What's New at Sandbox AQ?

My favorite Quantum startup to cover for sure.

Welcome Back!

In March, 2022 Alphabet spun-off Sandbox AQ with what we’d realize later was nine-figure funding. In my opinion Sandbox AQ is one of the U.S.’s best attempts at keeping up with China in some of the more military applications of Quantum tech and Quantum computing in the future.

Recently the well-funded quantum software startup Sandbox AQ debuted Sandwich, an open-source framework designed to help developers build more secure applications.

Sandwich is an open source, unified API that removes the complexity of cryptographic libraries for developers and instead lets them call on the API to do the heavy lifting. With Sandwich, developers can create their own stack, or “sandwich,” of protocols and implementations that becomes available as a cohesive cryptographic object.

Sandwich supports multiple languages, C++, Rust, Python, and Go, and the cryptographic libraries OpenSSL and BoringSSL, as well as libOQS, to enable post-quantum as well as classical cryptography.

So who are backing this crazy well-funded military grade startup? Breyer Capital, T. Rowe Price funds and Salesforce Inc. founder Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures all participated in the one of the last rounds, as did its Chairman Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google LLC.

Sandbox AQ is also really into Quantum Sensing. Quantum Sensing has numerous military applications. Some of those most exciting Quantum tech startups are working on it. The startup also has ties with the U.S. Air Force. Jen Sovada, for instance, was a former Air Force Officer whose career in Intelligence focused on higher-end technological and quantum capabilities. Unsurprisingly the U.S. Air force has awarded contracts to Sandbox AQ.

But in the future its at the intersection of biotech and Quantum computing where Sandbox AQ will truly shine. Sandbox AQ’s molecular simulation division is collaborating with companies like AstraZeneca and Sanofi to develop novel treatments for various disorders. This is not generally easily understood by the lay public.

On August 15th it was announced that Sandbox AQ has formed relationships with more than 30 major universities and other educational organizations and has hit key milestones in co-training masters and Ph.D. students with universities in AI, quantum, cyber and other key technologies. This is not unlike how China builds ties between Government agencies and their Universities.

The U.S. is trying its best to show the world it is taking Generative A.I, quantum computing and other emerging tech and potentially exponential technologies seriously. Sandbox AQ therefore is working on a number of intersections and important applications.

Some of the team and inspiration for Sandbox originated at Alphabet in 2016.