Quantum News Nexus

I’m guessing that the number of quantum-AI data centers–locations where QPUs, GPUs, and CPUs working together under one roof on AI supercomputing–in the world right now could be counted on two hands at most. Maybe one hand if you happen to have six fingers?

A larger number certainly are in the works, and many more should be announced in the next 12 months. Is it too early to call 2026 “The Year of the Quantum AI Data Center”?

In any case, Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), Digital Realty, and NVIDIA, are getting a jump on this soon to be explosive trend, as they have announced the launch of they claim to be the first Quantum-AI Data Centre in New York City, located at Digital Realty’s JFK10 facility and built with NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips integrated with OQC’s GENESIS quantum computer.

(Interesting that it’s called a “centre” rather than “center” being located in the US, but UK-based OQC did a lot of the hard work here, so we’ll cut them some slack and not start a culture war over it.)

What else is interesting? I’m starting to feel like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s whole “very useful” quantum computers could be 20 year away controversy was some kind of misdirection to confuse competitors because the company has spent a heck of a lot of time in recent months working on quantum projects and investing in quantum companies.

The players involved in this project expect the new data center to offer quantum-enhanced AI model training, more efficient data generation, and transformative applications in finance and security. It’s also worth noting that OQC expects that future GENESIS systems will ship with Nvidia-accelerated computing as standard. Nvidia has many quantum computing partners, but I don’t think any of them have described their future roadmaps by highlighting that sort of “Nvidia-inside” (Sorry, Intel) message.

OQC CEO Gerald Mullally said in a statement, “This Quantum-AI Data Centre demonstrates how quantum can drive the AI revolution – securely, practically, and at scale – while strengthening the UK–US technology alliance.” 

That would be the US-UK alliance involving quantum, AI, and a bunch of other things. It’s also worth a bet that if the Trump Administration issues a quantum-related Executive Order and/or pushes to update the US National Quantum Initiative, we soon will see more plans to “Quantum-AI Data Centers” on US soil.

–Dan

Image by DC Studio on FreePik