News - Rev 1

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.

February 25, 2022 Super.tech Receives a $1.65 Million SBIR Award and QuantrolOx Raises £1.4 Million ($1.88M USD) in Seed Funding Two quantum software companies have received funding this week, but in different ways. Super.tech has won an SBIR Phase 2 award from the U.S. Department of Energy for further development of their software. And UK company QuantrolOx closed seed funding for further development of their machine learning software to automatically tune, calibrate, stabilize and optimize qubits. Click here for the full article.

February 25, 2022 - News Brief Quside Introduces a New Quantum Random Number Generator Chip The chip, called the QN 100, can generate random bits at a fast rate of 1 gigabits per second (Gbps). It works by measuring the quantum random phase in light pulses. It can be used to generate secure cryptographic keys or other applications where fully random numbers are required. The company is a spinoff of The Institute of Photonic Science (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain and they are working with a pure-play semiconductor foundry to have the chip fabricated in a reliable and repeatable manner typical of semiconductors. Additional information about this chip is available in a news release located on their website here and also a product page which describes the QN 100 in more detail here.

February 24, 2022 - News Brief The Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Has Open Sourced a Quantum Control Electronics Design The design is meant to supply all the room temperature control electronics to control the qubits in a superconducting based quantum computer. It is called QubiC and includes FPGAs, Analog to Digital Converters (ADC), Digital to Analog Converters (DAC) and other logic to generate the necessary control pulse to operate a superconducting qubit as well as perform the readout measurement to determine a qubit’s state. The design is customizable and modular and can be adapted to different user’s configurations. Although there are many commercial companies offering control electronic systems for controlling qubits, none of them are open sourced. AQT is hoping that an open-sourced design can be leveraged by the broader quantum information science community to access and improve the design in a way that is similar to what occurs frequently with open-sourced software. Additional information about this design can be found in a blog posted on Phys.org here, a more detailed technical paper posted on IEEE Xplore here, and the open-sourced design files posted on GitHub here.

February 24, 2022 - News Brief Quantum Machines Announces General Availability of Its Pulse Processing Unit (PPU) for Real Time Qubit Control The Quantum Machines Pulse Processing Unit (PPU), codenamed Hadamard, consists of an FPGA based unit with 18 processor cores that includes multiple waveform generators, digitizers, and processing units. It works with the rest of the OPX+ which includes analog to digital and digital to analog converters as well as a communications backplane which will provide all the needed control interfaces to the qubits. A key feature of the PPU is that it includes flexible, real-time control capabilities to support such things as error correction, mid-circuit measurements and If/Else and Case statements for conditional execution in real time. These capabilities allow the unit to alter the operation during the execution based upon conditions inside the circuit. Many other control implementations do not currently have this capability and will just provide a series of control pulses that were pre-planned ahead of time. Quantum Machines indicated that this capability has been able to speed up circuit execution by up to 5000 times in some situations. The PPU can be programmed with QUA, Quantum Machines Python-based quantum pulse-level programming language. For more, you can access Quantum Machines announcement about the general availability of this new Pulse Processing Unit here.

February 24, 2022 New Quantum Partnerships Form Between Zapata/Andretti Motorsports and Strangeworks/Quantum Algorithms Institute Companies are leveraging advances in technology via collaboration to expedite use cases and to build quantum infrastructure. Click here for two recent examples of how Zapata and Andretti Motorsports and also Strangeworks and the Quantum Algorithms Institute are working together to advance the technology.

February 23, 2022 Two New Quantum Benchmarking Suites Announced by IonQ and Super.Tech  IonQ and Super.Tech have disclosed their own quantum benchmarking suites called Algorithmic Qubits and SuperMarQ, respectively. Both benchmark suites are based upon running common quantum algorithms rather than randomized circuits. And the Boston Consulting Group published a white paper that companies some of the existing benchmarks and discusses how benchmarks can be a key source of competitive advantage for investors and end users. Click here to read details about all of these.

February 23, 2022 Deloitte Quantum Climate Challenge seeks to Optimize Climate Impacts of Air Travel Deloitte Consulting is sponsoring a Quantum Climate Challenge to address issues of climate change associated with air travel. The effects of air travel on localized and global climate are a complex calculation in which clouds caused by aircraft contrails can have a warming or a cooling effect on the climate. The best submissions will have the opportunity to present at the Deloitte Greenhouse in Berlin and be eligible to win part of the €12,000 prize pool. For more information about this quantum challenge, click here to read our article with additional information.

February 22, 2022 - News Brief Quantinuum and IBM Announce an Expansion of the IBM Quantum Hub at Cambridge Quantum and an Addition to IBM’s Financial Investment in Quantinuum In July of 2020, Cambridge Quantum Computing, now a part of Quantinuum, announced that they were the first startup company selected to be a hub in the IBM Q Network. The companies have now agreed to expand the IBM Quantum Hub capability at Cambridge Quantum to allow their clients greater access to IBM’s quantum computing systems including IBM’s recently announced 127 qubit processor. Even though the other part of Quantinuum, formerly Honeywell Quantum Solutions, has its own ion trap based quantum processor, this continues Cambridge Quantum’s strategy of offering support for a broad range of quantum processors including the superconducting based processors provided by IBM in order to support a variety of client needs. Similarly, IBM had announced in February 2020 that they would be making an equity investment in Cambridge Quantum. Now that Cambridge Quantum has been merged into Quantinuum, IBM’s stake has been transferred to the new company and the companies have now announced that IBM Ventures is adding to this previous investment. At this point, Quantinuum has three significant strategic shareholders in Honeywell, IBM and JSR Corp. You can view Quantinuum’s announcement of these two events in a press release available on their website here.

February 21, 2022 New Quantum Programming Languages Introduced by MIT and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) MIT and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have introduced new quantum programming languages that to provide specific features not available with some of the other programming platforms that are available. The MIT language is called Twist and is intended to help prorammers ensure the correctness of their quantum programs. The CAS language is called isQ-Core and has been developed to support the cloud-based quantum computer systems deployed by CAS. Click here for more.

February 20, 2022 Infineon Introduces Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Chip with Quantum Resistant Firmware Update Capability Infineon has introduced a news chips called Optiga TPM that includes firmware download capability using the quantum resistant XMSS digital signature algorithm. TPM chips are secure crypto-processors that is designed to carry out cryptographic operations and provide a root-of-trust for the rest of the system. This is the first commercial chip we are aware of that has this type of quantum resistant functionality built-in. Click here for our full articles on this.

February 19, 2022 - News Brief JPMorgan Chase, Toshiba, and Ciena Demonstrate a QKD Protected Blockchain Application A research team from JP Morgan Chase, Toshiba, and Ciena have demonstrated a quantum protected blockchain application over a 70 kilometer fiber optic cable. The demonstration was able to multiplex one QKD (Quantum Key Distribution) channel, two 800 gigabit/second channels (Gbps), and eight 100 gigabit/second channels over a single fiberoptic cable using DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology. The QKD channel was used to supply up to 258 AES-256 keys at a refresh rate of 1 key/second for the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithm and the 800 Gbps and 100 Gbps channels were used to transmit the encrypted data using the AES keys supplied by the QKD channel. Additional tests were performed with an extended distance of 100 km, although the Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER) increased significantly and the secret key rate decreased significantly at the longer distance. To learn more about this demonstration, you can view a news announcement provided by JP Morgan Chase here and view a technical paper which describes this experiment in much more detail here.

February 18, 2022 - News Brief Rigetti Demonstrates Two-Qubit Gate Fidelities as High as 99.5% on a Test Device One of the most important measures of qubit quality is the two-qubit gate fidelity. All the quantum hardware providers are working to improve this measure in their next generation devices. Without further improvements, it will be difficult for any company to run any NISQ algorithms that provide accurate answers or meet the required error rate threshold for error correction techniques to actually work. Rigetti Computing is also working on this and announced that they have achieved two-qubit gate fidelities on a 9 qubit test device as high as 99.5% with a median of 99.2%. This level would be competitive with some of the very best quantum processors that we track on our Qubit Quality page. For comparison, Rigetti’s has reported that their latest 80 qubit production machine, named Aspen-M-1, is providing two-qubit median fidelities between 92.7%-95.8% depending upon the particular gate type. The next step for Rigetti will be to incorporate the techniques and processes they have developed with this test chip into a future revision of a production device that can maintain this level of gate fidelity on a device that has many more qubits. Additional information is available in a news release provided by Rigetti available here.

February 18, 2022 - News Brief IonQ Partners with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to Create a Reliable Source of Barium for IonQ’s Quantum Computers IonQ had announced last December that its next generation quantum computers would use Barium ions for its qubits instead of the Ytterbium ions it has been using. At the time, they cited a number of reasons for doing so including lower error rates, higher gate fidelity, better state detection, better reliability, and easier to network for creating modular systems. However, the source for the Barium material may not be available off-the-shelf, particularly if there are requirements for very high purity or a specific Barium isotope. To ensure a reliable source, IonQ has partnered with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to ensure a sustainable domestic supply of the material. In addition, the team has been able to reduce the size of the Barium source material to microscopic scale which will be a benefit in IonQ’s efforts to miniaturize its systems. In related developments, IonQ has joined the Northwest Quantum Nexus (NQN), along with Microsoft, the University of Washington (UW) and PNNL and also announced that it plans to soon create a product engineering facility in the Seattle area. You can view IonQ’s announcement of its partnership with PNNL in a news release located here.

February 17, 2022 Israeli Government to Fund Quantum Computer Development with a Budget of 200 Million Israeli New Shekels ($62M USD) The project was announced by Israel’s Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Research and Development (MAFAT) and the Innovation Authority and will consist of two tracks. The first will be led by the Innovation Authority with a project to develop a quantum processor with about 20 qubits. The second track, led by MAFAT, will establish a national quantum capabilities center with support from the industry and academia. The agencies believe it is a national security issue to have this quantum independence capability, so they don’t get left behind or prevented from utilizing quantum technology due to another country’s export controls. To read our full article about this announcement, click here.

February 17, 2022 - News Brief Classiq Raises $33 Million in a Series B Round This round adds new investors including Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, the venture capital program of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE); Phoenix, a $60-billion insurance company; Spike Ventures, a Stanford alumni investor group; and Samsung NEXT, the investment and personal investments from Lip-Bu Tan and Harvey Jones. It also includes existing investors Wing VC, Team8, Entrée Capital, Sumitomo Corp. (through IN Venture) and OurCrowd. This brings the total funding for the company to $48 million since it was founded in early 2020. Classiq provides quantum programming software that automatically transforms high-level functional models into optimized quantum circuits for a wide range of hardware and cloud providers. The addition of Lip-Bu Tan and Harvey Jones to their investor base is particularly significant because Tan is the executive chairman of Cadence Design Systems and Jones is the former president and CEO of Synopsys. Both gentlemen are intimately familiar with the challenges in providing high level electronic design software for classical computing integrated circuits and should be able to share valuable insights for similar issues that are sure to come up with quantum computing circuits. Classiq will use the funds to quadruple the company’s headcount by adding both engineering and sales support personnel. They are planning to expand their office in the U.S. and open new offices in Europe and Japan for sales and support. The bulk of their engineering activities will remain in Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information about this funding round, you can view Classiq’s press announcement available here.

February 16, 2022 - News Brief Atom Computing, ColdQuanta, Meadowlark Optics, and SPIE Join the University of Colorado Boulder’s CUbit Quantum Initiative These four companies will be the first four strategic industry partners who are joining this program. The CUbit Quantum Initiative is an interdisciplinary hub of organizations in Colorado that work in quantum information science and technology. The initiative partners with regional universities and laboratories, quantum related companies, and serves a spectrum of local, regional and national interests. Key activities of CUbit are to perform joint research in areas of common interest and also to collaborate on workforce development programs, and provide real-world opportunities for CU Boulder students and researchers. Colorado is striving to become a key hub in quantum technology and already has several prominent quantum organizations from industry, academia, and government labs located in the state. Additional information about the CUbit Quantum Initiative and its new industry partners can be found in a new release located here and also a blog post from Atom Computing here.

February 16, 2022 Rigetti and Ampere Partner to Develop Cloud-native Hybrid Quantum-Classical Computers Rigetti is partnering with Ampere, a manufacturer of very high performance classical microprocessors to develop high-performance hybrid quantum-classical computers for use in cloud installations. They will also work together to optimize Rigetti's quantum simulation software for best performance on Ampere's microprocessors. Click here for the full article.

February 15, 2022 Rigetti Announces Commercial Availability of their 80 Qubit Aspen-M and a Teaming with NASDAQ to Explore Financial Applications of QC Rigetti has taken the next step with their 80 qubit Aspen-M-1 processor by making it commercial available on both Rigetti’s Quantum Cloud Service (QCS) and also on the Amazon Braket service. Previously, this machine was only available for private beta testing through QCS. In another announcement, Rigetti announced that they have reached a collaborative agreement with Nasdaq (Nasdaq:NDAQ) to explore quantum applications to help solve high-impact computational problems in the financial industry. Click here for the full article that describes both announcements in more detail.

February 14, 2022 - News Brief University of Strathclyde Will Lead Two Quantum Programs with a Total Budget of £960,000 ($1.3M USD) The first program is an International Network in Space Quantum Technologies which will include a consortium of 37 members in 13 countries, including four industrial partners, to develop satellite-enabled quantum-secure communication and Earth observation. It will tackle the technical challenges of putting quantum technology into space including the radiation environment in space, autonomous and remote operation and the limited size, weight and power constraints of satellites. This program will be funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) with a budget of £480,000. The second program is an International Network for Microfabrication of Atomic Quantum Sensors. This program will develop the next generation of miniaturized quantum sensors, with potential applications in healthcare, navigation, finance, communication and security. It is also funded by UKRI with a budget of £480,000. Additional information about these two quantum related awards is available in a news release on the University of Strathclyde website here.

February 12, 2022 - News Brief Quantum Motion Opens a New Lab in London Quantum Motion, a quantum hardware company spun out by academics from University College London (UCL) and Oxford University, has opened up a new development lab in the Islington section of London.  The lab will employ 25 full time staff including quantum theorists, physicists and integrated circuit (IC) engineers. Quantum Motion is developing a quantum processor using silicon-based spin qubits and has received almost £20 million ($27M USD) in equity and grant funding. Additional information about Quantum Motion and this new lab is available in a post on the UCL website here and another brief post on the Quantum MRotion website here.

February 12, 2022 Quantum South Releases Air Cargo Optimization Application Quantum South, a software development company based in Uruguay, has announced the release of software to optimize logistics and arrangement of air cargo for transport. The software utilizes the power of quantum computing to handle multiple variable optimization problems, as loading companies must take into account load shape, weight, and center of gravity as well as important plane and flight characteristics such as shear and fuselage shape. Click here for the rest of the article.

February 12, 2022 Who’s News: Management Updates at Rigetti, Cambridge Quantum, and QuintessenceLabs Rigetti Computing, Cambridge Quantum and QuintessenceLabs have all recent announced new additions to their management team. Click here to find out who has joined each of these organizations.

February 10, 2022 Duke University and IonQ Develop New Types of N-Qubit Gates Duke University and IonQ have developed is a way to implement various types of N-Qubit gates, including the Toffoli gate, natively in one level. Using these gates can potentially simplify and speed up the function while simultaneously offering a reduced error versus the synthesizing the N-Qubit gates from single and 2-qubit gates. And this approach is not just limited to three qubits. It can potentially be used on all the qubits in the ion trap chain. It can potentially be a significant benefit to programmers, depending upon the particular algorithm they are implementing. Click here for the full article.

