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Germany will spend about 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) to support the development of its first quantum computer and related technologies in the next four years, the economy and science ministries said on May 2nd, 2023.

The quantum computer is expected to house around 100 qubits by 2026 — and eventually reach 500 qubits in the near term. That will by then be considerably lower than commercial grade Quantum computers but is a nice start.

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Germany’s Aerospace Center (DLR) will receive the bulk of the subsidies - about 740 million euros - to team up with industrial companies, medium-sized enterprises and start-ups to forge two consortia, the economy ministry said.

Countries are aiming to build Quantum innovation ecosystems, and nobody wants to be left behind.

🍺 More Than A Quantum Computer

The initiative is more than just about Germany’s capacity to build a quantum computer, but it’s also a commitment to build a quantum ecosystem and a quantum industry. The plan lists five goals:

• To secure and expand Germany’s innovative power and technological sovereignty in quantum technologies.

• To work towards the development and production of marketable products.

• To contribute to addressing societal challenges in climate research, energy, health, mobility, and security with quantum technologies.

• To educate and attract skilled workers and develop Germany as an attractive employment location for quantum technologies.

• To introduce people to quantum technologies, convey the opportunities, and show the impacts.

• To ensure a coordinated, joint approach by the federal government.

🦘 Australia

Australia announced a coherent Quantum strategy as well this week. I have been quite impressed with startups in that part of the world for the population.

Read the official Document

The Strategy will be the North Star to help guide collaboration between research pioneers, industry partners, start-ups and the government into the future.

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Even as the U.S. signs a collaboration agreement with South Korea on Quantum computing, there is a sense that Quantum startups will have to be creative to get more funding.

Guess what IonQ did recently? They announced an agreement with the United Arab Emirates Quantum Research Center Technology institute. The contract will provide engineers, computer scientists, and physicists with direct access to IonQ Aria system for quantum algorithm experimentation.

Quantum computing always feels a bit stuck in the National Defense and geopolitical spectrum of national allegiances, teams, strategy and global change. It’s becoming a bit like technological game of thrones.

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This perhaps wasn’t the most exciting week in Quantum computing, but geopolitically there were some intriguing developments and some buzz in photonics as well.

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Hey Everyone,

After a pause in interesting Quantum News, there’s a lot I want to cover now, but priorities goes to breaking news. So this is going to be a short one.

Riverlane reports that it has raised $20m in Series A funding to build Deltaflow, its operating system for quantum computers. Over the past year, we have signed up 20% of the world’s quantum hardware manufacturers to use Deltaflow and will use the funding to expand internationally to the US, Europe and beyond.

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I’ll admit that I like Riverlane, both in their branding and what they are trying to do. They are in the UK so this is actually a £15 million in Series B funding. This substantially increases Riverlane’s enterprise valuation and is expected to see the company through to cash flow break-even, allowing us to continue driving forward our mission to unlock quantum computing’s potential. 

The round was led by Molten Ventures and included participation from simulation, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence leader Altair and returning investors Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), Amadeus Capital Partners and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF).

This means they have raised over $24 million to date. This actually has bigger implications that appears on the surface of the PR. According to the Telegraph, a government fund with close links to GCHQ has taken a stake in a Cambridge quantum computing start-up, as a global technological arms race gathers pace.

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Let’s dive a bit deeper, shall we?

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Welcome Back!

I’m very interested in how Quantum will be leveraged in the Cloud and for enterprise clients. I find it just a bit more business orientated and pragmatic. QC Ware is one of those startups that has an emphasis on bringing quantum computing power to the enterprise.

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When you are based in Palo Alto and have over $40 million in funding you have a unique vantage point. QC Ware is therefore a quantum computing software company building enterprise solutions that run on quantum hardware. The company's stated objective is to make quantum computing easily accessible to classically-trained data scientists and to offer performance speed-ups on near-term hardware.

