Quantum Computing Report by GQI - Week 47, 2023

Quoherent Closes a $4.7 Million Seed Round Financing

Quoherent, Inc., a Huntsville, Alabama quantum hardware startup, has secured a $4.7 million in a seed round led by Morpheus Ventures with additional participation from Draper Associates, Khosla Ventures, and Alpha Edison. The company is developing a novel quantum modality that used topological materials that operate at room temperature. The could potentially enable installing a quantum computer at the edge or in portable systems. The funds will be used to will be used to accelerate development of Quoherent’s “third-wave” solid state quantum qubits. Additional information is available in a press release provided by Quoherent which available here.

Quantum Computing Inc. Reports Third Quarter Financial Results

Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) report achieving third quarter 2023 revenue of $50 thousand. This compares to revenue of $38 thousand in the year ago quarter and $112 thousand in the previously second quarter of 2023. Net loss was $8.2 million compared to $7.5 million in Q3 2022 and $4.6 million in Q2 2023. The company ended the quarter with $7.3 million in cash and cash equivalents compared to $7.2 million at the end of Q2. The increase in cash was primarily due to receipt of ?$7.8 million during the period July 1, 2023 through August 9, 2023 through the sale of common stock via QCI’s ATM (At The Market) facility with Ascendiant Capital Markets, LLC.

The indicated it has received a ?NASA Ames subcontract award from?Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAERI) for a photonic sensor instrument. They also announced they had sold a?Reservoir Computer and Quantum Random Number Generator to its partners Assured Cyber Protection Ltd and AI firm millionways. They had also been performing several proof-of-concept and beta tests of its Dirac-1 and Dirac-2 Entropy Quantum Computers. They now have seven end users currently working with the systems. On the technical side, the company noted that they have made five product release announcements this year, expanded manufacturing capacity, increased their technical staff, and begun the buildout of their quantum chip facility in Tempe, Arizona.

Additional details about QCI’s Q3 financial results and overall company status are available in a news release posted on their website here.

University of Illinois Wins a $1 Million Grant to Study Josephson Junction Defects in Superconducting Qubits

The University of Illinois?Urbana-Champaign team has won an award for a two-year program from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to look at ways of reducing defects in the deposition process of the aluminum/aluminum oxide/aluminum junctions used in superconducting Josephson junctions. Defects in the junction can negatively impact coherence time in a superconducting qubit so improvements that can reduce the disorder in the material can help improve the overall qubit quality. The team will be using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) as well as low temperature characterization to be able to develop a full picture of a the Josephson junction deposition. Additional information is available in a news release posted by the University of Illinois here.

NVIDIA Unveils Collaborations with BASF, IQM, Classiq, and Terra Quantum

In several announcements that came out in conjunction with The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis conference being held this week, NVIDIA has announced several collaborations with quantum end users and quantum providers that use its CUDA Quantum software platform.

The first collaboration is with the chemical company BASF to simulate a compound called Nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA), a compound that can remove toxic metals from a city’s wastewater. BASF was able to model this compound using 60 qubit simulations on NVIDIA’s Eos H100 Supercomputer. This is the largest simulation that BASF has ever run. A second collaboration announced is with Classiq, a quantum software company, and the?Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. This collaboration will focus on researching the potential of quantum technology for applications in life sciences and healthcare. It will also provide training to non-quantum experts so they can develop quantum applications for use in their life science research. Another collaboration was announced with IQM with a purpose to advance future hybrid quantum applications. And finally, Terra Quantum also announced it will work with NVIDIA to accelerate the integration of hybrid quantum and classical computers through GPUs.

To learn more about all these and other collaborations, you can view a blog post on the NVIDIA website here. You can also view separate press releases from IQM, Classiq, and Terra Quantum that describe their respective activity with NVIDIA.

Alice & Bob Partner with Equinix to Expand Access to Alice & Bob’s Quantum Processors

Equinix, a global digital infrastructure company, has announced a strategic partnership with Alice & Bob, a leading quantum computing company. This collaboration aims to provide Equinix customers worldwide, including in the United States, with secure access to Alice & Bob’s advanced quantum technology through Equinix Metal and Equinix Fabric. Additionally, businesses can leverage Alice & Bob’s quantum strategy services to unlock potential opportunities in areas such as simulation, optimization, machine learning, and cryptography.

Alice & Bob’s quantum technology features a patented self-correcting superconducting quantum bit called the cat qubit. This innovation addresses computation errors in current quantum computers, offering a more straightforward path to fault-tolerant and universal gate-based quantum computing. The partnership combines Equinix’s secure operations with Alice & Bob’s quantum expertise, creating an environment conducive to breakthrough innovations while ensuring the confidentiality of research.