February 10, 2022 - News Brief Rigetti and Zapata Partner to Integrate Zapata’s Software Into Rigetti’s Quantum Cloud Services (QCS) Although Zapata Computing has been supporting Rigetti’s processors for a long time, this new development will represent a tighter integration that will provide additional improvements. Many of the quantum programs being run today are hybrid classical/quantum programs that require usage of both types of resources to arrive at a result. Because of this, the efficiency of the interface between the classical and quantum resources becomes very important and can have a big impact on the overall runtime for a particular program. The new development will integrate Orquestra, Zapata’s unified platform for building and deploying quantum applications, directly with Rigetti’s Quantum Cloud Services (QCS). In order to run a particular hybrid program, the classical and quantum processor may need to exchange data thousands of times and this integration will improve the speed of those exchanges and reduce overall latency for the end users. In addition, this improvement in latency may have an interesting side effect in improving solution quality because the qubit calibrations in a quantum processor tend to drift over time which can start causing more errors. By shortening the runtime of a program, the amount of drift is also minimized. Integrating the software will also provide other advantages by enabling the optimization and automation of the compiler toolchain for error mitigation purposes. This integrated compiler toolchain functionality is expected to be available to customers in Q2 2022. For more information, you can access the announcement of this partnership posted on the Zapata website here.

February 9, 2022 - News Brief Nord Quantique Receives $9.5 Million CAD ($7.5M USD) in Seed Funding The funding was led by BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund and Paris-based Quantonation VC fund. Previous investor Real Ventures also participated in this round. Nord Quantique is developing a superconducting quantum processor that will use bosonic codes to provide error mitigated qubits. They believe that their approach will result in lower error qubits than other superconducting qubit implementations. Nord Quantique, founded in 2020, is located in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada and is a partner of the Sherbrooke Quantum Innovation Zone. Additional information can be found in a news release posted on the Nord Quantique website here.

February 9, 2022 Germany Expands its Quantum Computing Roadmap with QuaST Germany aims to become a leader in quantum technologies and is rapidly rolling out its roadmap. A newly launched Quantum-enabling Services and Tools for Industrial Applications (QuaST) Consortium will enable rapid quantum adoption without requiring relevant prior knowledge or major investment. QuaST will supply end-users with high-level libraries that automatically decompose a solution into parts requiring classical, high-performance or quantum computing, according to the problem submitted. The parts requiring quantum computing are then optimized and mapped onto the hardware, including a co-design process. Potential applications include logistic optimization, scheduling in production management, health care and drug development and cases from automotive and cybersecurity. Click here for more.

February 8, 2022 D-Wave Will Go Public with a SPAC Transaction and an Estimated Market Cap of $1.6 Billion D-Wave will merge with DPCM Capital, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), in a transaction that will have a pro-forma implied market capitalization of the combined company of about $1.6 billion USD. The pre-money valuation of D-Wave will be $1.2 billion. The transaction is similar to those that have been announced with IonQ and Rigetti, but it does include a few twists. Like the other transactions, D-Wave will receive an infusion of cash of about $340 million. This will come from the $300 million of cash in DPCM existing trust with an additional $40 million in a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) transaction from a group of strategic and institutional investors. Click here to view the rest of the article.

February 7, 2022 - News Brief Zapata Computing and Qureca Announce an Online QC Training Course The two companies are partnering to offer a self-pace online course called Quantum Training for Enterprises that will cover quantum computing basics, challenges and potential impact in the near term. The course is configured as a modular course taught by Zapata executives, scientists and engineering experts which can be completed in about 3 weeks with a time commitment of about 2 hours each week. Altogether there are eight modules including a Getting Started and Wrap-up module. Completion certificates are provided for those who pass all the quizzes at the end of each lesson. For those who are already clients of Zapata, the course is available at no extra charge. The course is also available for those who are not Zapata clients at a price of £1,000 ($1353 USD) by registering directly on the Qureca website. A news release announcing this training course is available on the Zapata website here and a more detailed description of the course can be found on the Qureca website here.

February 6, 2022 - News Brief Polaris Quantum Biotech and Allosteric Bioscience Partner to Research Use of Quantum for Improving Aging and Longevity Polaris Quantum Biotech (Polarisqb) is a quantum software company that uses quantum computing and artificial intelligence to process, evaluate and identify drug lead molecules 10,000 times faster than alternative solutions. Allosteric Bioscience is a company formed in 2021 to utilize quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other sciences to create improved treatments for aging, longevity, and aging related diseases. The goal of the partnership will be to leverage their respective technologies to create an inhibitor of a key protein involved in human aging and longevity. Polarisqb will be using its Tachyontm drug design platform and Allosteric Bioscience will be using its  two aging platforms: “ALT” – Aging Longevity Targets and “ALM” – Aging Longevity Modulators for this research. As part of the agreement Allosteric Bioscience will also be making an equity investment in Polarisqb. For more information about this partnership, you can view a news release available here.

February 5, 2022 - News Brief Quebec-IBM Discovery Accelerator Launched and Will Receive an IBM System Quantum Processor in 2023 In a partnership between the Government of Quebec and IBM, they will set up the Quebec-IBM Discovery Accelerator to develop new projects, collaborations, and build skills, and investigate solutions to problems in critical areas of research such as energy, life sciences, and sustainability. The Discovery Accelerator will be working to research advanced in other advanced computing technologies including AI and High Performance Classical Computing (HPC), in addition to its activities in quantum computing. As part of this effort IBM will install a model of its IBM Q System One quantum processor in early 2023 at one of its facilities Bromont, Quebec alongside a new high-performance classical computing cluster for AI. This will be the fifth processor that IBM will be installing outside of its base in New York state and will follow other installations that have occurred or are being planned in Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. IBM has issued both a press release and a blog that provides additional information related to this announcement, and you can view them here and here.

February 5, 2022 - News Brief Microsoft Offering Free Credits to Try Out Azure Quantum Microsoft has initiated a program to provide $500 of free credits for use of Azure Quantum for each of its partners. The systems currently available are IonQ’s QPU (as well as their free Simulator) and Quantinuum’s H1 QPU and Emulator and soon they will be adding superconducting systems from Rigetti and Quantum Circuits Inc. (QCI). There are no applications requirements or approvals needed and the potential total of credits could add up to $2,000 if you use all four providers. For researchers who use up the $500 credits and would like to apply for more, you can submit an Azure Quantum Credits application and see if Microsoft will approve additional credits. Credit allocation for that program will be determined based on the potential value for the quantum ecosystem either from research, educational, or commercial point of view. Additional information about Microsoft’s free Azure Quantum credit program can be found in a blog post located on the MIcrosoft website here.

February 4, 2022 - News Brief Algorithmiq Raises a $4 Million Seed Round Algorithmiq is a company located in Helsinki, Finland that is developing advanced algorithms to solve complex problems in life sciences. They have raised this seed round from investors including Jorma Ollila (Nokia/Shell), Haakon Overli (Dawn Capital), Thames Trust (Lord Jim O’Neill), David Helgason (Foobar/Unity3D), Tiger Global Management, Feroz Dewan (Arena Holdings), Keenan Rice (Tokyo Black/ LookerGoogle/Firebolt) and K5 Global, and other European and US angels and entrepreneurs. The funds will be used to make their novel quantum-enhanced drug discovery platform commercially available. Algorithmiq’s announcement of this funding can be seen in a LinkedIn post available here.

February 4, 2022 German Government Funds €16 Million ($18.3M USD) for Photonic Quantum Computer Development The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is providing this funding to a project called PhotonQ which will be led by the University of Stuttgart and include the Universities of Würzburg, Mainz and Ulm, the Technical University of Munich, the Institute of Microelectronics Stuttgart and Vanguard Automation GmbH. The goal of the four-year project will be to demonstrate a quantum computer with eight qubits that will use a technique called measurement-based quantum computing. To accomplish this the team will be developing deterministic photon sources, scalable silicon photonics circuits, better connection technology and novel single-photon detectors. Key considerations for this project will be to reduce the optical losses in the system as much as possible while increasing the efficiency of the devices that generate and detect the photons. A news release about this project provided by the University of Stuttgart (in German) is available here.

February 3, 2022 InfinityQ Receives Additional Financing to Commercialize Quantum Analog Quantum analog creator infinityQ Technology closed a seed-extension round of financing with new investors Hevella Capital, iGlobe Partners and Westcott Investment Group, and participation from existing partners Cato Stonex and Louis Vachon, bringing the total raised to date to nearly $5 million USD. Click here for the full article.

February 2, 2022 - News Brief ColdQuanta Releases Summary of Achievements in 2021 ColdQuanta has issued a press release that describes its progress in 2021. Key metrics include a 140% growth in bookings and a 70% growth in headcount. In addition, their progress occurred on many fronts including new customers contracts, new members of their leadership team, new partnerships, and new technical milestones. Many of these milestones had previously been reported last year in the Quantum Computing Report. You can view ColdQuanta’s news release summarizing many of the key developments at the company in 2021 here.

February 2, 2022 - News Brief Multiverse Partners Will Use Xanadu’s PennyLane Software as a Core Element for Its Software Multiverse Computing has announced a partnership with Xanadu to utilize PennyLane software as a core element for much of its software. PennyLane is a hardware agnostic, open source quantum software platform that provides a dedicated library for quantum machine learning. Use of this software will improve the speed and make it easier for Multiverse and its financial industry clients to develop applications. Although PennyLane will be utilized for many of Multiverse’s products, they do have some others that work with D-Wave’s quantum annealer and Tensor Networks. The PennyLane library won’t be in use for these right now because PennyLane doesn’t interface with these platforms yet. You can view a news release provided by Multiverse announcing this partnership on their website here.

February 1, 2022 U.S. Government Releases a National Strategic Plan for Quantum Workforce Development Along with Several Other Workforce Development Activities The U.S. government's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science (SCQIS), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)’s National Quantum Coordination Office (NQCO), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have released a strategic plan and a new solicitation and several programs to help develop a robust quantum trained workforce in the United States. Click here for a summary of their recently announced activities.

January 29, 2022 - News Brief Strangeworks and Entangled Networks Partner to Provide Solutions for Multi-QPU Configurations One of the techniques being explored by many quantum hardware providers to increase the number of usable qubits is to create a cluster of multiple quantum processor units (QPUs) and network them together in a mini quantum internet. This strategy follows a similar pattern that was pioneered in classical computing over 30 years ago. However, developing software that takes advantage of this type of configuration can be a challenging problem, but Entangled Networks is working on both hardware and software solutions to make this happen. They have just announced their first product called MultiQopt which is a multi-QPU compiler that provides best-in-class quantum circuit optimization for modular system architectures. To bring this to market, they have partnered with Strangeworks make the product available in a future Backstage Pass ticket on the Strangeworks platform. One of the first hardware platform where this software will be used is with Rigetti’s 80-qubit design which consists of two 40-qubit chips and is also supported by Strangeworks. But several other hardware companies are planning to have their own multi-QPU systems available in the future too. You can view the press release issued by both companies announcing the MultiQopt sofware and their partnership here.

January 29, 2022 - News Brief Agnostiq Releases Covalent, an Open Source Workflow Orchestration Platform Agnostiq, a Toronto based quantum software company, has released Covalent, a workflow orchestration platform which is designed to make it easier for users to utilize the capabilities of quantum processors as well as classical high performance computing hardware. It will break workflows down into modular Python components to allow users to easily reproduce repetitive code and avoid costly reruns and it includes an intelligent task scheduler that automatically selects the best hardware resource for a given task based on a mix of predefined as well as user-defined constraints. Because the software is open source, a user can more easily integrate a variety of classical and quantum hardware backends into the software. For more about Covalent, you can view a news release released by Agnostic here and also a webpage for the software located on the Agnostiq website here.

January 28, 2022 - News Brief Menten AI Chooses Xanadu’s Pennylane to Help Design Novel Drug Molecules Menten AI is a biotech startup that is developing a software platform for protein design using next-generation technology that leverages machine learning and quantum computing. They have decided to use Xanadu’s open-source PennyLane library as the base for its quantum machine learning solutions. Pennylane is a dedicated library for quantum machine learning that integrates many different simulators and quantum hardware platforms. It is a good fit for Menten’s development approach of utilizing machine learning and quantum computing for drug design. Since both companies are located in Toronto, Canada, it may also make it a little easier for the two companies to work together. Additional information is available in a news release provided by Menten AI which is available here.

January 27, 2022 - News Brief USRA-Rigetti-NASA Start Work on DARPA ONISQ Phase 2 In March of 2020, we reported on an award from the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)to a team from the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), Rigetti Computing and NASA for work on a program called ONISQ (Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices). The goal of ONISQ is to research how NISQ level quantum computers can be used to provide an advantage in solving optimization problems. This activity has been quite productive as there has already been more than ten scientific papers, published or presented at international conferences or currently under review. The team has now advanced work to start on Phase 2 of this program which entails testing applications of increasing scale and benchmarking the solutions against high-performance classical computers to see if the quantum approach can provide an advantage. The Phase 2 work will include the use of Rigetti’s recently announced 80 qubit processor. More about the Phase 2 activity of this ONISQ program is available in a news release provided by Rigetti which you can see here and another news release from USRA which is available here.

January 26, 2022 - News Brief PQShield Raises $20 Million Series A Funding The funding round was led by Addition, with participation from existing investors Oxford Science Enterprises (formerly OSI) and Crane. PQShield is headquartered in Oxford, UK and specializes in providing solutions for Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC). Their products include a post-quantum System-on-a-Chip (SOC) crypto co-processor design, a cryptographic SDK for mobile and server technologies, and a toolkit for messaging platforms and apps to ensure the privacy and long-lasting confidentiality of sensitive data. The company has been participating in the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization process and they are the authors of several of the NIST PQC finalist algorithms. The company currently has employees in the UK, United States, France and the Netherlands and will be using the funds to double the size of their staff by the end of the year. Their announcement of the funding with additional information is available in a news release that can be seen here.

January 25, 2022 - News Brief HQS Quantum Simulations Receives a €12 Million ($13.58M USD) Series A Venture Capital Round The round was led by Quantonation with additional participation from previous investors UVC Partners, btov Industrial Technologies and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF). HQS Quantum Simulations develops quantum algorithms to predict molecular properties for performance materials, specialty chemicals and pharmaceutical companies. In addition, they have developed software that can initially be run on classical computers but can be transferred to quantum computers once more powerful quantum computers are available. They are part of the Q-Exa consortium which aims to install in the first quantum computer manufactured in Germany at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre by the end of this year. They will use the funds to enhance its HQS Quantum Assisted Design cloud platform while expanding its open-source library, called Active Space Finder. More information about HQS and this new funding can be found in a news release located on the HQS website here.

January 25, 2022 Classiq and ColdQuanta Partnership Aimed at Providing Solutions for 100+ Qubit Systems The companies state that this type of partnership is very important for end users to take advantage of machines that have more than a few dozen qubits. Although smaller machines can be programmed manually with lower-level languages at the individual gate level, once the processors hit the 100 qubit and higher level this becomes too complex to do it efficiently. For more about this new partnership, you can read the rest of our article describing it here.

