Quantum News Nexus

I have been down all week due to illness, and I’m still working my way back. Looking to be back at full strength on Monday for what should be a busy week for quantum earnings reports and other news. For now, here are some recent headlines to tide you over until we meet again:

SEALSQ and Quobly announced they have “mutually agreed to halt discussions” regarding SEALSQ’s planned majority investment or acquisition of Quobly, but instead will continue to explore the possibility of a “minority investment” as Quobly begins to put together its next financing round. The update comes after the companies announced an agreement in mid-January to work toward a bigger deal. The firms announced a major partnership last fall, and said this week that their collaboration will continue. This news also arrived just a day after SEALSQ reported that it is making an “additional investment” in Chicago’s EeroQ, following an initial investment announced last December.

IBM announced that it has invested in two early-stage quantum start-ups, Seattle’s SQK and Chicago-based QodeX, the latter of which IBM enticingly describes as “advancing the frontier of quantum AI.” Most of what IBM has done in quantum computing and related fields has been home-grown, though it does have an intriguing minority stake in Quantinuum, and also previously invested in QunaSys and Qedma, with the latter move having been announced last December. 

IBM also this week announced with Japan’s Riken a major quantum-centric supercomputing demonstration involving pre-exascale supercomputer Fugaku—in concert with Riken’s on-premises IBM Quantum Heron processor. The team calculated t”he electronic structure of a pair of complex iron-sulfur molecules. The result was the largest and most accurate chemistry experiment ever performed on a quantum computer,” the companies stated.

Germany’s Deutsche Telekom and Qunnect successfully tested quantum teleportation over a live network in Berlin. Enabling teleportation of quantum information over fiber networks is a step toward establishing a quantum internet. That news came just a day after Qunnect and Cisco Systems provided details on another big quantum networking demonstration on Qunnect’s New York City network.

Citi Institute recently released a report called “Quantum Threat: The Trillion-Dollar Security Race is on,” which highlights the importance of preparing for a time very soon when cryptographically-relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) will be able to break public key encryption. I’ll have more on this report next week from Citi Institute and post-quantum cryptography firm QuSecure, which contributed to the report.

Pasqal announced the delivery of a 140-qubit neutral-atom quantum computer to a supercomputing site in Italy. This news arrived just as Bloomberg reported that the French firm was working on a founding round worth more than $200 million.

Canadian post-quantum security firm Quantum eMotion received approval for its uplisting to the NYSE American stock exchange, where it will trade under the symbol QNC.

D-Wave joined partner Davidson Technologies, IBM and a couple of Alabama universities as an inaugural member of the Southeastern Quantum Collaborative. Davidson is based in Huntsville, Alabama, and hosts a D-Wave Advantage2TM system at its headquarters. From the press release: “The SQC will bring together academia, industry and government to accelerate the advancement and application of quantum information science and technology across the Southeast. In addition, it aims to develop the quantum-ready workforce needed to commercialize the technology.” D-Wave will report its latest quarterly earnings next week.

Image by freepik.

Quantum News Nexus is a site from freelance writer and editor Dan O’Shea that covers quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networking, quantum-safe security, and more. You can find him on X @QuantumNewsGuy and doshea14@gmail.com.