Microsoft and DARPA

Consolidation is going to occur in 2024 due to the Startup funding freeze of Venture Capitalists. This could benefit Azure Quantum.

Hey Everyone,

I am done for the count with Covid, hence I’m not at 100% in terms of publishing frequency, but I’ll make it up once I am feeling better.

I’m still thinking about what is the ceiling of Microsoft’s Azure Quantum efforts. As Chinese BigTech giants abandon Quantum like Baidu and Alibaba it makes me wonder.

Quantum computing holds the promise of solving some of our planet's biggest challenges in the areas of environment, agriculture, health, energy, climate, materials science, and more. Microsoft is increasingly working on interdisciplinary innovation like AI4Science. It gives me hope that Microsoft Research is taking on important problems and not just commercial R&D.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is laying down a bet on Microsoft’s long-running effort to create an industrial-scale quantum computer that takes advantage of the exotic properties of superconducting nanowires. DARPA’s interest in Microsoft fascinates me.

Quantum computing is very much an emerging technology and there are several hardware implementations and approaches. As it evolves in the 2020s and 2030s we’ll have a lot more clarity about its utility in science, innovation and engineering.

As a whole in 2023 and now into 2024, Venture capital fund distributions hit 14-year low. What does this mean? It means dozens of Quantum computing startups risk going out of business as their money runs out. Even the AI boom cannot compensate for this difficult environment for startups.

So organizations like DARPA need to turn to Quantum projects that will be around no matter what happens and well funded projects of the past few years like PsiQuantum. PsiQuantum managed to raise a stunning $450 million back in June, 2023.

DARPA has selected Microsoft as a partner to explore scaled quantum computing in support of DARPA’s broader quantum strategies.