January 24, 2022 Who’s News: Management Updates at SEEQC, Riverlane, Arqit, and Multiverse Computing SEEQC has created a new Scientific Advisory Board and appointed a new Vice-President of Engineering. Riverlane has recruited a new Head of Engineering to guide their efforts in fault tolerant quantum computing. Arqit has added a new advisor. And Multiverse has brought on a CEO for its new French subsidiary. Click here to read our full article reporting on these changes.

January 23, 2022 - News Brief Virginia Tech to Establish a Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering The new center was announced by Virginia Tech President Tim Sands and will be located on their campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It will complement another Center of Quantum Architecture and Software Development on the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus located in Alexandria, Virginia. The center will unite quantum research across disciplines and will initially include sixteen Virginia Tech faculty providing multidisciplinary expertise in physics, mathematics, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and material science. Some of the goals of the new center will be to strengthen Virginia Tech proposals for large center-scale grants and raise the visibility of this work, facilitate new partnerships, and attract faculty and students for work at the forefront of quantum research. More about Virginia Tech’s announcement about the creation of the center can be found in a news release here. You can also view a webpage for the center itself here.

January 22, 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF) Issues “Quantum Computing Governance Principles” Report The World Economic Forum’s Quantum Computing Governance project seeks to encourage the development of responsible quantum computing. Although quantum technology is still very new and in early development, they believe that this early stage is the best time to discuss the ethical, legal and societal impacts of quantum computing. This report lays out the first set of principles for responsible design and adoption of quantum computing technologies in order to incentivize the development of the technology while minimizing the possible risks. Click here for more.

January 21, 2022 Quantum Computing Inc. Announces a New QCI Qonsulting Practice and Signs Up Its First Customer Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI), a quantum software company that provides its hardware agnostic Qatalyst quantum optimization software, has established a new consulting practice to help customers through their quantum journey. The company has developed a four-phase framework that they call Path2Quantum (P2Q) that can help clients define quantum opportunities, define appropriate quantum infrastructures, measure quantum potential, and achieve first quantum production results that will help enterprises plan their quantum computing adoption. Associated with the launch of their QCI Qonsulting practice, they also announced their first client, an employee staffing solutions company called Quad M Solutions, Inc. (Quad M). The companies will work together to improve the efficiency of the company’s self-underwritten medical insurance. For more about these announcements, click here to read our full article.

January 20, 2022 - News Brief Quantum Brilliance, Fraunhofer Institute, and University of Ulm Will Collaborate in a €19.9 Million ($22.5M USD) Project to Research Diamond-Based Quantum Microprocessors The project will be 74.8 percent funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with the remaining budget covered by the consortium partners and it is expected to run through November 30, 2024. Key activities will be to develop growth processes for diamond substrates of high purity and quality as well as develop precision manufacturing techniques for fabricating scalable arrays of diamond (also known as NV center) qubits. Other important activities will be to develop mechanisms for the selective initialization, read-out, and manipulation of qubits in quantum computers with multiple processor nodes. Founded in 2019, Quantum Brilliance is an Australian-German quantum computing hardware company with locations in Canberra, Australia and Stuttgart, Germany that provides diamond quantum accelerators supported by a full stack of software and application tools. They are focused on developing quantum accelerators that possess small form factors and run at room temperatures for use as accelerators that will work with classical supercomputers. For more information about this project, you can view a press release provided by Quantum Brilliance that’s available here.

January 20, 2022 - News Brief QOSF and the Unitary Fund Announce the Winner of the 2021 Wittek Quantum Prize for Open Source Software The Quantum Open Source Foundation (QOSF) and the Unitary Fund have announced Victory Omole, a software engineer at Super.tech, as the winner of the 2021 Wittek Quantum Prize for Open Source Software for his outstanding contributions to Cirq and other open-source projects. He was selected after review of 38 nominations from all over the world. Three runners up were also announced including (in no particular order) Kesha Hietala who led the design of the SQIR quantum programming language, Paul Nation who co-created QuTiP and Robert Smith who started the Quil ecosystem and open-sourced large parts of the Rigetti software stack. The Wittek prize is a yearly award that was established in 2020 in memory of Peter Wittek, a pioneer in the field of open quantum software who went missing on a mountaineering expedition in the Himalayas in 2019. The prize award is $4,000 with the intent to reward an otherwise unnoticed individual for outstanding contribution to the field of quantum open-source software. For more information about the Wittek Quantum Prize, you can view the website for it here. And for more about the selection of Victory Omole as the winner of the 2021 prize, you can view a Medium article and associated video here.

January 20, 2022 Terra Quantum and Atom Computing Each Raise $60 Million in Venture Capital In an interesting coincidence both Terra Quantum and Atom Computing have each announced new venture capital raises of $60 Million. For Terra Quantum it was an A round and for Atom Computing it was a B round. Click here to read our full article describing these events.

January 19, 2022 - News Brief Finland Launches a €10 Million ($11.35M USD) QuTI Project The Quantum Technologies Industrial (QuTI) ecosystem project will develop new components, manufacturing and testing solutions and algorithms for the needs of quantum technology. It will be coordinated by VTT Finland and include eleven additional partners from research, academia, and industry including Aalto University, Tampere University and CSC – IT Center for Science, and the industrial partners are Bluefors, Afore, Picosun, IQM Quantum Computers, Rockley Photonics, Quantastica, Saab, and Vexlum. The project will last for three years and €5.6 million of the budget will be partially funded by Business Finland, a public organization under the Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy. The project will utilize the Micronova cleanroom facility in Espoo, Finland, operated jointly by VTT and Aalto University and also another cleanroom located at Tampere University for fabrication of the optoelectronics components. Additional information about this new collaboration in Finland can be found in a press release posted on the VTT website here.

January 19, 2022 - News Brief Multiverse Adds a Fair Price Module to their Singularity Quantum Software Platform We previously reported on Multiverse’ introduction of their Singularity quantum software platform that enable inputting QC problems from an Excel spreadsheet. We also reported earlier on their work to integrate support for the IonQ ion trap processor with this software. They have now added a new module to calculate the Fair Price of a portfolio of stocks to this platform. Currently, these calculations are typically implemented in programs running on supercomputers that can look at tens of thousands of samples and run for a period of 24 hours or more. When the number of samples is decreased, the accuracy also diminishes. In a test, they showed data that indicated a 37%-43% improvement in accuracy for a quantum calculation versus a classical calculation when both are limited to 4,000 samples. The algorithm uses a quantum amplitude estimation method to estimate the mean of a novel implementation of the Gordon-Shapiro formula. For more about this Fair Pricing module, you can view a news release from Multiverse announcing it here, a video demonstration of using it here, and a technical arXiv paper that describes the algorithm here.

January 19, 2022 - News Brief IonQ and Hyundai Partner to Study Use of Quantum Computing for Researching Battery Chemistry The two companies will study the use of new variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithms to characterize different lithium compounds and the chemical reactions that could be use in battery chemistry. There have been other quantum research projects announced in the past involving battery chemistry including one between IBM and Daimler and another one between Toyota and Qunasys, however IonQ indicated that their new project will be the most advanced model to date as measured by the number of qubits and gates used. In addition, the IonQ/Hyundai research will include other lithium-based battery chemistries, including Lithium-Oxide (or Lithium-Air), whereas the IBM/Daimler study only looked at Lithium-Sulfur batteries. A Lithium-Air battery would be lighter which could provide a potential advantage in a mobile vehicle. The IonQ/Daimler simulations will require at least 12 qubits and will be able to utilize all the quantum computers commercially available at IonQ, including System 5, the latest system in private beta. Using quantum computing to discover new types of battery chemistries can have a large commercial value due to the push to increase the production and reduce the cost of batteries for use in both electric vehicles and the electrical grid to help combat global warming. In addition, the simulation of all the interactions that can take place at the molecular level are too complex for a classical computer to perform accurately. You can read the announcement provided by IonQ and Hyunda in a post located on the IonQ website here. IonQ has also posted a blog titled “Improving Battery Chemistry with Quantum Computing” that you can find here.

January 17, 2022 D-Wave Installs an Advantage Quantum Annealer at Forschungszentrum Jülich for European Access D-Wave and Forschungszentrum Jülich announced that they have installed the latest D-Wave Advantage Performance quantum annealer at the Forschungszentrum Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Julich, Germany. This 5000 qubit machine is the first Leap™ quantum cloud-based system and quantum annealer located outside North America and will be available to European users at Forschungszentrum Jülich immediately in the cloud via Leap. Click here for more.

January 16, 2022 - News Brief Caltech Constructing a New Center for Quantum Precision Measurement The new center, called the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement, will add to Caltech’s already substantial capability to perform research in quantum science and technology. It will be housed in a six-story building that will have two stories underground and include passageways to three adjacent research buildings on the Caltech campus to maximize collaborations between scientists. The center is being made possible with grants from The Sherman Fairchild Foundation and Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg. Activity at the center will focus on understanding quantum systems and their potential including quantum sensing, quantum information, and gravitational-wave detection. For information about this center can be seen in two different news releases shown on the Caltech website that you can find here and here.

January 15, 2022 Government Grants for Q-CTRL, Quantopticon, and Rice University Three government awards related to quantum technology were announced this week for Q-CTRL, Quantopticon, Rice University and their partners. Click here to read our article describing what these groups will be researching and the amount of funding each program will receive.

January 14, 2022 - News Brief QMware Launches their Hybrid Quantum Cloud Data Center We reported in October 2020 about the formation of the QMware joint venture between Terra Quantum and Novarion to create an integrated hardware/software appliance called the Hybrid Quantum Cloud. They have now announced the opening of a Hybrid Quantum Cloud Data Center Alpha based upon the technology. They have made this available to European enterprises, scientific laboratories and institutions. Part of the motivation for this effort to provide a European alternative to U.S. dominated quantum cloud providers based upon a European standard called GAIA-X, a project for the development of an efficient and competitive, secure and trustworthy federation of data infrastructure and service providers for Europe. This first installation has occurred at the Vienna data center of NTT Global Data Centers and additional ones are under consideration for the future. More information is available in a post on QMware’s LinkedIn page here, another post on their website here, and an article (in German) on the pressetext website here.

January 13, 2022 - News Brief Spain Forms CUCO Project to Research Potential Quantum Computing Applications The CUCO (CUantica COmputacion) consortium will include seven commercial company (Amatech, BBVA, DAS Photonics, GMV, Multiverse Computing, Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech y Repsol), five research centers (BSC, CSIC, DIPC, ICFO y Tecnalia), and public university UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València) to research potential quantum applications in industries such as energy, finance, space, defense and logistics. The project is being supported by Spain’s Ministry of Science and Innovation under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan with funding from CDTI (Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial) a public funding agency for technology development. The project has been funded at $5.8 million and should last for two years with possible extensions later on. Activities of the project will include identifying relevant use cases for quantum computing in the Spanish economy and developing proof of concepts to show if they can provide a quantum advantage. Additional information about this project can be found in a news release posted on the Multiverse Computing website here.

January 12, 2022 - News Brief Capgemini Launches a Quantum Lab and Becomes an IBM Quantum Hub Capgemini is a French multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Paris, France. They have over 300,000 employees and reached €15.84 billion ($18B USD) in revenue in 2020. Their Quantum Lab (Q-Lab) will include facilities in the UK, Portugal, and India and they will work with clients in the areas of quantum computing, quantum communications, and quantum sensing. The key industrial sectors that they believe will benefit the most from quantum technologies include life sciences, financial services, automotive and aerospace. You can read Capgemini’s news release announcing the launch of their Quantum Lab here.

January 11, 2022 Pasqal and Qu&Co Announce Merger In another merger between a quantum hardware processor and a quantum software companies, French hardware developer Pasqal has announced a merger with Amsterdam based Qu&Co, a quantum software provider. The two companies will work to closely integrate Qu&Co’s quantum algorithm routines with Pasqal’s neutral atom-based quantum hardware to provide quantum solutions many commercial sectors including chemistry, life sciences, automotive, electronics, utilities, aerospace, defense, finance and others. Click here for more.

January 10, 2022 - News Brief LG Electronics Joins the IBM Quantum Network LG Electronics has joined the IBM Quantum Network in order to access IBM’s quantum computing systems, quantum expertise, and Qiskit software development kit. They are joining 170 other organizations including ‎ LG Electronics, Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, academic institutions and research labs that are working with IBM. LG Electronics is a large South Korean multinational electronics company with 63 trillion Won ($52 Billion USD) in revenue and over 75,000 employees. They surely have a large number of potential applications in areas including big data, artificial intelligence, connected cars, digital transformation, IoT, and robotics that could be helped through the use of quantum computing. Additional information can be found in a press release provided by IBM which can be seen here.

January 10, 2022 - News Brief D-Wave, SavantX, and Fenix Marine Services Team to Optimize Logistics at the Port of Los Angeles SavantX has announced that they have worked with Fenix Marine Services to develop a quantum powered AI engine called HONE (Hyper Optimization Nodal Efficiency) that optimizes the logistics at the Pier 300 container terminal project at the Port of Los Angeles, one of the largest marine terminals in the US. The software runs on the D-Wave quantum annealer and optimizes scheduling, appointments, and in-terminal container handling for trucking companies and their customers. The software allowed the port to handle a record 903,000 TEUs (twenty foot equivalent unit, equivalent to one 20’x20’x8′ shipping container) in October 2021. Coordinating all the many resources including ships, trucks, trains, warehouses, terminal facilities, etc. for maximum efficiency is an extremely challenging logistics and optimization problem. Obtaining the best possible efficiency has become additional critical in the past year due to the pandemic-induced buying surge which has created supply chain challenges that must be solved. Use of the optimization software can improve overall capacity, cost, predictability, turnaround times, and ROI for the shipping companies and its customers. For more about this real-world implementation, you can view a news release from Savantx which is available here.

January 8, 2022 - News Brief Michigan State University, Purdue University and the University of Michigan Form the Midwest Quantum Collaboratory (MQC) The three universities will work together on cutting edge projects related to quantum technology. Some examples of specific research goals of MQC include creating new directions to exploit entanglement in inherently scalable systems, quantum sensing, and complex systems. Another key focus of this effort will be to prepare students with the necessary skills and knowledge to succeed in this sector. It is well understood that one of the big challenges to growing the quantum industry will be to find qualified personnel for a growing quantum workforce. The MQC will not only work to provide students with scientific training, but also help them develop the necessary interpersonal skills in order to be a productive member of the quantum workforce. To learn more about the MQC, you can read a news release posted on the MSU website here and also visit the MQC website which is located here.

January 8, 2022 Who’s News – Management Updates at Quantum Computing Inc. and Q-CTRL Quantum Computing Inc. has appointed a new COO/CTO and also announced that another person has joined Board of Directors. And Q-CTRL has recruited a Chief Strategy Officer. Click here to read our article with more details.

January 7, 2022 - News Brief POLARISqb and PhoreMost Partner to Use QC for Drug Discovery POLARISqb, a quantum software company based in Durham, North Carolina, will work with PhoreMost, a drug discovery company in the UK, to help find potential drug targets that have previously been considered undruggable. PhoreMost’s SITESEEKER phenotypic screen platform identifies unexpected or “cryptic” druggable sites across the entire genome, within targets previously considered undruggable and then POLARISqb Tachyon™ quantum computing platform will use quantum algorithms to scan for billions of molecules from a large chemical space to find novel molecular drugs in minutes, rather than the months or years it would take for a classical supercomputer. The goal will be to discover and develop the next generation of oncology therapies. To see more about this partnership, you can read a news release posted on the POLARISqb website here.