Quantum Insider summarizes it as such:

• QCWare launches software-as-a-service (SaaS) quantum chemistry platform designed to dramatically accelerate pharmaceutical, chemical, and materials discovery.

• The company has named the platform, Promethium.

• The technology has been designed to make use of the power of flagship NVIDIA GPUs such as the H100 or A100 Tensor Core.

IQTN also covered it here. But what’s really going on here? It’s as if a foundation for R&D using Quantum is getting more in place around a range of industries.

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So let’s dig into this a bit more:

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Hey Everyone,

I’ve noticed Quantum sensing is suddenly getting a lot more attention in the media. Quantum sensing is exciting like startups are saying also because it’s not just limited to information processing - and it’s likely to be here much sooner.

Quantum sensing covers motion – including acceleration, rotation and gravity – electric and magnetic fields, and imaging. The benefits to quantum sensing include:

• Measuring electric and magnetic fields very accurately across many frequencies.

• Measuring physical quantities against atomic properties, so there is no drift or need to calibrate.

• Using quantum entanglement to improve sensitivity or precision.

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Quantum Sensing is a U.S. Department of Energy Priority, while A senior commercialization executive in the Energy Office of Technology Transitions told NextGov quantum sensing is a DOE priority, according to Quantum Insider.

QS will allow for more accurate measurements and could offer higher accessibility than existing sensors (for instance, through device miniaturization). The US electrical grid uses global positioning technologies but, quantum sensors have the power to report data directly from the electrical grid.

Even in the ESG context, Quantum Sensing methods apparently holds promise for improving Greenhouse gas detection. Maybe the World Economic Forum’s ideas around Quantum computing being helpful for global warming isn’t just a pipedream.

The World Econimic Forum believes that Quantum technology is a rapidly advancing field. With the application of quantum sensors, quantum communication systems and quantum computing, it has the potential to revolutionise various industries. The development of quantum technology in Africa should accelerate progress across healthcare, finance and agriculture, bringing about meaningful societal advancement.

China is also getting on the bandwagon of Quantum sending R&D. Quantum researchers in China claim to have an algorithm capable of breaking public-key encryption, years before anyone expected. China is also doing impressive experiments in Quantum communications.

Quantum computing, quantum encryption, and quantum sensing constitute the three primary domains within QIS. Analytics argue that if the Biden administration is serious about its designation of quantum information science (QIS) as a critical technology area for national security, it must do more to safeguard U.S. quantum superiority. It’s not clear they know how.

The quantum sensing market opportunity

Quantum technologies also carry immense potential market value, with quantum computing alone expected to reach a global market value of $1 trillion by 2035.

Many tech giants and start-ups have already invested significantly in quantum technologies, with confirmed and announced deals for 2021 alone totaling about $2.1 billion. I think we will be seeing more Quantum computing startups focusing on quantum technologies like Quantum sensing to diversify and leverage the tech that has more near-term applications across industries that have yet to be fully tapped into.

According to a new report from McKinsey & Partners, in partnership with the Viva Technology show, the (Quantum) technology will have a global market value of $1 trillion by 2035.

Quantum sensors possess extraordinarily fine-tuned capabilities. When these sensors are coupled with artificial intelligence that can sort through the massive amounts of data they generate, exciting new applications can be created. These include enhanced medical imaging technology, natural resource exploration, and global navigation without GPS satellites. Quantum Sensing this become important for space superiority among nations.

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So let’s get into some of the good stuff:

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On Science alert and other publications there’s the promise of a “Quantum breakthrough” pretty much every other week. I think in 2023 we are at the point where we can make significant steps towards improved Quantum Error Correction.

Quantum error correction protects information by encoding it across multiple physical qubits to form a “logical qubit,” and is believed to be the only way to produce a large-scale quantum computer with error rates low enough for useful calculations.

In a new experiment, scientists were able to keep a qubit in that state for twice as long as normal. What is Quantum Error Correction? (Wiki). What is Quantum Error Correction read: by Q-CTRL.

