try without requiring them to learn a lot about quantum computing. They have now released an update to this program that includes Singularity Portfolio Optimization v1.2 that supports a variety of modes including a Multiverse Hybrid mode, a D-Wave Leap Hybrid mode, and a pure classical solver. The program also can accept a variety of constraints while performing the optimizations including investor’s level of risk aversion, resolution of asset allocation, minimum and maximum allowable investment per asset, and others. The portfolio optimizer uses Multiverse’s hybrid solver for its core algorithms and the company indicates it can produce results competitive to classical solvers in a shorter period of time. The program is hardware agnostic and can be used with a variety of different quantum processors as well as quantum-inspired and classical configurations. Additional information about this new version of Singularity is available in a news release posted on the Multiverse website here.
August 27, 2022
UCLA Receives $1.8 Million in Funding from the NSF to Research a New Type of Qubit
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has been researching a new type of molecular based qubit called a quantum functional group. This consists of molecular fragments which which can be attached to molecules or surfaces to form qubits. To help further this research, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded UCLA $1.8 million over a three year period to establish the Center for Advanced Molecular Architectures for Quantum Information Science to further study and refine this technology. Click here or the rest of the article.
August 25, 2022 – News Brief
Baidu Releases a New Quantum Computer and an Associated Quantum Cloud Services Platform
The quantum processor is named Qian Shi and implements 10 qubits using superconducting technology. They also indicated they are working on their next generation 36 qubit machine which will use tunable couplers for better isolation, cross-talk resistance and higher gate fidelities. To provide access to this and other quantum processors, Baidu also announced a cloud-based quantum operating environment called Liang Xi. Liang Xi includes a large collection of software modules including Quantum Leaf for providing quantum cloud access, Quanise for quantum control, QEP which is a quantum error correction toolkit, Paddle Quantum for quantum machine learning, and QNET which is a quantum networking toolkit. Interestingly, the Liang Xi platform is also able to provide an interface to other quantum processors in much the same way that Amazon Braket and Microsoft Azure can provide interfaces to several different quantum processors. The first outside processor they are supporting is a trapped ion quantum device developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Baidu has been working on quantum technology for over four years now and has already made 200 core patent applications on this technology. Additional information about Baidu’s quantum announcement can be found in a press release that can be accessed here as well as a webpage for Baidu’s quantum activities available here.
August 24, 2022 – News Brief
Riken and Fujitsu Team Up to Deliver Japan’s First Domestically Developed Quantum Computing
The companies established the RIKEN RQC-FUJITSU Collaboration Center in April 2021 to research quantum computers using superconducting technologies. They have a longer term goal of developing hardware and software within the next few years that will scale up to 1,000 qubits. Their more immediate goal is to provide a 64 qubit machine in the next Japanese fiscal year that starts in April 2023. Last year, IBM installed an IBM System One processor in Kawasaki City that is managed by the University of Tokyo as part of the Quantum Innovation Initiative Consortium (QIIC) to facilitate collaboration on quantum computing between industry, academia, and government in Japan. But that machine was designed at IBM’s Research Center in New York and shipped to Japan for installation. The Riken/Fujitsu machine is expected to be the first quantum processor designed and built within Japan. Additional information is available in an article posted on the Nikkei Asia website here and also a web page for the RIKEN RQC-FUJITSU Collaboration Center that can be found here.
August 23, 2022 – News Brief
Multiverse and BASF Partner to Research Quantum Use for Foreign Exchange Optimization
At first glance you might wonder why BASF, a large chemical company, would be working with Multiverse Computing to use quantum computing for a financial problem. But on closer look, you would see that BASF is a giant company with 2021 revenues of €78.6 billion ($78.2B USD) and operates in over 190 countries. So they need to convert currencies in their operations all the time and even small improvements in the exchange rates that they can achieve could be worth a lot of money. The team started a small 9 month research effort in January 2022 that focused only on the trading between Euros and U.S. dollars. It will be completed shortly and the team will issue a final technical report. Presumably, if this first trial is a success the companies will move on to subsequent phases that may incorporate more currencies or more complicated scenarios. For more about this project, you can read a press release issued by Multiverse that you can access here.