January 6, 2022 Eeroq is Moving Its Headquarters to Chicago Eeroq, a quantum hardware startup developing processor based upon electrons floating above pools of superfluid helium, has signed a lease for a 9600 square foot engineering lab and office on Chicago’s West Side. The company received considerable support from the business community in Chicago including Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s INVEST South/West initiative in their search for this headquarters. To read more about Eeroq's announcment, click here to read the full article.

January 5, 2022 - News Brief Strangeworks and Quantinuum Partner to Offer Quantum-Enhanced Cryptographic Keys within the Strangeworks Ecosystem You might think it is ironic to find out a company named Strangeworks now has a product line offering random numbers to their users. But Strangeworks is indeed partnering with Quantinuum and offering access to Quantinuum’s Quantum Origin, a quantum-enhanced cryptographic keys service based on verifiable quantum randomness. A key feature of Quantum Origin is that all keys generated by the system are run through an assurance test on the key to make sure it is as unpredictable as possible before the key is sent back to the requestor. The keys can be used with current encryption algorithms such as RSA and AES used in most classical computer today and they are also usable with the new Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) keys being standardized in a selection process being run by NIST. Weak keys that an attacker can guess are a significant cause of cybersecurity issues and by using quantum technology to generate the keys that can be truly random and provide greater protection an organization that wants to keep their communications private. You can view more information about Quantum Origin in a white paper that you can see here. And you can view a news release provided by Strangeworks announcing the partnership with Quantinuum here.

January 4, 2022 French Government to Invest Over €70 Million ($79M USD) for Launch of a National Quantum Computing Platform The €70 Million represents the first funding installment out of an overall funding goal of €170 million for a project to create a hybrid computing platform that will interconnect classical systems and quantum computers. This platform will be located at the Very Large Computing Center at CEA (TGCC) and will be supported by INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology which focuses on computer science and applied mathematics. The platform will be made available toan international community of laboratories, startups and industrial companies. This effort is part of the overall French national strategy of quantum technologies that will invest €1.8 Billion ($2M USD) over a period from 2021-2025 with a goal of creating 16,000 quantum jobs by 2030. For more information about this investment and the French quantum computing strategy, you can read a news release provided by the French government here and a document that describes the overall French quantum computing strategy here. (Hint: Both of those documents are in French, but you can use Google Translate to translate them to English or any of the other languages it supports.)

January 3, 2022 Russian Scientists Create Quantum Device Using Qutrits and Ququarts Russian scientists from the Russian Quantum Center and the P.N. Lebedev Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences are utilizing the phenomena of qutrits and ququarts to construct the equivalent of a four-qubit ion trap computer using only two physical ions. This is a step in their effort to provide cloud access to a universal quantum computer by the end of 2024. Click here for more.

December 31, 2021 Quantum Summer School Fellowships Available for Undergraduates at the Chicago Quantum Exchange and Los Alamos National Laboratory Although there are many summer intern programs in quantum technology available for graduate students at various organizations there are far fewer summer internships that are open to undergraduate students. Here are two sponsored by the Chicago Quantum Exchange and the Los Alamos National Laboratory we are aware of that are now accepting applications for summer internships this summer. Click here for the full article.

December 30, 2021 - News Brief Quantinuum Releases a New Quantum Processor with a Quantum Volume of 2048 Quantinuum (formerly Honeywell Quantum Solutions) has released a new quantum processor they call the H1-2. This machine is an upgrade of their previous H1-1 processor with two additional qubits and better gate and measurement fidelities. The H1-2 is very similar to the H1-1 as it uses the same ion-,trap architecture, control system design, integrated optics, and photonics as its predecessor. But now the H1-2 has 12 operational qubits instead of the previous 10 qubits and has implemented minor upgrades to improve the fidelities and other aspects of the design. Many of these upgrades were also applied to the H1-1. These improvements allowed Quantinuum to perform a Quantum Volume test and obtain a measurement of 2048 using the test procedure specified by IBM. For more, you can view a press release provided by Quantinuum that you can find here.

December 27, 2021 - News Brief Rigetti Will Receive an Additional $45 Million Investment as Part of Its SPAC Deal The investment comes in the form of a PIPE (Private Investment, Public Entity) commitment where the investors will purchase equity in the proposed business combination between Rigetti and Supernova Partners Acquistion Company II in exchange for stock. It is almost the same as the $103 million PIPE investment that was announced at the time the SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) deal was announced except that the price of these new shares will be at $10.25 each instead of $10.00 previously. The commitment was made by from Lansdowne Partners (UK) LLP and from an existing PIPE investor. When this investment is funds from the previous SPAC and the $345 million in Supernova cash held in trust, Rigetti will have approximately $440 million in cash after transaction costs after the merger is finalized to use for accelerating product development and expanding operations. You can view the news release provided by Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II here.

December 27, 2021 - News Brief IQM Opens a New Subsidiary in France The new office will be located in Paris and will be the fourth European office for IQM, joining other offices in Bilbao, Spain, Munich, German, and Espoo, Finland. The company has a unique co-design approach to develop quantum processors optimized for particular use cases. The Paris office will work with customers in the aviation, space, and cybersecurity industry for these solutions. The company will work with Atos as part of their Scaler program and provide additional focus on HPC integration and offer quantum accelerators to supercomputing centers worldwide. It will also give the company another source of talent and make it easier to recruit quantum scientists and engineers from French universities and other organizations. Details about this announcement can be found in a news release posted on the IQM website here.

December 23, 2021 - News Brief German Government To Provide Funding for €44.5 Million ($50.3M USD) Ion Trap Computer Development The project, called ATIQ, will receive most of its funding, €37.5 million. from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and will have a duration of 5 years starting on December 1, 2021. It will have 25 collaborators and will be organized by the Leibniz Universität Hannover. Additional partners including Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, University of Siegen, TU Braunschweig, RWTH Aachen, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Fraunhofer- Gesellschaft, the companies AMO GmbH, AKKA Industry Consulting GmbH, Black Semiconductor GmbH, eleQtron GmbH, FiberBridge Photonics GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG, JoS QUANTUM GmbH, LPKF Laser & Electronics AG, Parity Quantum Computing Germany GmbH, QUARTIQ GmbH, Qubig GmbH and TOPTICA Photonics AG. Associated partners are AQT Germany GmbH, Boehringer Ingelheim, Covestro AG, DLR-SI, Volkswagen AG and QUDORA Technologies GmbH. An initial goal for the next 30 months will be to have a 10-qubit ion trap demonstrator made in Germany that will be available for use 24/7. Follow-on activity will include research on scaling up the technology to support over 100 qubits. Additional information about this project is available in a news release on the website of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz that can be found here and also another news release issued by eleQtron and ParityQC that can be seen here.

December 22, 2021 - News Brief Quix Quantum Sells a Photonic Processor to the Hungarian Quantum Information National Laboratory Initiative Quix Quantum has sold another of their photonic processors to the Hungarian Quantum Information National Laboratory and the Faculties of Science and of Informatics at Eötvös Loránd University. This chip will be the first piece of quantum hardware in the Central and Eastern European region that will know about and will be used by the university for academic research into photonic quantum computing. Quix’ product is a 12-mode quantum photonic processor which they have also sold to other organizations including Paderborn University, Quandela, and Qontrol. You can view an announcement about the sale provided by Quix in a press release that has been posted on their website here.

December 21, 2021 - News Brief Rigetti Releases Financial Highlights for First Nine Months of 2022 Rigetti Computing indicated that for the first nine months of 2021 ending October 31, 2021 they achieved $6.9 million in revenue with a net operating loss of ($26.2) million. The results showed a 68% increase in revenue and a 3% decrease in operating loss from the same period in 2020. It also compares favorably to a projection they provided in an Investor Presentation last October forecasting revenue of $7 million and an EBITDA of ($31) million for the full 12 months of 2021. Rigetti also recapped in their announcement a number of developments in the technical, industry collaboration, customer, customer application, and talent areas that we had previously reported on in these pages. Rigetti Computing previously announced plans merge with SPAC Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II to become a public company. We expect this trnsaction to be completed in early 2022. You can view Rigetti’s full announcement of their business update and nine-month 2021 financial highlights in a news release that you can see here.

December 20, 2021 - News Brief Equal1 Wins €10 Million ($11.2M USD) In Grant/Equity Funding Equal, a quantum hardware startup with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, received the award from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to work on quantum-enhanced machine learning. The funds will be provided in a mixture of grants and equity investment. Equal1 was one of 99 companies based in 21 different countries that have received funding under the EIC program. Equal1 is a spinout of University College Dublin and has been developing a silicon-based qubit technology with a focus of applying it to ML applications. They previously had received €10 million ($11.6M USD) in venture investments with the latest round announced last October. For more, you can view a news release from Equal1 available on their website here and a more detailed description of the EIC funding program on their website here.

December 18, 2021 - News Brief Pasqal, Thales, Paris Region and GENCI Partner to Explore Planning and Scheduling Applications on Pasqal’s Quantum Processor Creating the optimum plan and schedule for activities such as logistics, air traffic control, industrial automation, resource allocation, disaster recovery assistance, etc. can get very complicated as the number of variables increases. At a certain point the computation becomes too difficult for a classical computer to perform optimally so the data analyst needs to resort to approximation methods which won’t provide the best possible answer. This is where quantum computing can help because it can potentially allow the computation of more complex, yet more accurate solutions for these problems. The three-year program will initially use Pasqal’s 100+ qubit processor and possible larger ones later on. These processors may be big enough to provide solutions to large problems that are beyond the capability of a classical processor. Thales is a French multi-billion, multi-national technology company and has potential applications that could benefit from this research. The project is funded by the PAck Quantique programme (PAQ), an initiative started in 2020 by Paris Region, GENCI and Le Lab Quantique with a goal of accelerating the development of the quantum industry in the Paris region. Additional information is available in a news release posted on the Pasqal website here.

December 18, 2021 - News Brief QuTech and Fraunhofer to Collaborate on Development of a Pan-European Quantum Network QuTech, a Dutch partnership between TU Delft and TNO, has signed a memorandum of understanding with German research organization Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to explore quantum communication infrastructures for cross-border quantum networks. One of the first projects will be to deploy a quantum key distribution (QKD) network across borders between hubs in Germany and The Netherlands. They will also continue their joint research on integrated quantum photonic devices needed in these networks. The two organizations had already been working together to develop a quantum frequency converter (QFC) as part of the ICON project. Additional information about the collaborations between QuTech and Fraunhofer is available in a news release posted on the QuTech website here.

December 17, 2021 - News Brief Odyssey Therapeutics Acquires Rahko Odyssey Therapeutics, a Boston based company developing next-generation precision medicines for patients with inflammatory diseases and cancer has acquired a majority stake in Rahko. The value of the transaction has not been made public. Odyssey is a new pharmaceutical startup that just received a Series A venture investment of $218 million earlier this month and apparently has put some of the money to immediate use with the Rahko acquisition. Rahko was founded in 2018 by computer science graduates from University College London (UCL) and has developed a software product called Hyrax which can provide faster and cheaper drug discovery. Their solution currently uses classical AI algorithms now, but they are planning to use quantum computing in the future once better performing quantum computing hardware becomes available. Odyssey Therapeutics, a Boston based company developing next-generation precision medicines for patients with inflammatory diseases and cancer has acquired a majority stake in Rahko. The value of the transaction has not been made public. Odyssey is a new pharmaceutical startup that just received a Series A venture investment of $218 million earlier this month and apparently has put some of the money to immediate use with the Rahko acquisition. Rahko was founded in 2018 by computer science graduates from University College London (UCL) and has developed a software product called Hyrax which can provide faster and cheaper drug discovery. Their solution currently uses classical AI algorithms now, but they are planning to use quantum computing in the future once better performing quantum computing hardware becomes available. A press release from Odyssey Therapeutics announcing the acquisition can be found here.

December 17, 2021 - News Brief Multiverse Awarded €12.5 Million ($14.2M USD) in Funding from the European Innovation Council The funding from the European Innovation Council is comprised of an equity investment of €10 million with and a grant of €2.5 million. It is the first award the council has made to a quantum software company. This follows a €10 Million ($11.5M USD) seed round that Multiverse received in October as well as the August release of their flagship Singularity software product. Multiverse is focused on providing software that can help provide solutions to various finance related problems including portfolio optimization, capital allocation, fraud detection and risk management. Multiverse will be using some of the funds to further develop its Monte Carlo asset valuation engine, as well as derivative evaluation capabilities and stress test tools for financial institutions and central banks. It will also use some of the funds to hire more staff and to expand to additional new vertical markets. The company is among the largest quantum software companies in Europe and currently has about 35 employees. For more about this funding, you can find a news release provided by Multiverse available here.

December 16, 2021 Who’s News – Management Additions at IonQ and ColdQuanta IonQ and ColdQuanta have announced several new additions to fill out their management teams. Click here to find out what new position they have filled and who they have recruited for these positions.

December 15, 2021 Rigetti Announces 40 and 80 Qubit Processors and also Collaborations with Deloitte and Strangeworks to Explore Quantum Applications We had reported last June that Rigetti was working on an 80-qubit processor utilizing multi-chip technology and they have just announced they are now starting to make it available for private beta through the Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services with anticipated general availability in Q1 2022. The 80-qubit processor, which they call Aspen-M, is constructed using two 40 qubit chips that are connected together. Rigetti described their technical approach to multi-chip implementations in an arXiv paper that you can see here. In addition, a processor that utilizes a single 40-qubit chip, which they call Aspen-11, has reached general availability and can now be accessed via the AWS Braket, Strangeworks Ecosystem and Rigetti’s Quantum Cloud Service. Related to this announcement, Rigetti disclosed that they are working with Deloitte and Strangeworks to explore potential applications in the areas of material simulation, optimization, and machine learning that can utilize this technology. Click here for the full article.

December 14, 2021 Quantware and SEEQC Partner to Integrate the Cryogenic Digital Control Logic onto the QPU Chip Quantware, based in Delft, Netherlands, develops superconducting based qubit chips. Their latest product, called Soprano, is available now and can be delivered to customers either as a die or a fully packaged chip with a 30-day lead-time. SEEQC is a New York based company formed in 2019 as a spinoff of Hypres. They operate a state-of-the-art multi-layer superconducting chip fabrication facility and provide foundry services for superconducting devices. They possess a digital logic technology called SFQ (Single Flux Quantum) that can operate at the same ultra-cold cryogenic temperatures as the qubits. By combining the two companies’ technology together on the same chip they can solve the wiring problem inherent in today’s superconducting based systems. Click here for more.

December 12, 2021 U.S. QIS Budget Proposed to Grow 10.6% to $877 Million in FY2022 The Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science of the U.S. National Science and Technology Council has proposed an FY 2022 total government budget for quantum technology of $877 million for fiscal year 2022 (FY 2022 – which runs from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022). This is an increase of about 10.6% from the estimated $793 million that was spent in FY 2021. Click here for the full article.