Alice & Bob, founded in 2020, has already secured 30 million euros in VC capital, hired over 80 employees, and asserts they have demonstrated experimental results exceeding those of industry giants like Google or Amazon. Specializing in Cat Qubits, their technology reduces hardware requirements significantly, showcasing its potential in quantum computing.

A press release announcing this partnership with additional information has been posted here.

SpeQtral and SPTel Selected to Build a Quantum Network in Singapore

The ?Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) will be building up a new quantum network in the city-state of Singapore called the National Quantum-Safe Network Plus (NQSN+). This network will be an upgrade of the the National Quantum-Safe Network (NQSN) that we reported on earlier this year and this network is intended to cover the entire island-country. SPTel, a joint venture company of ST Engineering and SP Group, and SpeQtral have been selected to build this network. These companies will leverage SPTel’s experience in providing digital communication infrastructure in Singapore with SpeQtral’s expertise in developing both terrestrial and space-based solutions for quantum networks. In November 2022, the companies announced that they had successfully completed a trial test of ?quantum secure network on SPTel’s diverse fiber network. A press release provided by SpeQtral announcing their appointment with SPTel to build the NQSN+ network has been posted on their website here.

qBraid Now Provides Access to Intel’s Quantum SDK

qBraid, a quantum computing platform, announced that it is the first provider outside of Intel to offer access to the Intel Quantum SDK, a software development kit for quantum programming. The Intel Quantum SDK allows users to program quantum kernels using C++ language extensions and run them on various qubit-simulator backends, including one that simulates Intel’s quantum hardware under development. The QCR ran a review of Intel’s Quantum SDK which you can find here. qBraid and Intel have collaborated to pilot courses using the Intel Quantum SDK at the Ohio State University, where students and researchers learned and developed quantum algorithms. Additional details about aBraid’s support of Intel’s Quantum SDK are available in a press release provided by qBraid here.

QDM.IO Introduces a Quantum Diamond Microscope

QDM.IO is a quantum sensor startup with technology that originated from research at Harvard University and the University of Maryland. The Quantum Diamond Microscope uses nitrogen vacancy diamond quantum technology to measure magnetic fields at nanotesla sensitivities with?image resolution better than a thousandth of a millimeter and a field-of-view up to about a centimeter.?They have already provided pilot units to Oxford University, Washington University, SUNY Buffalo, and New York University. QDM also provides with the unit a Python-based control software called Ferrum that provides a graphical user interface all allows users to set up automated scans. List price for the unit starts at $150,000 with an expected lead-time of a few months. Additional information about the unit is available in a product brochure located on the QDM website here and also a press release announcing the product here.

Who’s News: Management Changes at Quantinuum, IonQ, and Quantum Brilliance

Tony Uttley, formerly the President and Chief Operating Officer of Quantinuum, announced that he has stepped away from the company. Mr. Uttley had helped start up the quantum effort and Honeywell Quantum Solutions and transition to the President and Chief Operating Office role in 2021 when that former Honeywell division merged with Cambridge Quantum Computing to form Quantinuum. Before getting in involved with Honeywell’s quantum activities in 2016, he spent several years in executive roles at Honeywell Corporation and prior to that had experience at the Boston Consulting Group and NASA.

IonQ has announced that Margaret Arakawa has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer and Kurt Kennett has joined at Vice-President of Software. Ms. Arakawa will be responsible for driving all aspects of marketing including customer engagement, demand generation, events, product marketing, PR and analyst relations. She had work in senior positions at Microsoft Corporation for over 20 years and more recently been the Chief of Marketing at cloud services provider Fastly and before that sales execution platform company Outreach. Mr. Kennett will lead the development of software across all elements of IonQ’s software stack. He has over 25 years of software development experience. Most recently he was responsible for the team that developed the software for Microsoft’s Surface products and has earlier experience at companies including Oculus VR, Nintendo, GE Industrial Systems, Nortel, Electronic Arts, and others. IonQ has issued a press release announcing these two new additions to their executive team and it is available here.

Quantum Brilliance has named Andrew Dunn as the Country Manager for the United Kingdom. He will be responsible for establishing and leading a new office in the UK and developing key relationships for corporate and public-sector development and business development opportunities. Dr. Dunn was previously the Strategic Business Development Director at Arm Holdings where he helped drive revenue for the company. Before that he spent time as an equity and technology analyst at the Royal Bank of Canada, Oriel Securities, The Royal Society, and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. A press release from Quantum Brilliance announcing his appointment can be seen here.

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