August 23, 2022
EeroQ Closes a $7.25 Million Seed Funding Round
EeroQ is a quantum hardware startup founded in 2017 that has recently moved its headquarters to Chicago. They are basing their qubits on a relatively unique technology called electrons-on-helium that was developed by scientists at Michigan State and Princeton University. Their belief is that the electrons-on-helium approach is superior to other qubit approaches because their qubits have longer coherence time, high speed, better connectivity, very high density, and compatibility with semiconductor CMOS processing. This funding round was led by B Capital’s Ascent Fund, with additional participation from V Capital, Alumni Ventures, Unbound Ventures, Calibrate Ventures and Red Cedar Ventures. For the full article about EeroQ and their funding round, click here.
August 19, 2022
Multiverse and IQM Partner to Create Application Specific Quantum Computers
The two companies have entered into partnership to tightly integrate IQM’s co-designed quantum processors with Multiverse’s Singularity SDK. When designing an application specific processor, one needs to have a deep understanding of the application and the specific algorithms that will be needed to provide solutions. Click here for more.
August 18, 2022 – News Brief
D-Wave Releases Its Second Quarter and First Half 2022 Financial Results
For its second quarter of fiscal 2022, D-Wave reported revenues of $1.371 million versus $1.137 million in the second quarter of 2021. Adjusted EBITDA showed a loss of $10.385 million versus a loss of $8.804 million in the same period a year ago and GAAP Net loss was $13.198 million versus a net loss of $4.668 million in 2021. The company reported that its customer base consists of 95 customers of which 55 are commercial organizations, representing an increase of 44% in the number of commercial organization customers in the past year. CEO Alan Baratz acknowledge during the earning calls certain headwinds stemming largely from the economic environment. To help adjust for these changes, they are increasing their budgets for go to market activities and moderating the budget growth in other areas. Despite this, he indicated that progress in their development programs has remained on-track or even been ahead of schedule in some cases. The company ended the quarter with about $10.5 million in cash, however they have announced an agreement that will provide them with a committed equity facility for up to $150 million. You can access a press release from D-Wave with their earnings announcement on their web page here and listen to their Q2 earnings call here.
August 17, 2022
IonQ Makes Its Aria Class Processor Available on Microsoft Azure
The IonQ Aria processor is their fifth generation processor which support approximate two dozen qubits or more using IonQ’s ion trap technology. They have been working on the development of this processor for over two years and first mentioned it in a press release in October 2020. Earlier this year, they have made it available for a private beta with select customers such as Hyundai Motors and GE Research, but now they have made it publicly available on the Microsoft Azure Quantum cloud. Click here for the rest of the article.
August 16, 2022
Multiverse and IKERLAN Partner to Research Quantum Computer Vision
Two companies based in Spain, Multiverse Computing and IKERLAN have partnered and released a paper describing how quantum computer vision can be used to detect defects in manufactured car pieces in a manufacturing production line. This would represent one of the first implementation of quantum computer vision for a relevant problem in a manufacturing production line. Although this research only created proofs-of concepts, it does point the way for utilization of quantum computing in manufacturing and quality control. Click here for more.
August 15, 2022
IonQ Announces Its Second Quarter Financial Results
IonQ announced its second quarter financial results for the period ending June 30, 2022. Revenue achieved was $2.6 million versus $93 thousand in the second quarter o 2021. EBITDA in Q2 2022 was a loss of $11.6 million versus $7.0 million in 2021 and the GAAP net loss was $1.7 million versus $10.0 million in Q2 2021. A significant account adjustment of $16 million due to a change in fair value of warrant liabilities account for much of the difference between the EBITDA and GAAP net loss numbers. The company still has $571 million in cash and investments available and indicated that they do not expect they will need any further financing before they reach profitability and positive cash flow. Click here for the rest of the article.
August 14, 2022
Who’s News: Management Changes at Rigetti, IonQ, JP Morgan Chase, and the Quantum Science Center at ORNL
Rigetti Computing has a new Chairperson for its Board of Directors. IonQ has added a new member of its Board of Directors. JP Morgan Chase has hired a new Global Head of Quantum Communications and Cryptograph. And the Quantum Science Center at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a new Director. Click here for the details on these management changes.
August 13, 2022 – News Brief
Q-CTRL Forms a New Quantum Sensing Division
Taking advantage of its expertise in quantum control Q-CTRL has now formed a new division to utilize this capability for quantum sensing applications. They will be focusing on applications such as quantum-enhanced navigation, persistent Earth observation, and magnetic anomaly detection. They are developing ultrasensitive software-defined quantum sensors that has near-term applications in many fields such as defense, navigation, minerals exploration, climate monitoring, and many others. Part of the challenge in these applications is to stabilize the signals when these devices are employed on moving platforms and Q-CTRL’s software is able to help this and filter out some of the clutter. Q-CTRL’s is already participating in teams that have won over $60 million in publicly disclosed quantum sensing contracts for programs involving advanced navigation and space qualified quantum sensors. For more information about Q-CTRL’s sensing activities you can read a press release posted on their website here and a web page for quantum sensing here.