December 11, 2021 D-Wave Announces NEC as a Global Reseller, the QuickStart Program as an Accelerator for Developers, and PayPal as a Customer NEC is an investor in D-Wave and had previously signed an agreement with work with D-Wave in December 2019.  But now they have broadened the collaborations and NEC will serve as a Global Reseller for D-Wave. NEX will gradually expand their consulting and professional services to the 38 countries where D-Wave’s Leap platform is available today. The arrangement will allow NEC’s customers to access Leap view the cloud, purchase seats in D-Wave’s training courses, and leverage the utility of hybrid workflows with NEC’s assistance. Quickstart is a new program with a goal of providing Python developers the skills and knowledge to start building and running quantum applications within one week. And they disclosed that they have been working with PayPal who is investingating the potential use of D-Wave's quantum computer for certain financial applications such as fraud detection. For more details about these announcement, click here to view our full article.

December 11, 2021 Who’s News at Pasqal, Duality Accelerator, and the Quantum Strategy Institute Pasqal has announced a new scientific advisor. The Duality Accelerator has created a new Technical Advisory Committee, and the Quantum Strategy Institute has established a new Board of Directors.  Click here to see who will be involved with each of these organizations.

December 11, 2021 Partnership Announcements: Pasqal/Nvidia, PsiQuantum/Qunasys/JSR, Rigetti/PlanQK, and Quantum-South/Universidad de Montevideo Several partnership announcements of various types were made this week for joint research and development between quantum computing providers and potential users, researchers or other collaborators.  Click here for the details.

December 9, 2021 - News Brief BMW and AWS Announce Winners to Their Quantum Computing Challenge In July of this year, we wrote about a Quantum Computing Challenge issued by BMW and AWS. The purpose was to develop quantum algorithms for four specific industrial problems and to test them on real quantum computing technologies. About 70 companies submitted entries and these are the winners: 1. Sensor positions for automated driving functions: Accenture 2. Simulation of material deformations: Qu&Co 3. Configuration optimisation of pre-series vehicles: 1QBit and NTT 4. Automated quality analyses: QC Ware BMW will continue to work with these winners as a customer so that the winners can continue development of these pilot projects. For more details, you can view a press release announcing these winners on the BMW website here and another press release that announcing the winners on the AWS website here.

December 8, 2021 IonQ Next Generation: Barium In, Ytterbium Out Peter Chapman, CEO of IonQ, gave a sneak peek at the Q2B conference of a few characteristics of the next generation quantum computer they are developing for 2022. The significant change is that they are changing the fundamental material used to create the ions from Ytterbium to Barium. Click here for more.

December 8, 2021 - News Brief ColdQuanta’s 100 Qubit Hilbert Computer Will Become Available through Strangework’s Backstage Pass Program We had a detailed article describing ColdQuanta’s 100 qubit Hilbert cold atom based quantum computer last July and they have now announced that early beta access for it will be available through Strangework’s Backstage Pass program in Q1’2022. The Backstage Pass program provides early access to new machines to a select number of users. It will join IBM’s Eagle processor in what we are calling the “adolescent sized” quantum computers. These computers contain more qubits than could be simulated with a classical computer simulator. However, whether or not they could support real world quantum advantage applications is still not yet know because it will depend upon the quality level of the qubits and other factors. To see the announcement about the Hilbert joining the Backstage Pass program, you can read details in the press release here. You can view our write-up describing the Hilbert in our previous article here. To view our previous article about Strangework’s Backstage Pass program, you can view our article here. And to apply for the Backstage Program to access Hilbert, you can go to this page on the Strangeworks website.

December 7, 2021 Cambridge Quantum Introduces Quantum Origin, a Quantum Random Number Generation Service Cambridge Quantum, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quantinuum has announced a cryptographic key generation platform that utilizes Quantinuum’s H-Series quantum computers, Powered by Honeywell. To receive a key an organization will access the H-series computing via an API, it will generate the key, run an assurance test on the key to make sure it is as unpredictable as possible, and sends it back to the requestor. The keys can be used with current encryption algorithms such as RSA and AES used in most classical computer today and they are also usable with the new Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) keys being standardized in a selection process being run by NIST. Click here for the full article.

December 6, 2021 - News Brief Microsoft Azure to Add Rigetti as Another Hardware Provider Rigetti computing announced that they will be integrating their quantum computer with the Microsoft Azure Cloud service making them the fourth company that will have a quantum computer accessible through Microsoft Azure. They will join IonQ, Honeywell (now Quantinuum), and Quantum Circuits Inc. (QCI). IonQ and Honeywell’s machines are based on ion trap technology while QCI and Rigetti’s use superconducting qubits. Although Rigetti declined to say which of their machines would be available on Microsoft Azure, they did indicate that it will be the largest quantum computer accessible, and that integration will be complete and the machine available to users in the first quarter of 2022. Rigetti also has a partnership with Amazon AWS and their machine is also available on that cloud service as well as Rigetti’s own cloud service. You can view Rigetti’s press release announcing this development here and a blog post from Microsoft here.

December 2, 2021 Innovative European Open Master’s Degree in Quantum Technology is Launching The Quantum Technology Open Master (QTOM) (LINK: https://qtom.qtedu.eu/ ) project provides opportunities for European master’s degree students to assemble their quantum technology education, with support from over 30 top academic institutions across Europe and around the world. QTOM is a pilot project of the EU Quantum Flagship (LINK: https://qt.eu/) that coordinates an expansive portfolio of learning opportunities, remote courses, and research projects for bona fide graduate-level ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) credit. The official launch of the project to the public is scheduled for Monday December 6, 2021, at 16:00 CET / 10:00 US/Eastern.  All interested parties are invited to attend. Visit https://qtom.qtedu.eu/launch-event/ for online event details and registration link. Click here to see more informaiton about this program.

December 1, 2021 - News Brief Classiq To Collaborate with NTT DATA to Implement Algorithms for Credit Risk Analysis NTT DATA is part of the NTT group of companies and is one of the leading providers of IT and business services in over 50 countries worldwide. They will be working with Classiq to utilize Classiq’s software for credit risk analysis. Credit risk analysis is a very important function within financial institutions. It can also be very complex. These algorithms will look at a wide variety of factors involved in a lending situation and help determine the risk involved that may arise from a borrower defaulting on the loan or other factors. This data will help the lender make a decision on whether or not to approve the loan. In classical computing this is often accomplished using a Monte Carlo algorithm which can be quite compute intensive. The Classiq software will allow a user to specify the algorithm with a high-level functional model and then use the software to translate it into optimized, low-level gate based models that can be targeted for a variety of quantum hardware platforms which in the future will be able to provide either a more accurate or a faster result to the potential lender. You can view Classiq’s announcement that it is working with NTT DATA in a post located on their website which you can see here.

December 1, 2021 - News Brief European Consortium Starts a High-Performance Computer and Quantum Simulator Hybrid” (HPCQS) Project with €12 Million ($13.6M USD) in Funding The HPCQS project sets out to integrate two quantum simulators, each controlling about 100+ qubits with classical supercomputers located at the Joliot Curie of GENCI, operated at CEA/TGCC, and the JUWELS modular supercomputer at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre. The project started on December 1, 2021, will last for four years, and has a €12 million budget. The software simulators involved include the Atos Quantum Learning Machine (QLM) and ParTec’s Parastation Modulo. Another quantum company involved will be ParityQC which will develop connections from the proposed middleware to ParityOS, as well as exploring potential use cases. Additional participants will include various organizations from the academia, research, technology, and industry sectors. More information about this project can be found on the HPCQS website at https://www.hpcqs.eu/.

December 1, 2021 - News Brief SpeQtral Receives $8.3 Million USD in Venture Funding SpeQtral is a Singapore based startup developing commercial space-based QKD founded on technology developed at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore. Among other projects they have a collaboration with Toshiba to power quantum-secure communication solutions in Southeast Asia. They have just announced they have closed an $8.3 million USD funding round led by Xora Innovation with additional participation from TIS Ventures.  The funds will be used to expand SpeQtral’s regional and international presence, establish strategic business partnerships, hire top talent, support the commercial rollout of terrestrial systems, and further develop its satellite-based systems. For more about this announcement you can view a news release they have posted on their web site.

December 1, 2021 - News Brief Xanadu Selects VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland as One of their Manufacturing Partners One of the most strategic decisions a quantum hardware company can make is how they plan to manufacture their chips. Some companies, such as Rigetti, have decided to construct their own fabrication facility in order to obtain the best possible control and fabrication turn-around time. While others, including D-Wave, PsiQuantum, and others are utilizing semiconductor foundries to build their chips. Xanadu has decided to take the latter approach, but it appears they will be using multiple vendors for different parts of their system. In August, they announced they will partner with imec in Belgium to fabricate the chips that contain the photonic qubits based on imec’s ultra-low loss silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides. But to complete the design, they also need sensitive photon detectors to count the qubits when they come out at the end of the silicon nitride waveguide chips. For this, they have selected the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland as their vendor. VTT will be using a superconducting photon detector technology to build these devices for Xanadu which Xanadu will use in their development of a fault tolerant quantum computer. You can view VTT’s announcement that they have been selected as a vendor to Xanadu in a news release available on their website here.

November 30, 2021 New Quantum Intermediate Representation Alliance Formed  The Linux Foundation has just announced they are forming a QIR Alliance (Quantum Intermediate Representation Alliance) that will work to establish an intermediate representation for quantum circuits with the goal to facilitate interoperability within the quantum ecosystem and provide a representation suitable for current and future heterogenous quantum processors. The Quantum Intermedia Representation will be built on top of the LLVM intermediate language standard used in the classical computing. Founding members of the QIR Alliance include Honeywell, Microsoft, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Quantum Circuits Inc. and Rigetti Computing. Click here to read more about the background and our full analysis of this development.

November 30, 2021 - News Brief Q-CTRL Receives $25 Million (USD) Series B Financing The round was led by Airbus Ventures with additional participation from Ridgeline Partners, Main Sequence Ventures, Horizons Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Sierra Ventures, DCVC, Sequoia Capital China and In-Q-Tel. Besides Q-CTRL’s work in developing control software for quantum computing, Airbus has been particularly interested in Q-CTRL’s recent work in quantum sensing. Dr. Lewis Pinault, Airbus Ventures Partner based in Tokyo said “At Airbus Ventures, we’re particularly excited about Q-CTRL’s widening span of advanced applications and solutions, including lunar development, geospatial intelligence, and Earth observation, all increasingly critical in the global effort to address the accelerating planetary system crises we now face.” Q-CTRL is also developing a new data-as-a-service market powered by quantum sensing for acceleration, gravity, and magnetic fields. They have also recently introduced a product called Black Opal which is an interactive quantum technology education program. More information about this Series B funding is available in a blog post on the Q-CTRL website which can be see here.

November 30, 2021 AWS Introduces Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs and also the Upcoming Addition of QuEra and Oxford Quantum Circuits as Hardware Providers to the Braket Service At Amazon's re:Invent conference they announced the Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs capability that will automate the management and configuration of hybrid processing jobs that require a classical and quantum computer to iteratively work together to solve a problem. These type of hybrid approaches are used in common quantum algorithms such as QAOA and VQE and this capability can significantly simplify the work of an end user as well as improve the overall program run time. They also announced that QuEra and Oxford Quantum Circuits will be added as hardware providers in the near future. View our full article reporting on these developments here.

November 30, 2021 Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum Close Merger; New Company Called Quantinuum We reported last June about the plans for Honeywell Corporation spin off its Honeywell Quantum Solutions division and have it merge with Cambridge Quantum to form a new independent private company. (See our previous articles here and here.) They have gotten through all the necessary government and other approvals and have officially started their life together under the name of Quantinuum. The company will be the largest independent quantum company with a staff of 400 people of which 300 are technical.  Click here to read our full article about this merger.

November 30, 2021 VTT’s Five Qubit Quantum Computer is Now Operational We reported last year that VTT had selected IQM to provide the country’s first quantum computer. The program has started with a five qubit machine which is now in operation at located at Micronova, a national research infrastructure for micro and nanotechnology jointly run by VTT and Aalto University. Click here for more.

November 29, 2021 - News Brief Sydney’s Tech Central Adds a New Quantum Terminal and Signs Up Its First Three Quantum Tenants Tech Central is an effort by the New South Wales (NSW), Australia government to provide innovative tech companies to centralize and find affordable office space for scaling up. One goal will be to encourage collaboration between related companies and foster a culture of sharing ideas and resources. It will include a Scaleup Hub with 8,000 square meters (about 86,000 square feet) of space for these companies to locate and expand. The Scaleup Hub is slated to be in operation by July 2022. They also provide funding of up to $600,000 AUD ($427K USD) per company to fit-out the space and customize areas for their particular use. They have announced that the first three Quantum organizations to locate in the new Quantum Terminal will be Q-Ctrl, Sydney Quantum Academy and Quantum Brilliance. For more about Tech Central’s Quantum Terminal and its first three new quantum tenants, you can view a news release provided by the NSW government and available on their website here.

November 27, 2021 - News Brief NIST Issues RFI Asking for Input on Quantum Computing Trends & Risks for a Congressional Study The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking information about the public and private sector marketplace trends, supply chain risks, legislative, policy, and the future investment needs of eight emerging technology areas, including quantum computing. The goal will be to gather ideas from people both in the industry and the general public of ways that can foster economic growth and competitiveness across the Nation that benefit all citizens. Information that the government seeks includes material related to the relevant marketplaces; supply chains; legislative, policy and standards needs; and strategic public-private partnerships to enhance adoption. This will help the government identify, understand, refine, and guide the development of the current and future state of technology in quantum computing and the other seven emerging technology areas. The deadline for responding to the RFI (Request for Information) is January 31, 2022 and the full RFI has been posted on the Federal Register website here.

November 25, 2021 Zurich Instruments Unveils a New Qubit Controller for Superconducting Qubits Zurich Instruments new product, called the SHFQC, provides both qubit control and readout in one unit for up to 6 qubits. It combines the capabilities of their SHFSG Signal Generator for generating microwave pulses and their SHFQA Quantum Analyzer for readout into one box. It is specifically well suited for researchers who are working with small systems, but want to have control electronics that is compact, quick to set up and intuitive to operate. Read the full article here.

November 24, 2021 U.S. Imposes a Blacklist on Chinese Organizations Working in Quantum for Military End Use The Export Administration Regulations (EAR) managed by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce calls for the maintenance of an Entity List. The list identifies entities that have been involved, are involved, or pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States. In particular, this include entities that are involved in developing technology that have a military end use (MEU) including such areas as artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing, and others. Special export controls are imposed on organizations on this list and for the most part, it makes it impossible for these companies to purchase components or do business with U.S. companies. Eight organizations were identified as being involved with quantum technology and added to the list including the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, QuantumCTek Co., and Shanghai QuantumCTek Co., Ltd. for their efforts to acquire and attempt to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of military applications. Click here for more.

November 24, 2021 - News Brief Dell Partners with IonQ to Test Hybrid Classical-Quantum Solutions We wrote last September about Dell’s first step in quantum computing to test a solution that integrates their Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd with IBM Qiskit quantum emulator. They have now taken a second step to test how their server can be integrated with both IonQ’s quantum simulator (also called a vQPU or virtual Quantum Processing Unit) as well as IonQ’s real ion trap quantum computer. Although the title of their blog post mentions the term “on-premise” this is only true when using a configuration that uses the vGPU. When interfacing with a IonQ’s real QPU in Maryland, that machine will still be remote. However, that may still provide some performance advantage because this Dell solution allows one to bypass IonQ’s normal job-queues and directly submit one’s program to IonQ’s remote QPU for execution. We should mention that IonQ’s roadmap calls for development of a rackmount version of their machine in 2023 and this would make it more amenable to develop a full on-premise installation. Perhaps another factor that Dell considered when deciding to partner with IonQ is the fact that IBM sells its own classical servers that compete with the PowerEdge R740xd, while IonQ does not. For more on Dell’s announcement that it is partnership with IonQ, you can view a blog post on the Dell Technology website that you can view here.

