Quantum News Nexus

It’s a wild week in quantum as we await several earnings reports. Here’s a look at the headlines so far:

IQM Quantum Computers of Finland was the first quantum company to report earnings this week, and it’s IQM’s first report since going public earlier this year. Revenue for the first six months of this year amounted to €8.9 million (more than $10.2 million USD), and €6.7 million (about $7.7 million USD) of that came in the second quarter. With a full-year outlook for at least €42 million ($48.4 million USD) in revenue, IQM is seeing a quick ramp-up in sales, and expects that to continue as it works on converting a considerable order backlog.

D-Wave, which reports second quarter earnings this Thursday, announced a partnership with Nasdaq Verafin focused on quantum application development around financial crime detection. An initial proof-of-concept will involve analysis of “hundreds of data signals in an effort to strengthen predictive models for detecting unusual account behavior.” This announcement comes a week after AT&T gave D-Wave a huge vote of confidence by expanding a collaboration to use D-Wave tech on its optimization challenges.

IonQ, which reports second quarter earnings tomorrow, said it signed a memorandum of understanding with Sandia National Laboratories to explore accelerated co-design of quantum information science technologies in support of U.S. national security innovation. This is more evidence of IonQ’s ongoing work supporting federal government initiatives and agencies. Also, IonQ’s press release included this interesting quote from Dr. Rick Muller, SVP and Chief Scientist, IonQ Federal: “Sandia fabricated the ion traps that IonQ’s earliest quantum computers were built on, so this collaboration has a historic pedigree. What’s new is the scope. We’re putting our hardware and applications teams alongside Sandia’s expertise in trapped-ion fabrication and silicon photonics. These two areas  most directly determine how fast quantum computers scale and how well they connect to one another.” 

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said he will sell Bitcoin after getting freaked out by IBM CEO Arvind Krishna’s suggestion that quantum computing is a few years away from cracking current encryption. I don’t know if more credit should go to Krishna saying that will be the time to get “paranoid” about Bitcoin security, or to Cramer for just running with it and broadcasting his knee-jerk reaction to the world, but this should drive a lot more quantum-safe security awareness and investment. In reality, the timeframe evoked by Krishna should not be surprising to anyone, as the recent Trump administration Executive Order on cryptography accelerated the federal government’s own post-quantum cryptography deadlines to 2030 and 2031. The industry has been moving away from the notion of Q-Day as a singular event, though the first announcements of fault-tolerant quantum computers in the next three to four years seem likely to trigger a tidal wave of panic about what gets hit first and how badly.

IBM put out multiple announcements claiming demonstrations of quantum advantage on different problems with different partners – the University of Chicago, Qedma, Algorthmiq. The paper with the U of C on error correction for encoding logical circuits to speed up processing is particularly interesting, but together these announcements play into the idea that quantum advantages is going to be realized on many different problems at different times, and like Q-Day, is not something we should think of as a singular event. Also, these claims are sure to draw out critics and detractors.

Image by freepik