August 12, 2022
Rigetti Computing Announces 2nd Quarter Financial Results
Rigetti announced its second quarter 2022 financial results with revenues of $2.1 million versus $1.5 million in the second quarter of 2021. Gross profit increased slightly to about $1.3 million from about $1.2 million in the prior year. Total GAAP Operating Expenses for the second quarter 2022 were $26.9 million versus $10.9 million in the same period a year ago due to increases in headcount and other expenses due to its transition to a public company. Adjust EBITDA loss was $15.1 million compared to $8.1 million in 2021. And Net GAAP loss was about the same at $10.0 million in Q2 2022 versus $10.1 million in Q2 2021 helped by accounting changes in fair value of certain items and other factors. Click here for the rest of the article describing additional progress at Rigetti in technology, customer engagements, and financing.
August 5, 2022
D-Wave and DPCM Complete Their Business Combination
The companies announced that their SPAC merger has been approved and that D-Wave will become a public company and will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbols “QBTS” for the common stock and “QBTS WS” for the warrants. Members of the company’s management will ring the opening bell of the NYSE when trading starts on Monday, August 8. Click here for the rest of the article.
August 4, 2022 – News Brief
Rigetti Leading Team Awarded $2.9 Million from DARPA for Quantum Application Benchmarking
Rigetti is leading a team that also includes the University of Technology Sydney, Aalto University, and the University of Southern California which is receiving $2.9 million over a three year period subject to the achievement of certain milestones to develop benchmarks for quantum application performance on large-scale quantum computers. This is part of a larger program that DARPA announced in April 2021 which has also awarded contracts to three other teams earlier this year. The goal for this team will be to better understand how qubit errors occur, how the errors impact target applications, and what advances are needed in quantum hardware and software to achieve critical performance thresholds. The research will work to develop more detail models of qubit errors than exist with the simplified models available today as well as creating some of the first automated software tools for quantum performance analytics. Additional information about this award is available in a news release that can be accessed on the Rigetti website here.
August 3, 2022
Zurich Instruments Introduces a Parametric Amplifier Controller
It’s no secret that obtaining the lowest possible level of noise is critical in building quantum computers. And one of the key areas that engineers look at is the circuitry to readout the qubit state for measurement. For this reason, engineers designing superconducting or spin qubit quantum processors can often choose to use parametric amplifiers for amplifying the readout signals after they are detected. To facilitate the use of parametric amplifiers, Zurich Instruments has introduced their SHFPPC parametric amplifier controller that generates the necessary pump signals and active pump tone cancellation so that parametric amplification can be used. It is meant to work with their SHFQA Quantum Analyzer or the SHFQC Qubit Controller in superconducting or spin qubit based processors. Click here for our full article describing this new product announcement.
August 2, 2022
SandboxAQ Partners with evolutionQ on Quantum Safe Cybersecurity Products
Two companies working in the quantum cybersecurity area will be working together to promote each other’s products and leverage each other’s product and technical expertise. SandboxAQ will be able to offer evolutionQ’s BasejumpQDN product, a software package that manages QKD networks and optimizes them for the best efficiency, stability and latency. In return, evolutionQ will have the ability to integrate and distribute SandboxAQ’s Security Suite to its customers. In addition, SandboxAQ has made an investment in evolutionQ’s Series A funding, as part of SandboxAQ’s newly announced Strategic Investment Program. Click here for more.
August 1, 2022
NIST PQC Round 4 Candidate SIKE May Have Been Broken
We reported last month that NIST had selected four Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms for standardization in Round 3 and another four algorithms were selected for further analysis in Round 4. One of the algorithms selected for further study was SIKE (Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation). SIKE is a key encapsulation (KEM) algorithm based upon a fundamentally different approach (Supersingular Isogeny) than the lattice-based Kyber algorithms chosen for KEM applications in Round 3. But now, researchers at KU Leuven have published a preliminary paper claiming they were able to find an efficient key recovery attack for SIKEp434, security level 1 using a single core processor in about one hour’s time with a program they call Magma. Click here for our full article that covers this in more detail.
