It has been a really busy week in the quantum sector. Here are some bits of news I didn’t get to earlier, but are worth knowing and exploring further:
- DARPA chose 11 companies for Stage B of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. There were 17 in Stage A, and it is not clear if this is the final Stage B list, but firms that made the first-round ideas stage that are absent so far from Stage B include Google Quantum AI, Rigetti Computing, PsiQuantum, Alice & Bob, Atlantic Quantum, and Oxford Ionics. That latter was acquired by IonQ, which did advance. Four of the other five absentees work with superconducting quantum computing architectures, although so does IBM, and it already made Stage B. For the next year, participants will focus on R&D to advance their submissions before a final government validation stage begins.
- Quantinuum launched its new H-Series quantum computer, featuring the following stats: Physical qubits (PQ): 98 PQ at 99.921% 2-qubit gate fidelity, and 99.9975% 1-qubit gate fidelity. Logical qubits (LQ): 94 LQ (error detected) globally entangled with better than physical performance; 50 LQ (error detected) with better than physical performance in a magnetism simulation; and 48 LQ (error corrected) with better than physical performance (99.99% state prep and measurement fidelity). We’re are getting into the age of fidelity claims that reach and go beyond 99.9% fidelity. This is the threshold many have talked about for broader commercial relevancy. Quantinuum also expanded an ongoing partnership with Nvidia to integrate Helios with Nvidia’s GB200 GPU-CPU Superchip via the recently announced NVQLink technology. Expect to hear a lot more Quantinuum technology news as the company prepares for Honeywell sell its stake in the firm.
- Quantum sensing technology start-up Euqlid, based in College Park, Maryland, has emerged from stealth mode with $3 million in funding and a 3D imaging approach for semiconductors and batteries. The company proposes to use MRI-like technology to find defects in chips and other devices, which could save the companies involved a ton of money.
- The University of Chicago published a paper on a potential new method for entangling quantum computers over much longer distances. Networking and entanglement is already looking like the breakthrough area to keep an eye on in 2026. Image by freepik
Quantum News Nexus 
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