November 23, 2021 - News Brief QuTech Introduces a Quantum Network Explorer QuTech, a Dutch organization that is a collaboration between the TU Delft and TNO, has introduced a web site where users can simulate various aspects of a quantum internet. At this time, the simulations are performed on a classical computer but it is conceivable that this web site might allow allow users to try experience on real quantum communications hardware sometime in the future. The web site provides graphical animations of various quantum communications operations. There are currently three pre-configured applications available for beginners which include a Distributed CNOT, State Teleportation (also known as Quantum Teleportation), and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). The website also includes an Application Development Kit for Quantum Network Explorer (QNE-ADK) for researchers who want to build their own experiments. To learn more about the Quantum Network Explorer, you can visit their web site to try out the sample applications, read the documentation, or get instructions on how to install the QNE-ADK software.

November 21, 2021 - News Brief Northrup Grumman to Provide Virgina Tech with $12.5 Million for Quantum Research and Education The funding will allow Virgina Tech to create a new Center of Quantum Architecture and Software Development on the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus. It will supplement another $15.8 million in funding that was already planned by the Virgina Tech Innovation Campus. This support will be used to establish an endowed faculty position at the center, endow five to ten graduate fellowships, help connect Northrup Grumman experts with Virgina Tech faculty, create pathway programs to engage K-12 students, and support master of engineering projects in computer science and computer engineering. Construction of the innovation campus broke ground in Alexandria, Virginia in September 2020 and is expected to be ready by 2024. For more about this grant from Northrup Grumman, you can view a news release on the Virginia Tech website here.

November 20, 2021 Who’s News – New Additions at PQShield, Riverlane and Quantum Machines PQShield a UK cybersecurity company specializing in post-quantum cryptography has added Michael Vroobel as VP of Operations and Alan Grau as VP Business Development. Vroobel has had prior experience at fintech startups TrueLayer and MarketFinance. Riverlane has appointed of Cory Vander Jagt as Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances. He was previously the Director of Strategic Alliances at GitHub which was acquired by Microsoft in 2018. And Quantum Machines has announced that Max Schireson has joined the company’s Board of Directors. Read our full article here which provides additional information about these new management appointments.

November 19, 2021 Australia Signs Quantum Cooperation Agreement with the U.S, Commits to Invest A$111 million ($80 million USD) in Quantum, and Use Quantum Tech to Help Run the NSW Transit System A trio of separate announcements involving quantum technology from different branches of the Australian government has been released in the last couple of weeks. The first was an announcement from the New South Wales (NSW) Transport Minister, Rob Stokes, that they plan to build a Centre of Quantum Technology with a mission to help run Sydney’s vast transport network. The second announcement was from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison that the country will invest in nine critical technology with quantum computing being allocated funding of A$111 million over ten years to commercialize Australia’s quantum research and help businesses find markets and investors. And the third announcement is a statement of intent has been signed between the United States and Australia to cooperate on quantum technology. Click here for our article that covers each of these announcements.

November 19, 2021 - News Brief Qunnect Sells the World's First Commercial Quantum Memory Quantum memories are devices that store and release entangled photon qubits. They are a key component for creating quantum repeaters that would allow quantum communications over long distances and enable a quantum internet and there are many research activities around the world to develop this technology. Qunnect, located in Brooklyn, New York, is a spinout from research originally performed at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York to commercialize this and other components needed quantum communication. The quantum memory device is based upon a technology called Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) and has a unique feature that it operates at room temperature, unlike other approaches. It achieves fidelities above 95%. The have sold their first device to Brookhaven National Laboratory which will be using it for implementation of a quantum communications demonstration network. Additional information about this device along with a video that explains how the device operates can be seen in a news release that you can find here.

November 18, 2021 Classiq Introduces a New Version of their Software that Allows Users to Integrate their Own Functional Models Classiq is an Israeli based quantum software company provides software that automatically transforms high-level functional models into optimized quantum circuits for a wide range of back-end systems. Previously, algorithms designers could only use the built-in functions in the software that were provided by Classiq, but this new release allows a designer to integrate their own new functional block with the rest of the software. This new capability allow users include their own unique intellectual property (IP) and custom functional models. Click here for the full article.

November 18, 2021 Bluefors Introduces a New Generation of Cryogenic Platform Bluefors has introduced a new cryogenic platform that they call KIDE (meaning snow crystal in Finnish). This platform provides more cooling capability for larger chips. It also provide more flexibility. As shown in the picture three of the hexagonal shaped units can be connected together for possible use in creating a three-way quantum computing cluster. IBM has announced it will be using this platform for its forthcoming IBM Quantum System Two series of machines. You can view the Bluefors news release announcing this platform here and a short video that provides additional views of it here.

November 18, 2021 QuEra Announces a 256 Qubit Quantum Simulator and Raises $17 Million in Funding QuEra will be commercializing a neutral atom based 256 qubit quantum simulator originally developed at the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms and will make it publicly available soon. They also announced raising $17 million in venture funding from Rakuten, Day One Ventures, Frontiers Capital and leading tech investors Serguei Beloussov, Paul Maritz, and others. Click here for our full article with additional details.

November 16, 2021 IBM’s Seven Announcements at the IBM Quantum Summit IBM held their annual IBM Quantum Summit today and made seven significant announcements about the status and plans for their quantum computing activities. Although there was a lot of press hype about the 127 qubit Eagle processor, many of the other announcements were ignored and some may even be more significant than the Eagle itself. Click here to see our report on what they announced.

November 16, 2021 - News Brief Quandela Receives €15 Million ($17M USD) in Funding Quandela is a French quantum hardware startup that is planning on offering an online photonic based quantum computer in 2022. They were founded in 2017 as a spinoff of the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at CNRS. A key product for Quandela is the Prometheus, a photonic qubit generator with broad applications in quantum computing, quantum cryptography and quantum sensors. They also offer quantum photonic components to companies and research centers around the world. Omnes was the lead investor in this round with additional participation from Quantonation and the Defence Innovation Fund managed by Bpifrance. More details about this funding are available in a news release posted on the Quantonation website that you can find here.

November 16, 2021 IonQ Releases Third Quarter Financial Results Although quarterly results at this stage aren’t very meaningful for understanding the long term prospects for the company. Now that they are a public company, they do need to go through this. For the quarter, IonQ achieved Q3 revenue of $234 thousand which is a 150% increase over the Q2 revenue of $93 thousand. But expenses went up a lot with Q3 R&D expense at $6.18 million versus $5.47 million in Q2. Sales and Marking costs were at $1.28 million versus $871 thousand in Q2 although General & Administrative costs were $6.7 million including one-time offering costs of $4.2 million versus $2.9 million in Q2. The Net Loss in Q3 was $14.7 million versus a loss in Q2 of $9.9 million in Q3. In addition, they announced expected bookings by year end to total $15.7 million to $15.9 million and ended the quarter with $587 million in cash. Click here to view the full article.

November 15, 2021 - News Brief IQM Quantum Computer Selected for Integration as an Accelerator for an HPC System in Germany’s Q-Exa Project The IQM superconducting quantum computer will be integrated within a high performance computing (HPC) installation at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) near Munich. Other partners in this activity include Atos, Europe’s leading HPC company, and HQS, a quantum software startup company. Q-Exa is a €45.3 million ($51M USD) consortium project with major funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) that will research making quantum acceleration of HPC applications a reality. More about the Q-Exa project and integration of IQM’s quantum computing can be found in a news release available here.

November 15, 2021 - News Brief QED-C Will Start Accepting Memberships from non-U.S. Corporations The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C), a consortium established in 2018 by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of stakeholders that aims to enable and grow the quantum industry has announced that it will start accepting Tier-2 memberships from non-U.S. corporations located in certain countries approved by the QED-C steering committee. The list of countries currently includes  Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the UK with more expected to be approved in the future. More information about membership in QED-C can be found on their Membership webpage here.

November 14, 2021 - News Brief Agnostiq Chooses Xanadu’s Pennylane as a Base for Software that Addresses Financial Problems Agnostiq, a Canadian quantum software startup, will build software that solves various financial problems on top of Xanadu’s Pennylane. The Pennylane software is a quantum machine learning library that supports a very wide variety of the different hardware platforms that are currently available. By leveraging this software Agnostiq will be able to accelerate the availability of its solutions since it can concentrate its resources more on the end applications rather than the fundamental algorithms that are common with quantum machine learning and variational quantum computing. In addition, it provides more flexibility for Agnostiq’s customers in choosing which hardware backend to use due to the wide hardware support built into Pennylane. Additional information about this activity can be found in a press release issued by Xanadu that’s available here.

November 13, 2021 - News Brief Amazon AWS and CINECA Will Collaborate on a Series of Quantum Computing Research Initiatives CINECA is a non-profit consortium based in Bologna, Italy that is made up of 70 Italian universities, eight research institutions and the Italian Ministry of Higher Education. It hosts the  the most powerful supercomputing center for scientific research in Italy and its mission is to support the Italian scientific community through supercomputing and scientific visualization tools. Amazon AWS will work with them by supporting CINECA identified projects with AWS Cloud Credits for Research that provides credits for free time on the AWS cloud services. They will also jointly host a series of workshops to deepen the quantum expertise of the HPC research community. And Amazon will join a CINECA steering committee along with other quantum computing experts to represent the quantum computing research community in Italy and help identify cutting-edge quantum computing research projects that can leverage Amazon’s Braket quantum cloud services. More information about this collaboration can be found in a blog that has been posted on the Amazon AWS Braket website.

November 12, 2021 - News Brief Classiq Joins the Fraunhofer Led Sequoia Project Which Focuses on Industrial Hybrid Quantum Applications and Algorithms Classiq, an Israeli quantum software startup company, has joined the Sequoia project which will focus on software engineering of industrial, hybrid quantum applications and algorithms. The project is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO with additional partners including Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF, Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, University of Tübingen, Chair of Embedded Systems, FZI Research Center for Information Technology, University of Stuttgart, High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart, and the University of Stuttgart, Institute of Architecture of Application Systems (IAAS). The project is funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism Baden-Württemberg and will last from 2021 to 2023. Classiq will be working on two main problems within this project including solving mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems with state-of-the art (gate-based) quantum computers and solving coupled partial differential equations with the Harrow Hassidim Lloyd (HHL) quantum algorithm. You can view Classiq’s announcement that they have joined this project in a press release available here.

November 12, 2021 - News Brief IQM Opens a Dedicated Fab Facility in Finland IQM, a superconducting quantum processor startup headquartered in Espoo, Finland, has opened a dedicated fabrication facility in Espoo, Finland. The facilities size is 560 square meters (about 4000 square feet) and will cost about € 20 million ($22.9M USD). The pilot line at this facility will be ramped-up over the coming months, and it is expected to reach maximum production capacity during 2022. The company has received €71 million in funding to date and has also received a contract from VTT in Finland to build the country’s first commercial 54 qubit quantum processor. They are also implementing a unique strategy of creating application specific quantum processor that would be optimized for specific types of algorithms with help from their offices in Spain and Germany. Additional information about IQM’s announcement of the facility opening can be viewed in a press release available here and a video of the opening ceremony which can be seen here.

November 11, 2021 - News Brief The Advanced Quantum Testbed at the Berkeley Lab Releases an Open Source Control Electronics Design for Superconducting Processors One of the most critical subsystems in a superconducting quantum computer is the portion of the machine that contains the control electronics. These electronics generate the microwave pulses that are used to control the qubits to implement the various gates needed to run a quantum program. Up until now, an engineer developing a quantum processor would need to chose from purchasing commercial control electronics from one of the companies specializing in these products or designing their own from scratch. Now the Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has designed key low-noise RF mixing modules that can be used by anyone with an open source design that can be downloaded from GitLab. RF mixers convert the frequency of an incoming signal to either a higher or a lower frequency depending upon the use. By providing an open source option, a team using this for their quantum computer design could potentially save time or money or both. The team’s approach was to develop small interactive mixing modules that can be configured in a modular fashion for a specific application. Although this initial design has focused on providing the controls for superconducting qubits, this technology has expansion potential for use in controlling other types of qubits. Additional information about this design can be seen in a news release provided by AQT here as well as the GitLab pages where one can access the design here.

November 11, 2021 - News Brief Multiverse Partners with IonQ to Offer their Financial Software on the IonQ Platform We described last August Multiverse’s Singularity quantum software solution for financial applications. This software can enable financial institutions to model real-life financial problems such as Fair Price calculations, portfolio creation and optimization, ETF replication, risk valuation, and many other simulations with speed and accuracy. One thing that is highly significant about this software is that it can take input in the form of an Excel spreadsheet and then automatically translate that problem statement into a program that can run be on a quantum computer. This makes it significantly easier for a user to start access the power of a quantum computer. IonQ has now announced that it has integrated support for IonQ’s ion trap computer into Singularity. So Singularity will be able to automatically push your data directly to the IonQ’s quantum computer and will not require going though a cloud service provider like Amazon, Microsoft, or Google to access the machine. Multiverse indicates that IonQ is now a preferred quantum compute partner for their Singularity platform. Additional information about Multiverse’s partnership with IonQ is available in a press release here and additional information about Singularity is available on a page located on Multiverse’s website here.

November 10, 2021 - News Brief Quantum Algorithms Institute and Mitacs Announce a Funded Internship Program The Quantum Algorithms Institute is a non-profit organization was founded in 2019 with a mission to grow the applied quantum computing ecosystem in British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada. Mitacs is a Canadian not-for-profit organization that has designed and delivered research and training programs in Canada for 20 years. Together the two have established a program to provide university students with ten internships that pay up to $40,000 (CAD) per year for a period of eight months for quantum computing research in a variety of application areas or to design new algorithms. The proposals for an internship must include the participation of one QAI industry member such as Microsoft, IBM, AWS, D-Wave, or 1QBit and one B.C. post-secondary institution. A student must be based in British Columbia but they can partner with another student from an approved university anywhere in the world. The interns will be expected to present their research findings after the completion of their internship. The deadline to apply for this program is January 31, 2022. For more information about this program, you can view a news release from the Quantum Algorithms Institute here and also detailed rules that are available in a Call for Proposal document here.

November 10, 2021 Your Chance to Help the EdQuantum Project Develop a Curriculum for Training Quantum Technicians One of the common themes we are hearing at every quantum conference these days is the criticality of developing a quantum workforce so that we get the most advantage out of quantum technology as soon as we can. Although a number of good training programs have been started, one area that hasn’t received as much attention is the development two-year programs for quantum technicians who could potentially perform many of the activities that would have to be otherwise need to be done by individuals with full undergraduate or graduate level degrees. Appropriately utilizing these quantum technicians could significantly expand the availability of human resources that are needed to build, deploy and use quantum technology. Recognizing this, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided a grant to the Indian River State College to create the EdQuantum program for training quantum technicians.  The first steps for this program is to take an industry survey from industry of those skills they consider important for a quantum technician role. For more information about this survey and how you can participate and provide you inputs, click here to find out more.