July 31, 2022 – News Brief
University of Oklahoma Receives $1 Million Grant to Study Quantum Synchronization
The grant was made by the W. M. Keck Foundation to the University of Oklahoma’s Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Quantum Research and Technology and will cover a three year period. The purpose will be to see how two neighboring cold atoms can use self-organization to be synchronized and achieve entanglement. This would be analogous to how many systems in the classical world, such as two neighboring pendulums, tend to get in sync. The researchers will try to different methods to get the atoms to synchronize. The first uses focused laser beams to create what is called an optical tweezer. And the second is to use what they call “quantum light” which is a stream of individual photons. Additional information about this grant and research is available in a news release located on the University of Oklahoma website here and also a grant abstract document available on the Keck Foundation website here.
July 30, 2022 – News Brief
Multiverse Collaborating with Bosch to Optimize Quality, Efficiency, and Performance in an Automotive Electronic Components Manufacturing Plant
Multiverse and Bosch will be working to create a quantum computing model of the machinery and process flow in at one of Bosch’s manufacturing plants in a process known as digital twin. This is a technique where a model of the activities in the facility will be created inside the computer and then enable various simulations and optimizations to be performed which can predict how the plant will perform under different scenarios. The companies will be using both customized quantum and quantum inspired algorithms developed by Multiverse in order to model an automotive electronic components plants located in Madrid, Spain. The companies hope to have first results of this pilot implementation by the end of the year with a goal of finding ways to enhance quality control, improve overall efficiencies, minimize waste, and lower energy usage. Bosch has a total of 240 manufacturing plants that include over 120,000 machines and 250,000 devices which are connected together to provide them with digital control and sensing to optimize performance. So a successful implementation of this digital twin concept could be extended to many more factories and provide Bosch with a significant productivity advantage in the future. A news release from Multiverse about this collaboration can be accessed on their website here.
July 29, 2022 – News Brief
Quandela Creates a Connector that Transpiles Gate-Based Programs So They Can Run on a Photonic Processor
A native quantum program for a photonic processor will be much different from a native gate-based program written for superconducting, ion trap, or other quantum modalities. On the other hand, there is already an extensive code back of quantum code that has been written in Qiskit and one other gate-based programming platforms that might benefit from being able to run on a photonic processor. Photonic technology may have some advantages over the other modes because these processors can run at room temperature and are less effected by the external environment which can harm the quality of the calculations. In order to provide another a path for users to try out a photonic processor, Quandela has introduced a “connector” that can take a program written in one of the third party quantum programming framework such as Qiskit and convert it to a photonic version that can run with Quadela’s open source Percival framework. Percival allows a user to design and simulate a photonic quantum program. Currently, Percival supports a photonic quantum simulator with a choice of four different algorithms as a backend. It will also support Quandela’s six qubit photonic processor slated to be available in the cloud in the autumn of 2022. For more information about the Percival framework and this new connector, you can view a LinkedIn posting here and also a web page for Percival here.
July 29, 2022
Quantum Computing Inc. Optimizes Vehicle Sensor Placement for BMW Using a New Type of Quantum Processor
The exercise was to perform an optimized placement of vehicle sensors as part of a Quantum Computing Challenge sponsored by BMW and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The problem required optimizing the placement of sensors on automobiles to reach the highest coverage at the minimum cost and the problem was configured as an optimization problem that included 3,854 variables and 500 constraints. But the breakthrough in this recent announcement is that QCI has provided a solution that provided similar coverage with only 15 sensors and 6 minutes of processor runtime. The key is a new type of quantum technology called Entropy Quantum Computing (EQC) that QCI obtained through their recent acquisition of Qphoton, a photonic quantum startup spun out of research by Dr. Yuping Huang from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. Click here for the full article.
July 26, 2022 – News Brief
Origin Quantum Secures a 1 Billion Yuan ($148.2M USD) Series B Funding Round
Original Quantum is a startup headquartered in Hefei, China and founded in 2017 by a team from the quantum information laboratory at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The company is believe to have over 300 employees with about 75% of them R&D personnel. They have been developing quantum processors based upon both superconducting and spin qubit technologies and have also developed a quantum computing software framework called Qpanda2 to build, run and optimize quantum algorithms along with a quantum operating system called Origin Pilot. They received a Series A funding of over 100 Million Yuan ($15.4M USD) in January 2021 and have now closed a Series B round of almost 1 billion yuan. The round was led by the government backed Shenzhen Capital Group’s Hotland Investment Asset Management with additional participation from CITIC Securities and China International Capital Corporation (CICC), Bank of China Group Investment Limited (BOCGI) and several other Chinese investment institutions. Additional details can be seen in an article posted in an article by Deal street Asiahere.