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So while Amazon chases Quantum networks with artificial diamonds, this Yale announcement has peaked my interest.

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Welcome Everyone,

I am pretty skeptical of some of the claims of how Quantum might impact the future, especially as they relate to IBM’s track-record with emerging technology and A.I. You will notice that Merative, formerly IBM Watson Health, is now a standalone company as of 2022. But this PR is also very flashy and interesting.

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So what’s the grand rev…

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Image: A tiny lump of lutetium hydride, a new material that a team of scientists claim can be a superconductor at room temperature under relatively low pressure - University of Rochester photo / J. Adam Fenster

Hello Everyone,

I back from my trip, check out the new Newsletter Reddit, where you and I can share articles on Quantum computing & AI from around the web.

In early March, 2023 an astonishing claim was made. Few discoveries in science would revolutionize technology as much as a material that achieves superconductivity at room temperature, under relatively mild pressures. However the claim is extremely controversial and does not seem to be easy to replicate, raising some doubts.

A team of physicists led by Ranga Dias, a physicist from the University of Rochester in New York says they have now demonstrated that a rare earth metal called lutetium combined with hydrogen and nitrogen can conduct electricity without resistance at 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) and around just 10,000 atmospheres of pressure, the team reports (paper dated March 8th, 2023).

The so-called "Reddmatter" shows evidence of room temperature superconductivity.

Are we on the verge of a materials breakthrough or is this yet another fall signal?

• Being able to carry electrical current with no electrical resistance, superconductors have a wide range of applications.

• But practical devices that use superconducting components, such as the magnets in magnetic resonance imaging machines, must be chilled to ultralow temperatures to ensure the material superconducts.

• Condensed-matter physicists have therefore long hoped to develop materials that superconduct at room temperature, which would slash the costs of operating such devices.

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New Room-Temperature Superconductor Offers Tantalizing Possibilities

But what if? What if this is legit? If Ranga Dias of the University of Rochester, New York, and his team have observed room-temperature (294 K), near-ambient pressure superconductivity, their discovery could rank among the greatest scientific advances of the 21st century.

• For many years, the materials with the highest superconducting transition temperatures were the copper-oxide-based “cuprates”, which superconduct when cooled to below around –130 °C at ambient pressure.

• But then in 2015 Mikhail Eremets and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, both in Germany, observed superconductivity at –70 °C in a sample of hydrogen sulphide albeit at pressures of about 150 GPa.

If confirmed by other researchers, this would be a huge breakthrough in creating devices that don't waste energy on heat when producing a current. Early signs that I have read, have not been able to replicate it.

The problem is Dias does not have a stellar track record. In October 2020, Dias and colleagues claimed in the journal Nature to have discovered superconductivity at a balmy 15 °C in a hydrogen sulphide material. The superconductor in question was made by adding carbon to hydrogen sulphide and then squeezing the sample to 220 GPa. Dias’s team found a maximum superconducting temperature of 15 °C occurring at about 260 GPa. Concerns were raised over the finding, however, and the paper was subsequently retracted in September 2022 by editors at Nature.

Researchers have not only raised the temperature, but also lowered the pressure required to achieve superconductivity.

Now, Dias and colleagues are back with a new material and one that superconducts at room temperature under less pressure than previous efforts. Dias’s team created it from a gaseous mixture of 99% hydrogen and 1% nitrogen that was place in a reaction chamber with a pure sample of lutetium. The components were left to react for a couple of days at about 200 °C.

The resulting lutetium-nitrogen-hydrogen compound was initially a blue colour. But the sample then turned pink as it was squeezed under pressure, with its change of colour coinciding with the onset of superconductivity at a temperature of –102 °C and pressure of 0.5 GPa.

It’s truly astonishing if this passes and turns out to be true.

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Hey Everyone,

I’m really bullish on the intersection of Quantum tech and space-tech. I believe these things will become more important for human civilization as we realize that to not go extinct we need to build splinter colonies and the window for doing so might be a closing one.