November 10, 2021 - News Brief Q-CTRL Introduces Black Opal, an Interactive, Online Quantum Learning Platform for Beginners Black Opal uses visualization, interactivity and animation targeted for technology professionals, STEM-enthusiast teenagers, science fans, and self-learners and other beginners who want to learn more about quantum computing without requiring any pre-requisites. “Black Opal helps anyone go from zero knowledge to programming real quantum computers without facing the barriers of formal coursework,” said Q-CTRL Founder and CEO Professor Michael J. Biercuk. “It supports students and professionals seeking careers in the quantum industry, and provides insight to the most curious enthusiasts from real research leaders in the field. There’s no better way to learn quantum computing from actual experts.” In order to incentivize users to try it out, Q-CTRL is holding a Black Friday sale (a first for the quantum industry!). They are offering a 12 month subscription plus four months beta access for a special price of $50, a discount from the normal price of $180 for sign-ups entered between November 19-29, 2021. Additional information about Black Opal and the Black Friday sale can be found in a news release provided by Q-CTRL that you can find here. To get a subscription and to view a short video demonstration of it, you can visit a page on the Q-CTRL website here.

November 10, 2021 - News Brief ORCA Computing will Lead a Team for a £9 Million ($12M USD) Quantum Data Centre of the Future Project ORCA Computing will be leading the project to research how quantum computing can integrate with the data centers that currently underpin and drive the digital economy. Other participating organizations in the project include BP, BT, Digital Catapult, Imperial College London, National Composites Centre, NCC Group Security Services, PQShield, KETS Quantum Security, Riverlane, University College London, University of Bath, University of Bristol, and the University of Southampton. The project will be using quantum-safe communications solutions including  Quantum Random Number generation, Quantum Key Distribution and Post-Quantum Cryptography so that users can access data and computing resources remotely in a way that is secured against both conventional and quantum computing attacks. This award was part of twelve different quantum projects announced recently as part of the UK’s National Quantum Technologies Programme (NQTP) for a total of  £50 million ($67M USD). For additional information about the Quantum Data Centre project, you can view a news release posted on the KETS website here and for additional information about the other NQTP awards you can see a news release on the UK Research and Innovation website here.

November 9, 2021 Classical Computing Strikes Back; Simulation Advances from NVIDIA and China One thing not fully understood is that significant innovation is still occurring in classical computing and those trying to demonstrate a quantum advantage over a classical solution will find that the competitive bar is continually being raised. Some will say that classical computing is slowing down because Moore’s Law improvements are becoming harder to come by, but that is too simplistic. There is still much classical computing innovation still occurring in new architectures, new algorithms, and development of quantum-inspired solutions. Two recent announcements from GPU manufacturer NVIDIA and a research group in China show some significant advances in the classical simulation of quantum algorithms that may make these approaches much more attractive for use in real world problems. Click here for more.

November 8, 2021 - News Brief Three New Corporate Partners Join the Chicago Quantum Exchange Classiq, Lake Shore Cryotronics, and Oxford Instruments have joined the Chicago Quantum Exchange as corporate partners. These companies provide software, processes, tools, and instruments that can be utilized for the quantum research being performed by member organizations of the Chicago Quantum Exchange and to help train future quantum scientists and engineers. Additional information is available in a news release posted on the Chicago Quantum Exchange website that can viewed here.

November 7, 2021 - News Brief Delft Circuits and kiutra Team to Provide Cooling and Connections Two of the larger mechanical engineering challenges in creating a quantum computer is to provide an efficient way of provide the low temperature cooling needed while routing all the cables down to the chip that contains the qubits. Now Delft Circuits and kiutra have gotten together to provide a fully integrated, turnkey cooling platform in a project named “SPROUT”. The project is funded by a European program called “Eurostars” with support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. For more about this program, you can view a press release posted on the kiutra website that you can see here.

November 6, 2021 Q-CTRL Quantifies the Benefit of Their Qubit Control Software using the QED-C Application Benchmarks Q-CTRL has long claimed that their qubit control software can provide improve gate fidelities and now has supplied data that can show how well it works. They have used the QED-C application benchmarks that we reported on earlier this month, and re-ran some of the tests on a few IBM superconducting quantum computers to show improved results. They used their upcoming Fire Opal toolset which will provide optimized control pulses to implement the gates on the IBM Lagos quantum computer which has seven qubits and a quantum volume of 32. This results in superior implementation of the gates with higher gate fidelities than can be achieved with the unmodified standard gates. They achieved an improved result fidelity of about 1.6X for the Grover’s Search algorithm, about 12X for the Quantum Fourier Transform and about 27X for the Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm. Click here for the full article.

November 6, 2021 - News Brief Quantum Motion Led Consortium Receives £5.7 Million ($7.7M USD) for Cryogenic Chip Development The three year program, named Altnaharra, is funded by the UKRI’s National Quantum Technologies Programme (NQTP). Additional participants in the project include the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Oxford Instruments, Oxford Ionics, and the University of Glasgow. The chip being developed will use CMOS technology and provide for integrated control and readout of qubits at low temperatures. The chip will be usable with several different qubit technologies. Additional information about this grant can be found in a news release available on the Quantum Motion website here.

November 5, 2021 - News Brief Oxford Quantum Circuits and the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre Sign an MOU to Work Together and Enable the Pathway to Quantum Readiness in the UK The companies will work together to utilize Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) recently established Quantum Computing as-a-Service (QCaas) and leverage the National Quantum Computing Centre’s (NQCC) reach to provide a lead on sector-based engagement. This will help boost access to quantum computing resources for UK-based users in the future and drive adoption of the technology. The organizations will identify potential users and showcase the capabilities of UK technologies and expertise, through access to OQC’s quantum computing platforms. It will also help ensure data onshoring for critical applications. For more details about this, you can view a press release provided by NQCC and available here.

November 5, 2021 SEEQC UK Announces Three New Project Awards by Innovate UK’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) The first is a  £6.85 million ($9.25M USD) grant from Innovate UK to build a commercially scalable application-specific quantum computer designed to tackle prohibitively high costs within pharmaceutical drug development. The second project is a £6.8 million ($9.1M USD) initiative led by Riverlane, to develop advanced quantum calibration methods that utilize machine learning and support the integration of SEEQC’s unique superconducting classical logic platform with cryoCMOS components to support deep memory. And the third project is a £6.5 million ($8.77M USD) initiative led by sureCore, will also support the integration of SEEQC’s unique superconducting classical logic platform with cryoCMOS components, combining the optimal features of each component in support of the company’s platform development. For more, you can view our full article by clicking here.

November 5, 2021 Two Consortiums with Universal Quantum Win Awards for £7.5 Million ($10.1M USD) and £6.5 Million ($8.7M USD) from the U.K. Government In consecutive days this week, Universal Quantum announced that it is participating in two different consortium projects that have won sizable awards. The first consortium is led by Universal Quantum and includes a £7.5 million grant from from Innovate UK’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to build an error-corrected quantum computer that can be applied to help solve high-impact problems in the aerospace industry. The second consortium will be led by by sureCore with a goal to develop advanced cryogenic semiconductor IP and be funded with £6.5 Million from Innovate UK’s £36M ISCF project. Click here for the full article.

November 5, 2021 - News Brief Who’s News – Denise Ruffner, Justin Ging Join Atom Computing; Jake Taylor Joins Riverlane Denise Ruffner will serve as the Chief Business Officer for Atom Computing with responsibilities for leading customer, partner and sales strategy. She previously was the Vice-President of Business Development at IonQ and has additional quantum experience gained from her previous roles at Cambridge Quantum and IBM. Justin Ging will be the Chief Product Officer at Atom Computing. Previously, he was the Chief Commercial Officer at Honeywell Quantum Solutions with other experience at Samsung and Aptina Imaging. Riverlane has appointed Dr. Jake Taylor as Chief Science Officer. Dr. Taylor was the assistant director for quantum information science at the White House from 2017 to 2020, and help lead the creation of the US National Quantum Initiative. Part of his responsibilities at Riverlane include helping them establish a larger U.S. presence by assisting in the hiring of engineers and researchers in the Boston area. You can view the news releases announcing these new management appointments at Atom Computing here and at Riverlane here.

November 5, 2021 - News Brief Rigetti, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and University of Southern California Awarded a $3.1 Million Contract for Quantum Simulation of Nuclear Fusion The award was made by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) for a three year program to simulate plasma dynamics associated with fusion energy on Rigetti’s cloud-based quantum computers. The project will also help advance Rigetti’s quantum technology as it involves applying control pulse engineering and dynamic error suppression techniques to enable long duration simulations with high effective gate depth. It will leverage and help extend Rigetti’s QUIL, Quil-T and other software programming libraries. QUIL is an open-source quantum instruction language for hybrid quantum-classical computing originally developed by Rigetti. Quil-T is its time-domain pulse programming extension. Additional information is available in a news release issued by Rigetti which can be viewed here.

November 5, 2021 - News Brief The U.S. and U.K. Issue a Joint Statement of Intent to Enhance Cooperation on Quantum Information Science and Technology The purpose of the agreement is to boost collaboration between the two countries and help realize the full potential of quantum technologies and deepen ties between the United States and the United Kingdom. This collaboration will help facilitate increased cooperation between U.S. and U.K. governmental agencies on various projects. This includes joint work performed by the the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.K. National Physical Laboratory (NPL) for quantum technologies including next-generation atomic clocks and quantum sensors. It will also enable an enhanced partnership between the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.K. Research and Innovation (UKRI) for additional collaboration on research in QIS. This statement will make it easier for U.S. government agencies to form addtional partnerships with corresponding organizations in the U.K. Additional information about this statement can be found in a press release posted on the U.S. governments Quantum.gov website that you can view here.

November 2, 2021 IBM Introduces Another New Quantum Performance called CLOPS to Measure Execution Speed IBM has come up with a new performance metric called CLOPS (Circuit Layer Operations per Second) that can provide some visibility into speed performance. This metric is based upon the time it takes to run a quantum program that includes multiple shots, varying parameters, overheads associated with the control electronics and other factors. Click here to learn more about this new measure and some of its implications.

October 28, 2021 - News Brief Who’s News – Management Additions at Alice & Bob, Terra tionsQuantum, and Quantropi A few more management additions have been announced this month. Professor Michel Devoret has been appointed as a scientific board member and advisor at Alice & Bob. Professor Devoret is a Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University and has done pioneering work in the areas of superconducting qubits and error correction. Terra Quantum has appointed Dr. Florian Neukart as Chief Product Officer. He was previously the Director of Volkswagen’s Data Lab. And Marco Pagani has been appointed as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Quantropi. Mr. Pagani is the President and CEO of the Ottawa Community Foundation and is a former President of Nortel. Additional details can be seen in the individual press announcements from Alice & Bob, Terra Quantum and Quantropi.

October 27, 2021 - News Brief QuintessenceLabs Receives a $25 Million AUD ($18.75M USD) Series B Round QuintessenceLabs, a Canberra, Australia supplier of quantum cybersecurity solutions including quantum random number generators (QRNG) and quantum key distribution devices (QKD), has received $25 Million in a Series B funding round. The round was led by Main Sequence and TELUS Ventures with additional participation from Mizuho Financial Group-backed InterValley Ventures and Terry Snow’s Capital Property Group. The company is a spin-off from the Australian National University in Canberra and had previously received funding of $3.26 million AUD ($2.45M USD) and followed by an additional funding of $528 thousand ($396K USD) from the Australian Department of Defence. Among other uses, the company will be using these funds to scale up its sales and marketing efforts and will expand its teams in the U.S. and later on the U.K., Japan and India. Additional information about QuintessenceLabs and the funding can be found in a press release provided by them that’s available here.

October 26, 2021 - News Brief Amazon Opens the AWS Center for Quantum Computing in Pasadena Amazon had announced last year that it was building a new center for quantum computer research on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California and they now have announced that its opening after a year of construction. The two-story 21,000 square foot (1950 square meters) facility will include office space, laboratories and everything needed for Amazon to make, test and operate quantum processors. Although Amazon is currently partnering with D-Wave, Rigetti and IonQ to offer quantum computing cloud services through their AWS platform, they are also busy designing their own superconducting based quantum computer with error correction. Although they have not released any schedule or specification information on what they are working, they have published technical papers that describe their approach which we reported on in a three part series with Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Caltech describes this facility as the first  first corporate-partnership building on the Caltech campus. Amazon will benefit because it will allow them to tap into the large talent base at Caltech. For additional information about the opening of this building, you can view a blog article posted on the AWS Quantum website here and a second news article provided by Caltech available on their website here.

October 26, 2021 - News Brief Qualcomm Ventures Invests in Quantum Machines We reported on Quantum Machines raise of $50 million in a Series B round in September. They now have announced that Qualcomm Ventures will also become an investor in Quantum Machines as an extension to their Series B round. The amount of the investment was not disclosed. To our knowledge this is Quantum Ventures first investment in a quantum company. Overall they have invested in 150 portfolio companies around the world in companies working in the 5G, artificial intelligence, automotive, IoT, consumer, enterprise cloud areas. You can view Quantum Machines press release announcing this investment here.

October 24, 2021 - News Brief Toshiba Develops a Three Chip Solution for QKD Toshiba has developed a photonic integrated circuit solution that shrinks the core QKD functionality into three chips. Although these chips are still prototypes, they are built with standard semiconductor manufacturing process which could pave the way for future high volume production at competitive costs. The three chips are separated into the QTx transmitter chip, QRx receiver chip, and the QRNG quantum random number generator chip. They are capable of exchanging a thousand symmetric QKD codes per second over a 10 km fiber optic link. For more details about these chips, you can read a press release provided by Toshiba and available on their web site here and a technical paper published in Nature Photonics that can be viewed here.

October 22, 2021 - News Brief IonQ Becomes the Third Corporate Member of UMD’s Quantum Startup Foundry IonQ joins EY and The Mitre Corporation in supporting this new accelerator managed by the University of Maryland (UMD) for quantum startup companies. Perhaps this is not surprising as IonQ itself was a startup that spun out of quantum research activities at UMD. This activity is just one of many areas where IonQ and the University of Maryland are working together. In September, the two parties announced they will be partnering to create a National Quantum Lab (Q-Lab) with $20 Million in funding from the university. Additional information about IonQ’s collaborations with the university can be viewed in a news article posted on the UMD website here.

October 20, 2021 - News Brief Multiverse Computing Lands a €10 Million ($11.5M USD) Seed Funding Round Multiverse Computing is a quantum software company with headquarters in San Sebastian, Spain that specializes in providing quantum software solutions for the financial industry. Their flagship product is called Singularity that allows users to input their problem’s parameters for applications such as portfolio optimization or fraud detection into a spreadsheet and then submit the spreadsheet for solution on a quantum computer. This funding round was led by JME Ventures with additional participation from Quantonation, EASO Ventures, Inveready, CLAVE Capital (Mondragón Fondo de Promoción), Ikerlan, LKS, Penja Strategy, Seed Gipuzkoa and Ezten Venture Capital Fund. This follows an earlier pre-seed round of 1.5 Million Euro ($1.78M USD) that Multiverse received in November 2020. The company will use the funds to expand their technology and marketing efforts. In addition, they will continue their globalization strategy with increased support including offices in Toronto, Paris and Munich. The company has set a goal of reaching annual revenue close to €100 million ($116M USD) by 2027 and grow the staffing levels from the current count of 30 to about 100 people. For more information about their funding, you can view a press release they provided which is available here.