July 25, 2022 – News Brief
University of Chicago Introduces a Certificate Program in Quantum Science, Networking, and Communications
The University of Chicago in association with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is offering a seven week on-line course to prepare prepares students to enter the quantum field with demonstrations, simulations, and technical hands-on experience. It is geared towards early-career individuals ten years or less of professional experience and a bachelor’s or graduate degree in the sciences such as physics, computer science, engineering, or math as well as mid-career professionals seeking to transition into the quantum field. The course will consist of on-line evening lectures twice a week for seven weeks and self-paced modules to teach the student the theoretical and practical fundamentals of quantum computing and communications. Topics covered in the course include linear algebra frameworks of quantum information and computing, programming quantum circuits, fundamental quantum communication protocol, and physical components used in quantum networks and quantum computing. The course will be held from October 04, 2022 to November 20, 2022. A full description of the course can be found here and also a registration page can be accessed here.
July 24, 2022 – News Brief
IonQ Establishes German and Israeli Subsidiaries
IonQ is looking to expand its geographical reach and has formed IonQ GmbH in Germany and IonQ Israel LTD in Israel in order to better support their commercial partners in Europe and Israel. Establishment of the subsidiaries will also help to embed IonQ within the European and Israeli quantum ecosystem. Noam Zakay, formerly the Program Director of IBM Quantum Europe, will be responsible for business development and sales of these subsidiaries. Additional information is available in a news release posted on the IonQ website here.
July 23, 2022
Continued Progress at Google AI Quantum: QVM, Cirq 1.0, Surface Code Scaling, and More Sycamore Qubits
Google held its Quantum Summer Symposium last week and described a number of new developments that shows they are continuing to progress in their quantum developments. For our full article describing their new software development of a Quantum Virtual Machine (QVM), their promotion of the Cirq SDK to version 1.0 which is its first formal release, a technical paper that shows progress in error correction as more complex codes are implemented, and a 72 qubit version of Sycamore, click here.
July 22, 2022
IQM Raises €128 Million ($130M USD) in Series A2 Funding
The funding was led by World Fund with additional participation from Bayern Kapital, EIC Fund, OurCrowd, QCI SPV, Tofino and Varma, as well as existing investors Maki.vc, Matadero QED, MIG Fonds, OpenOcean, Salvia GmbH, Santo Venture Capital GmbH, Tencent, Tesi, and Vsquared. IQM is building superconducting based quantum processors, but has taken a different commercialization strategy than some of the other hardware providers. Click here for more.
July 22, 2022 – News Brief
Atlantic Quantum Secures $9 Million in Seed Round Funding
Atlantic Quantum is a spinout from the Engineering Quantum Systems (EQuS) group at MIT formed in early 2022. They are developing a scalable, fault tolerant quantum processor using superconducting technology. They assert that they have a superior approach for superconducting qubits because they are using a new type of noise-protected qubit that will improve coherence times by an order of magnitude along with a control scheme that will make scaling easier. Their seed round funding was led by The Engine with additional participation from Thomas Tull, Glasswing Ventures, Future Labs Capital, and E14. The company will use the funds to expand their technical teams in both Cambridge, Massachusetts and Gothenburg, Sweden. Additional information is available in a press release can be seen here.
July 21, 2022
Silex Completes Construction of Stage 3 Pilot Demonstration Facility to Produce Purified Silicon Wafers for Quantum
Natural Silicon consists of three isotopes including Si-28 (92.2%) which has zero nuclear spin, Si-29 (4.7%) which has a spin state of 1/2, and Si-30 (3.1%) which has also has zero spin. Natural silicon is perfectly fine for semiconductor processing since transistors are not sensitive to nuclear spins. But for spin qubits built on silicon wafers, the Si-29 is a problem since the 1/2 spin state will hurt the coherence times. So Australian company, Silex Systems Limited, has construction of a pilot demonstration facility that uses a SILEX laser isotope separation (LIS) platform technology to remove the Si-29 and provide customers with starting silicon that has no residual spin. Click here for our full article that describes this project.
July 20, 2022
QuEra Launches Bloqade, a Quantum Simulation Package for Neutral-Atom Quantum Architectures
Some of the neutral-atom quantum computers, notably those developed Pasqal and QuEra, support what is called an analog mode as well as the more familiar digital mode used in other technologies. Although the analog mode may not be as universally applicable as the digital mode might be, it is also less effected by noise issues. For some computational problems, analog mode may prove to be a better alternative to digital mode by providing an earlier means to reach quantum advantage. Commonly used quantum program platforms, such as Qiskit, Cirq, QDK, and others do not support simulating this mode so QuEra decided to create one. Click here for the rest of our article that describes this new Bloqade software for simulating analog mode on a neutral-atom processor.