There’s new NASA PR and it’s a bit proming I think:

A new JPL- and Caltech-developed detector could transform how quantum computers, located thousands of miles apart, exchange huge quantities of quantum data.

The way quantum computers placed at great distances exchange huge amounts of quantum data is being transformed by a new detector from JPL and Caltech.

Quantum computers promise to work millions of times faster than conventional ones. But to communicate over long distances, we will need a network of computers and a network of social communications.

To help create that network, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech have developed a machine capable of counting huge numbers of individual photons—quanta of light—with incredible precision.

How will humanity communicate with itself at great distances? Using Quantum tech or even Black holes as quantum computing is a possibility. Sending information at faster speeds requires a single photon detector that can not only detect photons quickly but also precisely measure their arrival times.

In a recent study, a German-Georgian team of researchers proposed that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) could use black holes as quantum computers. It’s no laughing matter. I find such ideas really refreshing.

“Transmitting quantum information over long distances has, so far, been very limited,” said PEACOQ project team member Ioana Craiciu, a postdoctoral scholar at JPL and the lead author of a study describing these results. “A new detector technology like the PEACOQ that can measure single photons with a precision of a fraction of a nanosecond enables sending quantum information at higher rates, farther.”

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QuantWare announced their new flagship quantum processor Tenor-64 on February 23rd, 2023. They claim Tenor is the first 64 qubit processor that features our 3D scaling technology that will enable superconducting qubits to massively scale.

Tenor-64’s technology solves the scaling bottlenecks for superconducting processors qubits by taking the connections out of the horizontal plane and into a vertical architecture.

According to their tema, it represents a big step forwards on the road to quantum advantage, and unlocks large-scale open-architecture quantum computers for the first time. 

🚀 Read their Announcement

Product landing page here.

QuantWare based in the Netherlands, have come a long ways in just one year.

Tenor is Shining

QuantWare’s quantum processor, called Tenor, has been chosen to run Israel’s first fully functioning quantum computer. It is claimed to offer 10 times lower cost than competing superconductor-powered quantum computers.

Such superconductors are used to create qubit atoms charged in such a way that they perform quantum entanglement, which in theory allows many more calculations to be performed synchronously.

1. Superconducting qubits have led the quantum computing race for the last few decades, but have yet to scale to truly useful qubit counts because of scaling bottlenecks.

2. Previous generation devices have been planar: the connections between the qubits and the outside world were routed to the edges of the chip. This limits the number of qubits to the numbers seen today.

3. QuantWare has developed a patented 3D technology that routes the connections vertically, making it possible to scale superconducting quantum processors to thousands of qubits - opening the door to ‘quantum advantage' where quantum computers will overtake the most powerful classical computer.

4. Tenor marks a significant advance in commercial quantum computing because it is the first device commercially available that features this technology.

Some analysts were a bit skeptical reading the marketing PR.

Is this Startup the “Intel of Quantum” in the Making?

The quantum processor features 64 fully controllable qubits, which is a device with more than twice the number of qubits than the previously largest available quantum processor. Because the qubits are fully controllable, these processors are very suitable for powerful error-correction schemes.

Such a design requires more connections per qubit than the often used fixed frequency qubits, and as such were impossible at a scale of 64 qubits with conventional planar devices. QuantWare unlocks, according to the PR, these powerful devices for the quantum community by bringing its technology to the market at a 10x lower price point than competing solutions.

QuantWare’s aim is to become the ‘Intel of quantum computing’ by providing easy-to-use, increasingly powerful and affordable quantum processors to organisations across the world. Last year, QuantWare was selected to deliver quantum processing units for Israel’s first fully functional quantum computer.

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Hey Everyone,

Ed Update: It turns out the $500 million was the amount of their initial funding, the PR does not represent a new funding round.

Okay Google, what have you done for me lately? Don’t look now, but Sandbox AQ just raised a big round. This is breaking news, but I may cover this topic more when more details have been revealed.

