Quantum News Nexus

Don’t be an April Fool. Check out my latest quantum news wrap-up:

Numerous people across Wall Street, the cryptocurrency community, and elsewhere have been losing their minds this week over a new whitepaper from Google Quantum AI that suggests, among other things, that using a quantum computer to crack elliptic curve cryptography protecting cryptocurrencies could require fewer qubits than previously thought.

It’s interesting that the quantum sector has been talking about the coming of cryptographically-relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) for many years, and has been planning post-quantum cryptography (PQC) protection schemes for just as long, yet some people still seem to have been caught by surprise by this whitepaper. Google is not the first big company to openly discuss the threat, as IBM, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and other giants of the tech world have published similar papers over the years. Many tech firms now have growing quantum groups and strategies, and governments around the world have started to respond and invest in PQC.

Perhaps what’s scaring everyone is the suggestion that it will take fewer physical qubits than previously thought, but again, Google is hardly the first one to point out that the bar is lowering, and has been lowering for a while. This should hardly be a surprise as quantum computing technology–and particularly error correction and the ability to create logical qubits–has continued to advance.

The broad reaction to this whitepaper puts the quantum sector in kind of an odd position. The industry probably should try to cool the panic a bit by clarifying that CRQCs are still several years away. Yet, quantum companies also have been warning other industries for years about the possibility that encrypted data stolen now could be cracked later by a CRQC. The “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” slogan has not exactly been embraced at the level of pop culture, but it’s not for lack of trying. Google’s whitepaper gives the sector a new opportunity to amplify this message.

Monarch Quantum, a photonic quantum technology company in San Diego, announced a $55 million oversubscribed growth round, led by Serendipity Capital, a leading deep tech investor, with participation from 55 North, which describes itself as the world’s largest dedicated pure-play quantum fund, and Global Innovation Labs. 

Monarch is a start-up among start-ups, having been founded only last year. I have talked about the company before regarding its participation, with Infleqtion, in NASA’s Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder mission.

In announcing the funding, the firm counted Infleqtion and NASA among its more than $60 million in customer contracts so far.

Monarch said the funding will accelerate production of its Quantum Light Engines photonic control systems for quantum computing, sensing, and networking, while supporting scale-up, supply chain expansion, and global partnerships to meet growing demand for next-generation quantum hardware. 

QuSecure announced it is collaborating with the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) in the Migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography Project, which is all part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s programs to combat the quantum threat

As a contributing member of the consortium, QuSecure will collaborate with Automated Cryptography Discovery and Inventory and post-quantum cryptography vendors to understand tool performance across enterprise environments and use cases. QuSecure will test solutions in NCCoE lab environments with enterprise PQC tools to identify capability gaps and strengthen post-quantum cryptography migration strategies. The company will share technical expertise and deployment barriers to improve interoperability, implementation performance, and coordination with standards bodies and industry sectors.

“This collaboration with the NCCoE brings industry leaders together to tackle one of today’s most pressing cybersecurity challenges – the transition to post-quantum cryptography,” said Garfield Jones, QuSecure SVP, Research & Technology Strategy. “By working across government, industry, and academia, we can help organizations identify quantum-vulnerable systems, manage risk, and prepare for a secure, quantum-resilient future.”

IBM and ETH Zurich announced a 10-year initiative targeted at advancing “the next generation of algorithms at the intersection of AI and quantum computing.”

The US Department of Energy announced a plan to invest $320 million in a bunch of research projects across many disciplines, among them “Quantum Information Science and Advanced Computing.”

And finally, another bit of DoE news: The department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry (QC 3) program is giving $3.9 million to French firm Alice & Bob for development of fault-tolerant quantum algorithms aimed at discovering rare-earth-free permanent magnets – a critical component in electric motors and turbines. 

“Designing high-performance magnets without rare earth elements is one of the hardest problems in material science, as these materials are extremely difficult to simulate with classical computers. A hybrid approach – where classical methods compute environmental parameters and quantum computers simulate highly correlated electronic systems more accurately – could significantly accelerate the discovery of new magnetic materials.” said Juliette Peyronnet, U.S General Manager at Alice & Bob. 

Alice & Bob will lead the three-year project in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory, GE Vernova’s Advanced Research accelerator, and Professor Emanuel Gull (a visiting Professor at Warsaw University and a Professor at University of Michigan), leading a group that will create classical algorithms that will work in conjunction with Alice & Bob’s quantum algorithms. Los Alamos will develop tensor network tools to optimize quantum circuits, and GE Vernova’s Advanced Research accelerator will perform a technoeconomic analysis of material discovery opportunities enabled by the hybrid algorithm.

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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.