July 20, 2022
BASF and PASQAL Collaborate to Predict Climate Change Impacts
BASF and PASQAL just announced that they will collaborate to explore how quantum computing will improve complex weather modeling applications used to simulate crop yield and growth stages and predict drift when applying crop protection products. Quantum technology will allow BASF to expand well beyond today’s classical HPC capabilities, prepare for climate change impact and help drive a more sustainable future. Click here for more.
July 19, 2022 – News Brief
BosonQ Psi Raises $525,000 in Pre-Seed Funding
BosonQ Psi is a company founded in India in 2020 that provides quantum powered cloud simulation software called BQPhy for enterprise customers in areas such as structural mechanics, thermal analysis, design optimization, fluid mechanics, acoustics analysis, electrochemistry analysis, electromagnetics analysis, multiphysics simulations, and digital twin simulations. The funding round was led by 3TO1 Capital with additional participation from India and US-based angel investors. The company has produced a prototype of their BQPhy software and plans on using the funds to further develop the software and release alpha and beta versions later in 2022. A press release announcing the pre-seed funding is available on the BosonQ website here.
July 18, 2022 – News Brief
D-Wave Collaborating with Mastercard to Find Quantum Solutions for Challenges in the Financial Services Industry
Mastercard is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York with over 24,000 employees and 2021 revenues exceeding $18.8 billion. They have a mission to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. And one of the tools they use to do this is to leverage advanced technology as much as possible to fulfill their mission. They have reached a multi-year strategic alliance agreement with D-Wave to explore the adoption of quantum computing solutions in their business. Some of the problems they will be working on may include things like developing more efficient settlement procedures for cross border payments, providing consumers with more choice and personalization, optimizing consumer rewards programs at an individual level, and finding more effective fraud detection algorithms that can result in earlier detection. They will be using D-Wave’s Leap™ quantum cloud service for creating and running the algorithms in real time. For more about this collaboration, you can view a news release provided by D-Wave that can be accessed here and also a short video that shows some of the potential applications here.
July 18, 2022
Israel Investing 100 Million NIS ($29M USD) to Establish the Israel Quantum Computing Center
The budget of 100 Million New Israeli Shekels (NIS) will cover a three year period and will be provided by the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA). The center will work with three different quantum technologies including superconducting, cold atoms, and photonic along with the associated software. Quantum Machines has been selected to lead the establishment of the center with their Quantum Machines’ Quantum Orchestration Platform being a key component in the project. Click here for our full article with more details about this project.
July 16, 2022
NIST Announces Collaborating Vendors in the Migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography Project
Although NIST has announced their first selections of recommended algorithms to use for PQC, there is still a great amount of work to do. It is not a simple matter of unplugging the module that uses legacy RSA encryption and plugging in the new algorithms. So, the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has created a project to develop white papers, playbooks, demonstrations, and tools that can help other organizations implement their conversions to Post-Quantum-Cryptography (PQC) . They have recruited a consortium of partners who would help with this project and selected 12 partners to work with them under the terms of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). Click here to read our full article about this project and the list of selected partners.
July 15, 2022 – News Brief
D-Wave and DPCM Capital Reach One More Milestone on their Way to a SPAC Merger
As originally announced earlier this year, D-Wave intends on becoming a public company through the execution of a merger with DPCM, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). After the filing of an S-4 registration form that provides details of the business combination with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the form is reviewed by the SEC and deemed “Effective” if no issues are found. And this is what occurred earlier this week. The next step will be a shareholders vote which is now scheduled for August 2, 2022. Assuming the shareholders vote “FOR” the business combination, the merger will be completed and D-Wave will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The new ticker symbols will be QBTS for the common stock of the company and QBTS.WS for the warrants. Although the market environment for SPACs is not as strong as it once was, the deal has some unusual provisions because a 5 million share bonus pool has been created to reward DPCM shareholders who chose to become D-Wave stockholders rather than cashing in their shares. Additional information about the business combination and the declaration that the registration statement is effective can be found in a press release posted on the D-Wave website here and as well as all the filings the companies have provided to the SEC which can be accessed on the SEC website here.