We don’t know how much funding they had previously (nine figures generally means $100 million), but this instantly makes them one of the best funded Quantum startups currently around. It’s nearly the one year mark since their last funding.

Jack Hidary, who was formerly the director of AI and quantum at Sandbox when it was part of Alphabet, is a pretty interesting speaker on the future of Quantum and AI.

Jack Hidary on YouTube

What Is AQ And Why Will Impact Your World

This is a relatively recent talk he gave, if you can manage the poor audio quality:

Next Level Quantum

This tweet also has a Vimeo interview that’s of interest:

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What does Sandbox AQ do?

The U.S. government has set quantum computing as one of the key technologies important for national security. More enterprises are going to need cybersecurity solutions for the next-generation.

Sandbox AQ's software scans companies' systems to identify which parts use the old cryptography, identifies which need to be replaced urgently, and sets out to fortify the encryption of the enterprise, said CEO Jack Hidary.

They have basically doubled their company size since they announced that they are being spun out of Alphabet.

They claim to be leveraging “AQ” - the powerful compound effects of AI + Quantum

But they also have a Quantum sensing and Quantum simulation play, not just a secruite suite. They also have contracts with the DoD, or at least the U.S. Airforce. So the Quantum sensing play they are involved with might be part of the U.S. Defense plan to keep up with China.

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Hey Everyone,

I’m a huge fan of Israeli Quantum software startup Classiq. I think in terms of PhD talent they are very loaded. Microsoft has a good eye for startups doing important things, Microsoft’s interest in Wayve (Deep learning for self-driving) and Classiq really exemplifies this.

While attention is elsewhere on Microsoft’s attempts to re-brand itself as an A.I. leader, with a little help from another startups, it’s doing interesting things with Quantum partnering with DARPA, among others.

So the PR here is quiet, but sometimes quiet is the best thing. Quantum computing has an incredible academic and global startup collaboration opportunity. On February 8th you may have missed a rather important announcement. Classiq and Microsoft launched a quantum research and education program that offers educational institutions access to Classiq’s state-of-the-art Quantum software platform coupled with Azure Quantum cloud access to diverse quantum hardware.

Classiq’s Global Academic Program

The future will need a lot more talent than currently exists in Quantum computing. India is going to be a driver of a lot of the talent as the likes of IBM have realized. Classiq, which provides a leading platform for designing, analyzing, and executing quantum circuits, selected Azure Quantum to be its launch partner for its global academic program.

I personally really like this initiative as it’s very aligned with the future:

I also have an incredible faith in Classiq as a company. This is PR I can actually believe in where a global workforce and new jobs created by Quantum technologies and computing is truly potentially going to be very impactful.

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Check out Classiq dedicated landing page for this. You can register at the link below.

Visit Classiq Academia

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Hey Everyone,

In recent years the U.S. Government and Defense sector has gotten really close to Cloud computing champions of BigTech. Now this seems to be continuing with the advent of Quantum computing and Microsoft’s holy grail approach to the future qubit approach: the so-called Topological qubits.

Microsoft is taking a large-scale approach to quantum development as the US looks to develop its leadership in the technology. DARPA is sort of a big deal in terms of the future of innovation but it’s not clear if that’s really the case with quantum.

Read the Microsoft Azure Quantum Blog

DARPA has selected Microsoft as a partner to explore scaled quantum computing in support of DARPA’s broader quantum strategies. DARPA has long been on the cutting edge of technology and plays an important role in advancing the quantum technology ecosystem.

Azure Quantum.

The Inner Circle of DARPA Quantum

This week the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA), the U.S. military's boffin brain farm, announced a new endeavor, called the Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program, to explore novel quantum system designs, and tapped Microsoft, Atom, and PsiQuantum to help.

The program will explore whether an underexplored approach to quantum computing is capable of achieving utility-scale operation. This even as Google spin-off Sandbox AQ get closer with the U.S. Airforce.