October 19, 2021 ColdQuanta Forms Quantum Research as a Service (QRaaS) as a New Division Although the division is new, it actually has been ColdQuanta’s core business since they started and well before they decided to enter the quantum computing market. ColdQuanta has always offered a broad portfolio of quantum devices and machines for use in quantum systems and applications. These include such items as UHV glass cells, magneto-optical traps, cryogenic apparatus, high performance quantum based clocks, and other such items. Click here for more.

October 19, 2021 - News Brief Applications Due October 22nd for a Jumpstart Workshop to Learn How to Test the Market Potential of Your Quantum Innovation The Midwest I-Corps Node, in partnership with the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Duality, is offering a Jumpstart workshop that will help teams explore the commercial viability of quantum technologies, including hardware and software solutions as well as quantum-enabling technologies. The workshop will consist of four two hour session from November 2 to December 14 that will provide guidance to teams on how they can learn customer pain points, build connections to a commercial ecosystem, assess the size of their potential market and develop a commercialization roadmap. Participants will be eligible to receive up to $950 in funding for customer discovery-related expenses. Additionally, qualifying teams may also be eligible for a $50,000 grant from the NSF I-Corps National Teams program, SBIR/STTR, and other commercialization grants. The deadline to apply to this Jumpstart workshop is Friday, October 22nd. An information session that further explains the Jumpstart Quantum Technology Commercialization Workshop will be held on October 21 and you can register to attend here. Other information is available in a blog post available here and a webpage description of the program here.

October 19, 2021 - News Brief Berlin Quantum Alliance Launched with €25 Million ($29M USD) in Funding The Berlin Senate is funding this effort with €25 million over a five year period. The funds will be split with €15 million to be used for basic research and €10 million to be used for applied research. The activities will focus on both quantum software including basic research and industry related applications as well as quantum hardware, in particular photonic quantum enabling technologies. The Berlin Quantum Alliance (BQA) is based upon a concept developed by the Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, Technical University of Berlin, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications (HHI). Additional information about the Berlin Quantum Alliance is available in a press release (in German) posted on the City of Berlin’s website that you can be seen here and also another press release (in English) provided by the Berlin Business Office that can be found here.

October 18, 2021 - News Brief aQuantum Announces Subscription Plans for Its QuantumPath Software Development Platform QuantumPath is an ecosystem of tools, services and processes that simplify the development of quantum algorithms into hybrid information systems that support gate-based, quantum annealing and simulator backends. It consists of two component types. The first are QPath Core Modules which manage agnostic quantum algorithms & solutions (gate-based, quantum annealing) assisted by general purpose tools. CORE Modules enable this hybrid (classical/quantum) computing platform to support the quantum software life cycle and engineering. The second type of components are QPath® Platform Apps that support software engineering and programming best practices adoption for developing high-quality quantum software. The software currently provides support for backends from IBM, D-Wave, Fujitsu, QuTech, AWS, and Microsoft. aQuantum is now providing four different levels of subscription plans for using this software that depend upon the size of the team and the amount of usage needed. These levels are QPath Free Developer, QPath Developer, QPath Business and QPath Enterprise. For more about aQuantum’s announcement of its subscription plans, you can read a news release posted on their website here and a webpage that provides an overview of the QuantumPath software here.

October 17, 2021 - News Brief U.S. Government Report on International Talent in Quantum Information Science The Economic and Security Implications of Quantum Science (ESIX) subcommittee of the U.S. National Science & Technology Council (NSTC) has issued a report with recommendations on how the U.S. can work with foreign talent to help advance the quantum industry. It is important to provide a balance between supporting an open innovation ecosystem with protecting national security. The report asserts that there is a continuing shortage of quantum trained individuals worldwide and it is important to grow this workforce in order for the U.S. to retain leadership in this technology. Key recommendations from the report including the following: 1) The United States should continue welcoming talented international researchers while implementation protections to ensure that research security concerns are mitigated; 2) U.S. federal organizations should continue close collaboration with allies and partners to ensure a vibrant and secure international QIST ecosystem; 3) The NSTC Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science (SCQIS) should develop a five-year strategic plan for QIST workforce development and 4), Federal organizations that fund research, development, and acquisition of QIST should develop coordinated, comprehensive technology protection plans to safeguard intellectual capital and property, while accounting for specific mission needs. The full report is available on the Quantum.gov website and can be found here.

October 15, 2021 - News Brief QuICS Receives Renewed Funding of $12.2 Million from NIST The Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) is a partnership between the University of Maryland and NIST set up to advance research and education in quantum computer science and quantum information theory. It was originally created in 2014 and now has received renewed funding of $12.2 million from NIST to cover the next five years. In addition to the $12.2 million, the University of Maryland (UMD) will also provide another $2 million over the next five years. The center will use these funds to grow its staff, research agenda and educational activities. QuICS has recently doubled its space on the UMD campus and now has additional room for the expanded activities. A news release announcing this funding can be found on the QuICS website here.

October 15, 2021 NIST Soliciting Collaborators for their Migrating to Post-Quantum Cryptography Project The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) within the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is inviting interested parties to collaborate in their Migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography project. The purpose of this project is to develop practices to ease the migration from the current set of public-key cryptographic algorithms to post quantum cryptography (PQC) replacement algorithms that are resistant to quantum computer-based attacks. For the full article, click here.

October 15, 2021 - News Brief D-Wave Joins the Center for Quantum Technologies Research Program as an Industry Member The Center for Quantum Technologies (CQT) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded program aimed at developing novel quantum technologies to address significant industry challenges. Its founding partners include Purdue University, Indiana University Bloomington, the University of Notre Dame, and Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI). D-Wave will provide access to its hardware, software and developer tools for CQT students as well as serve on the industry advisory board. They will be joining other CQT industry members including Accenture, Cummins, Entanglement, Inc., General Atomics, IBM Quantum and Quantum Computing Inc. An announcement from D-Wave about their joining the CQT program with additional information can be found here.

October 14, 2021 Cambridge Quantum Releases “lambeq”, a Quantum Natural Language Processing Toolkit and Library lambeq (named after mathematician Joachim Lambek) is the result of research that has gone on for 10 years by Cambridge Quantum’s (CQ) Chief Scientist Bob Coecke. The concept is that a sentence consisting of a group of words can be represented as a network and the network can be converted to a quantum circuit in an application called Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP). This approach can enable real-world QNLP applications, such as automated dialogue, text mining, language translation, text-to-speech, language generation and bioinformatics. It can also be used for a more general analysis of symbol sequences that can be found in genomics and proteomics. Click here for more.

October 14, 2021 - News Brief Quantum Dice Receives £2 Million ($2.7M USD) in Pre-seed Funding Quantum Dice is an Oxford University spinout developing a compact and continuously self-certifying quantum random number generator (QRNG) based upon a technology they call DISCTM that employs advanced silicon photonics technology to produce high-quality, certified randomness from an on-chip laser source. This technology is very high speed and was originally developed in Oxford’s world-leading Quantum Optics research group. The pre-seed fundraising consists of a £1 million venture capital investment led by Elaia Partners with additional participation from IP Group plc, and the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) managed by Midven. An additional £1 million of non-dilutive grant funding came from the Quantum Investment Accelerator run by IP Group plc in partnership with Innovate UK, the United Kingdom’s innovation agency. Generating high quality, fully random numbers to use as encryption keys is very important for secure communication. Using a quantum based process can help guarantee this is the case due to the non-deterministic nature inherent in the laws of quantum mechanics. Additional information about this funding can be found in a news release available here.

October 13, 2021 New Corporate Sponsors Announced at Chicago’s Duality Quantum Accelerator and Maryland’s Quantum Startup Foundry Two quantum startup foundries in the United States have added corporate sponsors that will provide the quantum startup cohort members with equipment, training, mentorship, financial support and other services and resources. Click here to view the full article and see which corporate entities are getting involved.

October 9, 2021 Advanced Quantum Testbed Announces Open Call for New User Project Proposals The Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has issued an open call for new user project proposals. These proposals should be for research of non-proprietary work that will be published in the scientific literature. Non-U.S. citizens are allowed to submit proposals and there is no cost to groups with accepted proposals. AQT users will have access to AQT’s scientists and engineers for close collaboration and guidance on how to best use the hardware and software capabilities at AQT. To have a proposal considered, a prospective user should start by submitting a Letter of Intent (LOI) by November 5, 2021. Click here for more information about this open call for proposals.

October 8, 2021 - News Brief BT and Toshiba to Create One of World's First Commercial Quantum Secured Communications Network Across Metro London This network would be one of the world’s first commercially available quantum-secured metro network in the world. It will be operated by BT and utilize quantum key distribution (QKD) hardware and key management software from Toshiba, manufactured at Toshiba’s Cambridge, UK site. The companies will offer this service to enterprise customers, such as financial and legal organizations, who require the utmost security for sensitive data such as database backups. While the companies had previously installed a point-to-point network between Bristol-based NCC (National Composites Centre) and Centre for Modelling and Simulation (CFMS), the new network will be a multi-point network across a large metropolitan area. Additional details about this announcement can be viewed in a news release located on the BT website here.

October 8, 2021 - News Brief Zapata Partners with the University of Hull to Evaluate Orquestra to Help Evaluate Biological Signatures of Life in Deep Space Although the project will not use quantum computing directly to search for life in deep space, it can potentially help the effort by creating a data base of detectable signatures of molecules that could suggest biological activity. MIT researchers in 2016 created a list of 14,000 molecules that could indicate signs of life in extraterrestrial planets. The E.A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Hull will evaluate using Zapata’s Orquestra and quantum computing to create a database of detectable signatures using new computational models of molecular rotations and vibrations that will show how these molecules respond to infrared radiation from nearby stars. This evaluation will be a short one, scheduled to only last for eight weeks, but there are expected to be several follow-on projects between Zapata and the University of Hull for additional quantum astrophysics related applications. Additional information about this project can be found in a news release provided by Zapata available here.

October 8, 2021 - News Brief Strangeworks Announces a Backstage Pass Program for Early Access to the Newest Technology Members of the Backstage Pass program will gain access to the newest technology available from Strangeworks’ own internal development team and their Quantum Syndicate members. Oftentimes, when a quantum hardware provider develops a new machine, they won’t make it fully available to the general public immediately because there may be limits on how many users it can initially support. Rather, they may make it available only to a select group of beta customers so they can better control the usage while the provider gains initial experience and makes optimizations in operating the machine. Members of the Strangeworks program can have a better chance of being included in this select group of early users with the assistance from Strangeworks. An additional benefit of the Backstage Pass Program is that members can apply for the Strangeworks Quantum Hardware Credit Program which will provide up to $5,000 in credit on the Strangeworks platform to use on hardware systems available via Amazon Braket from D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti. For additional information about this new program and to apply to become a member, you can view announcement of the program on their website here and also an FAQ page that provides additional details about it here. The program will officially start in January 2022, but users can apply to join the program right now an a webpage located here.

October 7, 2021 - News Brief Microsoft Azure Adds Compatibility with Qiskit and Cirq SDKs Previously, anyone wishing to use the Microsoft Azure quantum cloud service to access the Honeywell and IonQ quantum computers needed to use Microsoft’s Q# quantum programming language for writing their programs. Now Microsoft has written an API so that user’s existing Qiskit or Cirq programs can add a few lines of code and run their programs on the Honeywell or IonQ systems using the Azure cloud service. This will expand the potential user community for Microsoft and provide users with a greater choice of hardware providers for developing and testing their programs. You can view Microsoft’s announcement about this development in a blog article on their website here.

October 6, 2021 Rigetti to Go Public with SPAC Supernova II with Equity Value of $1.5 Billion Rigetti Computing announced today that they will merge with SPAC Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II to become a public company. The transaction will include a cash infusion to Rigetti of $345 million in funds held in the trust account of Supernova II along with an additional $100 million in PIPE (Private investment in public equity) funding from investors including funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Bessemer Venture Partner, Franklin Templeton, and In-Q-Tel. Other strategic investors will include Keysight Technologies, Palantir Technologies and Ampere Computing. These funds should be sufficient to support Rigetti’s operating expenses and capital investment needs until they reach breakeven. Click here to view our full article that provides more information about this transaction.

October 5, 2021 - News Brief Equal1 Receives Multimillion Euro Funding Round Bringing Total Funding to €10 million ($11.6M USD) Equal1, a startup developing silicon based quantum processors based in Dublin, Ireland and Fremont, California, has received a multimillion Euro funding round from venture firm btov Industrial Technologies and previous investors Atlantic Bridge, 808 Ventures and Enterprise Ireland.. This brings the total amount of funding to the company to date of over €10 million ($11.6M USD). Dr. Christian Reitberger, partner at btov, has joined Equal1’s Board of Directors and Declan O’Mahoney has been appointed as Equal’s Non-Executive Chairman of its Board of Directors. Equal1 has been developing a quantum processor based upon spin qubit technology that operates at a relatively warm temperature of 3.7 Kelvin. The advantage of this approach is that it would eliminate the need for a large and costly dilution refrigerator and potentially allow providing the quantum computing in a desktop computer form factor. They have already create a demonstrator system called Alice and are working on a next generation system codenamed Aquarius that is expected to be completed within the next 24 months. More information about their technology is available in an article that we posted in May. Additional information about this funding can be found in a news release posted by Equal1 and available here.

October 5, 2021 D-Wave Announces Their Future Roadmap Including a New Gate Based Machine that is Under Development At its Qubits 2021 conference today, D-Wave announced its product roadmap including several new items on both the hardware and the software fronts. These include an update to their current 5000 qubit Advantage quantum annealer, a future 7000 qubit quantum annealer they are calling Advantage 2, a future gate based, error corrected machine, and various software improvement including a new Constrained Hybrid Solver. Click here for more about this product roadmap announcement.

October 4, 2021 - News Brief Archer Materials Receives A$15 Million ($10.9M USD) Funds in an Institutional Placement for New Shares In addition to the new funding of A$15 million the company is seeking to raise an additional A$5 million ($3.6 million) from existing eligible shareholders who are residents of Australia or New Zealand. The funds will be used to continue development of Archer’s 12CQ quantum computing chip and lab-on-a-chip biochip technologies, infrastructure and facilities, protecting Archer’s intellectual property, establishing and strengthening commercial partnerships and general working capital. Additional information about this new share placement can be found in a news release posted on the Archer website here.

October 3, 2021 Quantum Product Placements in Europe; Qblox and Atos A pair of product placement announcements have been recently announced. First Qblox announced that Chalmers University in Sweden has ordered their scalable and readout hardware for use with a new 20 qubit superconducting processor that Chalmers is developing. Also, Atos announced that it has delivered its Quantum Learning Machine (QLM) to the Galician Supercomputing Center (CESGA) in Spain. Click here for the full article.

October 1, 2021 - News Brief Munich Quantum Valley Project to Receive 83.3 Million Euros ($96M USD) from the Bavarian State Government We had reported in January about plans of the German state of Bavaria to create a Munich Quantum Valley program and have just announced this first release of funding from the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art. These funds will extend through 2024 with additional funds release anticipated in the future. Participants in the program include the Bavarian Academy of Sciences BAdW), the Fraunhofer Society, the Max Planck Society, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU), the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Goals of the project include developing an ecosystem for quantum technologies in the Munich region, set up a quantum technology park, set up a center for quantum computing and quantum technologies, and promote scientific qualification and training of a new generation of engineers and scientists. More information about this funding can be found in a news release (in German) provided by the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art that can be found here and also the website for the Munich Quantum Valley located here.

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