July 14, 2022
Quantinuum Expands Relationship with JSR Corporation to Research Semiconductor Materials Using Quantum Computing
In this latest announcement, JSR will work with Quantinuum to model complex organic and inorganic semiconductor materials. They will be using Quantinuum’s recently announced InQuanto software to make accurate predictions of the physical properties of various materials, such as optical absorption and conductivity, and help identify new materials which could benefit future semiconductor devices. Click here to read our full article about this collaboration.
July 12, 2022
Quantum Source Secures $15 Million in Seed Round Funding to Develop Photonic Quantum Computer Technology that Can Scale to Millions of Qubits
Israel based Quantum Source has received $15 Million in venture funding from Grove Ventures, Pitango First, and Eclipse Ventures. They are developing technology for a large quantum computer based upon photonic technology. Quantum Source has a goal of developing photonic quantum computing technology that can be scaled to millions of qubits. There are other companies that are pursuing a similar strategy with photonic technology, but Quantum Source is using a unique technology that uses something called photon-atom gates that could potentially give them an advantage. Click here more.
July 12, 2022
Nvidia Introduces their QODA (Quantum-Optimized Device Architecture) Platform for Hybrid Quantum-Classical Computing
Nvidia continues to expand their offerings to the quantum community. Last year, they introduced their cuQuantum SDK for implementing high performance simulation of quantum programs using their Nvidia GPU’s. They have now announced a new platform called QODA (Quantum-Optimized Device Architecture) that also enables the development and compilation of quantum-classical programs for hybrid environments that include classical CPU’s, GPUs, and quantum QPU’s connected together. Click here for the rest of the article.
July 9, 2022
Two More Quantum Network Testbeds Being Installed in Quebec, Canada and The Netherlands
The first quantum network is being set up by Numana, a non-profit organization located in Quebec, Canada with a mission to be a catalyst for technological ecosystems, and Bell Canada. With a budget of $3.75 million CAD ($2.89M USD) it will be launched initially in Sherbrooke in early fall 2022 with subsequent extensions planned for Montreal and Quebec City. The second quantum network testbed will be established in The Netherlands by QuTech, Eurofiber and Juniper Networks. This network will connect several datacenter locations in The Netherlands. It will test out the integration of a quantum networking concept called MDI-QKD (Measurement Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution) with a commercial optical fiber network from Eurofiber along with routing, switching and security solutions from Juniper Networks. Click here to read out full article about these projects.
July 8, 2022 – News Brief
Oxford Ionics and Infineon Technologies Partner to Develop Microwave Controlled Trapped Ion Processors
While most of the companies pursuing trapped ion quantum processors that use lasers to control the qubits, Oxford Ionics is taking a different approach and using microwaves to control the gate operation. Their thinking it that using microwave control is easier to scale than multiple lasers while retaining the high gate fidelity levels inherent in ion trapped qubits. It also makes the processor chip more amenable to being built with semiconductor fabrication processes, which is where Infineon Technologies can help. By leveraging Infineon’s precision semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, they can create qubits which are predictable, repeatable, and reliable. The companies have aggressive development plans. The first Oxford Ionics device is slated to be available on the cloud by the end of 2022, with scaling to hundreds of qubits within the next two years. And within five years, Oxford Ionics vision to to have available supercomputing clusters networked together with a quantum networking technology providing computational capability of hundreds or thousands of qubits. For additional information, you can view the press release announcing the partnership located on the Infineon website here. You can also see additional information on web pages describing Infineon’s research into trapped ions and other quantum technology here and here.
July 7, 2022 – News Brief
Quantum Machines Partners with Toyota Tsusho for the Japan Market
Toyota Tsusho is a member of the Toyota Group, but they are involved in many more industries than just automobiles. The company operates in about 130 countries and has over 65,000. Major businesses include Metals, Global Parts & Logistics, Automotive, Machinery, Energy & Project, Chemicals & Electronics, Food & Consumer Services, and Africa. With such a wide portfolio they have many business that may be able to take advantage of quantum computing in the future. Quantum Machines partnership with them will enable Toyota Tsusho’s customers to build quantum capabilities and integrate quantum technology into their operation. As part of this partnership, Toyota Tsusho will be leveraging Quantum Machines’ Quantum Orchestration Platform (QOP) and other Quantum Machine’s products. For more information about this partnership, you can view a news release provided by Quantum Machines which is available here.