DARPA has selected the following companies and their novel approaches for the initial phase:

• Atom Computing, based in Berkeley, California, builds highly scalable quantum computers based on large arrays of optically-trapped atoms.

• Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington, is building an industrial-scale quantum system based on a topological qubit architecture, which the company theorizes would enable their machine to be small enough to fit in a closet, fast enough to solve problems in a practical timeframe and have the capability to control more than one million qubits.

• PsiQuantum, Corp., Palo Alto, California, is using silicon-based photonics to create an error-corrected quantum computer based on a lattice-like fabric of photonic qubits.

Level playing field? This is the sort of collaboration that China is up against in terms of Quantum Supremacy.

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We see the potential of quantum computing to solve some of society’s most complex problems. This collaboration with DARPA will enable us to explore together the benefits of our unique approach in making the promise of quantum technologies a reality. - Microsoft blog

Risk Mitigation in Quantum Communications and Cybersecurity

In other words, if it is possible to build a quantum computer capable of breaking through encryption or compromising the United States' defenses in any capacity, DARPA doesn't want to be caught playing catch up with rival nations.

Qubit approaches developed by small and large companies including photonics, nuclear magnetic resonance, quantum annealing and topological quantum computing. The latter is a new focus for Microsoft and one area it will explore as part of its new Darpa partnership.

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Welinq were founded about a year ago, or as I prefer to call them: “WeLinQ” (but oops that a different company altogether). Welinq, a Paris, France-based company developing quantum interconnects based on neutral-atom technology, raised €5M in Pre-Seed funding.

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Providing Links to the future

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Hello Everyone,

On the topic of well-funded Quantum computing startups, Pasqal in France really does come to mind. Now the Paris-based quantum computing startup announced that it has raised a €100 million Series B funding round let by Singapore’s Temasek.

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Pasqual is building quantum processors out of 2D and 3D arrays of neutral atoms, towards quantum advantage for their customers. Neutral atoms trapped in optical tweezers and addressed with laser beams are ideal indistinguishable quantum systems to realize superposition and entanglement, at the heart of powerful Quantum Information Processing.

It is a highly scalable platform, benefiting from tens of years of development which has brought some of contemporary physics'​ most spectacular achievements: Bose-Einstein condensation, cavity quantum electrodynamics, etc...

So among other things, they develop the lasers, the vacuum technology, the electronic controls and the software stack to make the individual atoms accessible to quantum programmers worldwide.

The round was led by new investor Temasek, and includes other news investors the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Wa’ed Ventures and Bpifrance, along with current investors, such as Quantonation, the Defense Innovation Fund, Daphni and Eni Next.

Pasqual founded in early 2019, is yet another neutral (cold) atom Quantum computing startup and that exclusive list like I have covered, is only getting longer. You may recall Russ Fein recently wrote about this.

• Instead of trapped ions (like IonQ) or superconducting quantum computers (like IBM), neutral atom quantum processors use lasers to hold atoms in place with what is essentially an optical tweezer.

• As Russ pointed out: (the 4 Big ones might be: )

• Infleqtion (formerly known as ColdQuanta) completed a $110 million Series B equity round

• Professor Alain Aspect, a co-founder of PASQAL, was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics (now completing its own €100 million equity Series B).

• Atom Computer had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of its new $100 million facility in Boulder, Colorado

• QuEra’s 256-qubit Aquila QC was made available on Amazon’s Bracket, its cloud-based QC platform

The Euro is still worth more than the U.S. dollar so TechCrunch isn’t technically correct ($ to €).

PASQAL’s technology was built upon the Nobel Prize-winning research of company co-founder Alain Aspect.

The Neutral Atom qubit approach definately seems to have momentum if we look at the most recent funding in the space.

The PR is itself pretty standard:

“We are proud to invest in a startup we’ve been following for years that is working on a very high-impact technology that will solve some of the world’s most pressing computational challenges across industries,” said Nicklas Bergman, EIC Fund advisor. “PASQAL’s innovation in the quantum computing space has made them an industry leader in Europe and globally. We are excited to be a part of their incredible growth and contribute to their lasting impacts.”