July 7, 2022 – News Brief
Quix Receives €5.5 Million ($5.6M USD) in Seed Round Funding
Quix new investors include PhotonDelta, FORWARD.one and Oost NL and the funding will be used for further development of Quix’s quantum photonic processor chips. They recent delivered a 20 qumode chip to the European project PHOQUSING and are currently working on having a full 20 qumode processor by early 2023. After that they plan on developing a 50 qumode processor. Quix’ photonic technology has very low optical losses and runs at room temperature, unlike other technologies that require expensive cryocoolers for low temperature operation. You can view Quix new release announcing this funding on their website here.
July 5, 2022 – News Brief
Oxford Quantum Circuits Secures £38 Million ($46M USD) in Series A Funding
Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) has raised this investment fund from Lansdowne Partners, The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), British Patient Capital and existing investors Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and Oxford Investment Consultants (OIC). It is the largest Series A fund raise for any UK quantum company. The company will be using the funding to scale up its quantum processors and to expand internationally in the Asia-Pacific region. The company’s processors are based upon superconducting technology, but a distinguishing innovation is something they call Coaxmon. Coaxmon implements three dimensional circuits that can allows them to move control circuity off of the chip that contains the qubits. The company indicates this innovation will allow them to more easily scale the qubit count without degrading qubit quality and control. Earlier this year, OQC announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to make their “Lucy” 8 qubit processor available on AWS’ Braket service. This makes them the first European company to do so and helps end UK end users who are concerned about data residency requirements. You can access OQC’s press release announcing this investment on their website here.
July 5, 2022
NIST Announces Round 3 Algorithms for Standardization and Round 4 Algorithms for Continued Study
In another important milestone for Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC), NIST has selected the first batch of algorithms from Round 3 that will be standardized and additional algorithms that will be analyzed during a Round 4 for potential additional standardization. The algorithms selected for standardization include CRYSTALS-KYBER for key-establishment and CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon, SPHINCS+ for digital signatures. Additional algorithms Classic McEliece, Bike, HQC, and SIKE were selected for further study in Round 4. See our full article about this here.
July 2, 2022 – News Brief
QuSecure Wins SBIR Phase III Contract from the U.S. Government for Post-Quantum Cybersecurity
QuSecure, a company founded in 2019 and located in San Mateo, California, has secured a SBIR Phase III contract to implement their QuProtect post-quantum cryptographic solution to more than a dozen Federal Government agencies. Previously the company had started with a Phase I award from the U.S. Air Force in March 2020 to demonstrate their solution and a follow-on Phase II award in early 2022. This Phase III award will allow them to commercialize their technology. This Phase III award is the only one so far awarded by the U.S. government for post quantum cryptography and makes the company the Federal Government’s first PQC provider. The amount of the award has not been made public at this point but we estimate it is at least seven figures. Additional details can be found in a press release provided by QuSecure which you can find here.
July 2, 2022
Another Metropolitan Quantum Network Being Set Up in the Washington DC Area
A new metropolitan quantum network is being formed to join ones already started in Chicago, Long Island New York, and London. This one will be in the Washington DC area and will be called the Washington Metropolitan Quantum Network Research Consortium (DC-QNet). It will includes six U.S. government agencies located in the area and two additional affiliates outside of the region. Click here for our full article describing this new network.
July 2, 2022 – News Brief
qBraid Announces an Integration of their qBraid Lab SDK with Amazon Braket
The qBraid Lab SDK created by qBraid has three interesting features that can make it easier and faster for an end user to run a circuit on multiple platforms. The first is a “write-once-and-submit” function which can allow a user to create a circuit and submit it to multiple quantum hardware platforms and simulators without having to individually submit each one. The second is a circuit transpiler that supports over 20 different quantum hardware and simulation platforms that will take a circuit written in one quantum language and convert it so it can run on the many platforms including IBM Qiskit, Google Cirq, Xanadu Pennylane, Rigetti Pyquil and others. And the third feature is a mechanism to retrieve and manage the results of the multiple runs. The software is particularly useful for those who want to run a circuit on multiple platforms to compare the results of each platform. For example, Amazon Braket alone provides access to six different quantum computers and three different simulators and qBraid provides a pay-as-you-go model for accessing any of these. Additional information about the qBraid Lab, its integration with Amazon Braket, you can see a blog located on the qBraid website here.
July 1, 2022
NIST to Announce PQC Algorithm Selections on July 5, 2022
NIST has indicated that they will announce which of the Round 3 Post Quantum Cryptography algorithms they will select for standardization and also which of the alternatives will proceed on to Round 4 for analysis on July 5, 2022. This will represent a major milestone in a process that was started in late 2016. Click here for more.
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- Source: https://quantumcomputingreport.com/news/