This approach to Qubits have been discussed by Third Point Ventures, among others.

The advantage here is that once you can do this with hundreds of atoms at the same time, you can create both a very dense matrix of qubits and one that, using holographic methods, you can reshuffle in 3D space as needed for a given algorithm. And all of this happens at room temperature. - TechCrunch

Europe’s Neutral Atom Leader’s Loft Goals

With the new funding, PASQAL plans to accelerate the company’s research and development efforts to build a 1,000-qubit quantum computer in the short term and fault-tolerant architectures in the long term.

Advantages of Neutral Atom Qubit Approach

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Hey Everyone,

While I’m not necessarily a fan of WEF, they frame some of the global issues in potentially a reasonably helpful way.

This year's meeting will take place between 16 to 20 January. Davos 2023 will be a return to the traditional January event, after the meeting was pushed to May in 2022 and held online in 2021.

Covering emerging tech, I need to be aware of things like qubit approaches (Neutral Atoms) to scalability, macro global risks and other things.

On January 17th, 2022 the World Economic Forum (WEF) released the National Quantum Blueprint (part of WEF’s Shaping the Future of Technology Governance: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Platform) to address the potential impact of the next digital divide, which industry insiders widely believe will be driven by advancements in quantum computing and AI. 

Real Demand or Manufactured?

I noticed that SandboxAQ was a proud collaborator who closely worked with the WEF on the development of this important document. It attempts to address how the quantum divide will impact the world order and how leaders can leverage their existing innovation ecosystems to lead in this new area and to ensure that no country falls behind.

The document claims that it’s essential that governments, academia, startups, corporations, and other stakeholders come together to collaborate and cooperate.

I’m not sure if this is evidence but the WEF's National Quantum Blueprint does attempt to provide a roadmap for addressing this challenge and ensuring that the benefits of quantum computing and AI are shared equitably. Though the details, policy, regulation or actual framework appears absent.

With a few countries like the U.S. and China spending billions on quantum tech, some spending hundreds of millions, while other countries have not yet jumped on the quantum bandwagon, clearly a disparity between the "quantum haves" and the "quantum have-nots" is emerging.

It’s not clear to me how smaller countries, smaller Governments or small companies can keep up. Just as what we have witnessed with the rise of foundational LLM (large language models) in A.I.

Ideas on the Future

What is the NQB? It states:

1. Quantum technologies has the potential to drive transformational changes across digital society through breakthrough applications.

2. (Challenge #1) However, the growing global quantum divide between countries with established quantum programs and those without will lead to significant imbalances in core areas such as cybersecurity, defense, technology, healthcare, finance, manufacturing and more.

3. (Challenge #2) Many governments struggle with the breadth of how to navigate the development and use of dual-use quantum technologies, while aiming to maximize innovation and the need to align with the country's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

4. (Challenge #3) Certain additional factors further contribute to slower innovation like insufficiently skilled personnel, high complexity and cost inherent in the development of quantum technologies and cryptographic risks associated with fault-tolerant quantum computers amongst others.

5. (Opportunity #1) There are now several recognized initiatives globally to ramp up a quantum ecosystem at the national and regional level with the goal of promoting Quantum information science (QIS) to generate new knowledge and technologies.

6. (Opportunity #2) By following established best practices and global case studies and developments of Quantum technologies within partner nations, countries can ramp-up their quantum ecosystem, improve their industrial base, create jobs, and provide economic and national security benefits. By assessing the core building blocks required to develop a quantum ecosystem and outlining the role of business, academia, and governments in doing so, countries can catalyze their efforts in harnessing the potential of this technology.

7. (Opportunity #3) This initiative will create a roadmap across academia, industry, and government to help countries develop, support and commercialize their quantum tech initiatives, create new jobs and prosperity, and protect their national security, business integrity, and citizens’ privacy.

But honestly here are my actual thoughts:

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Hey Everyone,

I’ve been trying to make heads or tails of the Chinese claim. I didn’t get very far, so let’s lay bare some of the facts. My impression is that we may have to withhold judgement on this until more data becomes available.

Researchers in China claim to have reached a breakthrough in quantum computing, figuring out how they can break the RSA public-key encryption system using a quantum computer of around the power that will soon be publicly available.

The world has in its hands a new growth and development story driven by investment and innovation in green technology, boosted by artificial intelligence (AI) and things like Quantum computing, automated military systems and the power of Quantum sensing for military and space technologies.

The Americans doubt China’s legitimacy in many of these areas. The ultimate nightmare for cybersecurity experts is someone using a quantum to factorize the large numbers that underlie our existing encryption systems, from banks and financial markets to secure access to databases around the world. But what if it actually happened?

The Russians and Chinese are already using ChatGPT for cybersecurity and malicious code. Hackers in Russia are not just keen on leveraging ChatGPT to write pieces of malicious code but have also succeeded in bypassing the geofencing meant to keep them away from the platform, Business Insider reported.

While the U.S. has several cybersecurity firms, even the Google spin-out, Sandbox AQ might not be fully prepared for what is coming. While Microsoft integrates ChatGPT and OpenAI’s core innovations into its software suite, there may be a great worry on the horizon.

Breaking 2048-bit RSA — in other words finding a method to consistently and quickly discover the secret prime numbers underpinning the algorithm — would be extremely significant. The Chinese team, led by Professor Long Guilu of Tsinghua University, proclaimed that a modest quantum computer constructed with currently available technology could run their algorithm, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Wednesday. Many in the West remain skeptical that this is even possible or that the news is legit.

I cannot independently verify it, it’s way above some of our heads. Some cryptography researchers see the claim as misleading, others see it as a potential warning sign. If it was true, would the U.S. even admit it? That China could be ahead in the cybersecurity implications around quantum computing and cryptography? There such a cybersecurity talent shortage in the West as it is, even without ChatGPT being exploited for malicious code and new phishing schemes.

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Hey Everyone,

Canada may not be the first country that comes to mind when you think of Quantum computing efforts, but think again.

The federal government is pledging $360 million to create a national quantum strategy …

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Image credit: Oxford Ionics' founders Dr Tom Harty and Dr Chris Ballance

Hey Everyone,

As we enter 2023 it’s going to be exciting to see what stealth startups come to light with their own seed and Series A funding.

A lot of the top talent continues to work in academics in the UK. Oxford Ionics, a startup solving the critical scalability issues facing the future of quantum computing, has raised £30 million in Series A funding. It game to my notice in this LinkedIn post.

I really like funding announcement because you get an idea of what’s coming down the pipeline. To face the bottleneck of scaling Quantum computers to real-world utility, we need a lot more startups like this one.

The round was led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Braavos Investment Advisers. Lansdowne Partners, Prosus Ventures, 2xN, Torch Partners and Hermann Hauser (founder of chip giant ARM) also participated.

The intersection of Venture Capital and emerging tech is actually fairly interesting.

Trapped Ions to the Rescue?

Founded in 2019, Oxford Ionics takes a unique approach to designing and scaling one of the most promising quantum computing technologies – trapped ions. As multiple technologies vie for position in our race for a quantum future, trapped ions have long proved superior. The highest-performing quantum systems are powered by trapped ions; Oxford Ionics’ technology has been shown to consistently outperform the others. 

According to Dominik Andrzejczuk:

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Fugaku, located in the Japanese city of Kobe, was the world's fastest supercomputer until it lost the crown to U.S.-built Frontier in 2022.

Hey Everyone,

I’m a sci-fi nerd, the idea of Quantum computers with modular hardware being hooked into Supercomputers is something I find just on the whole, very exciting. Some PR recently came out about Japan.

The s…

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