The Minister of the Economy and Innovation Aušrinė Armonaitė has signed the European Declaration on Quantum Technologies. The Declaration, which has already been signed by 24 EU Member States, agrees to coordinate European, national and regional research and development programmes and initiatives in the field of quantum technologies. It also also planned to work together to develop advanced infrastructure for the development of these technologies and accelerate the transition from the laboratory to industrial applications by promoting cooperation between science and business and investing in start-ups developing quantum innovations.

Wave Photonics has received £4.5M ($5.8M) to develop on-chip photonics designs for quantum technologies, sensors, and datacentre applications. The UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund and Cambridge Enterprise led the round, with participation from the Redstone and QAI Ventures’ Quantum Fund, Kyra Ventures, and Deep Tech Labs. The investment round was complemented by non-dilutive funding via EIC and Innovate UK grants, taking the company’s total funding to date to £5.4M ($6.9M). 

The ParisRegion Quantum Communication Infrastructure (QCI) consortium, led by Orange has successfully implemented its first quantum communication network in existing fibre optic infrastructure. The ParisRegionQCI project, a consortium of industrialists, university researchers and start-ups set out to demonstrate the feasibility of quantum key distribution (QKD) based on existing terrestrial fibre networks.

UK-based quantum computing company OQC announced yesterday the appointment of Dr Peter Leek as Chief Scientific Officer. Leek is one of the founders of OQC and a key researcher in its core technology. OQC said that he will lead its scientific research operations and be responsible for its global research programmes.

Bloomberg recently reported that J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, has received support from a consortium including IBM and Discover Financial Services to launch a project named "Quantum Shield," which aims to leverage advanced quantum technologies and tools to address the growing problem of financial crimes.

Yesterday, the quantum startup Qblox announced the successful completion of a Series A funding round of $26 million, led by Quantonation and Invest-NL Deep Tech fund, with additional participation from QDNL participations and the European Innovation Council (EIC). Qblox said that its control stack solutions are currently utilised by over one hundred customers globally, and this Series A funding will further fuel Qblox's efforts in research and development, allowing for accelerated product development and enhanced market positioning.

PQShield, a cybersecurity company specializing in post-quantum cryptography (PQC), has raised $37 million in Series B funding led by Addition. PQShield will use the funding to expand its commercial operations as it continues to meet growing global demand for its quantum-ready cryptographic solutions for hardware, software, and communications.

Zapata Computing announced yesterday that it has published and will present to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) select research findings from its participation in Phase II of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking program. Publication of these results represent a critical milestone in DARPA’s initiative to quantitatively measure the economic value of specific, transformational quantum computing use cases and the associated hardware-specific resources required for a given level of performance.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (USF) yesterday announced a $20 million grant to CU Boulder to launch a facility known as the National Quantum Nanofab (NQN).  Researchers and quantum experts from Colorado will be able to utilize this facility to design and build incredibly small devices, which will help translate discoveries in the quantum world into technologies that have a greater impact on society.

Arqit Quantum Inc. , a leader in quantum-safe encryption, announces the full commercial launch of a new feature of its Symmetric Key Agreement Platform, the “Encryption Intelligence” service. Encryption Intelligence assists organizations in identifying network risks and developing mitigation plans to enhance their security posture against current and evolving cybersecurity threats. Arqit secured its first paid contract for this feature with an international telecoms network operator.

IDEMIA Secure Transactions has demonstrated to central banks and financial institutions the first offline central bank digital currency (CBDC) payment capability. This method provides citizens with an ultra-secure, quantum-computer-resistant offline CBDC payment method that allows for digital currency transactions even without internet connectivity. It is understood that this offline CBDC payment feature utilizes post-quantum cryptography technology that NIST is in the process of standardizing.

SK Telecom, South Korea's largest wireless carrier by membership, on Wednesday unveiled the official name of its quantum alliance: X Quantum. In March, SK Telecom allied with six other companies (Nokia, SOS Lab, Xgate, Wooriro, KCS and IDQ Korea) to promote developments in the quantum ecosystem through exploring joint marketing and business opportunities.

The neutral atom quantum computer manufacturer Pasqal announced yesterday that it has delivered a quantum processing unit (QPU) with over 100 qubits to GENCI (Grand Équipement National de Calcul Intensif) and CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission). It is the first QPU delivered by Pasqal to a third party, and the QPU will be integrated with GENCI’s supercomputer, Joliot-Curie, which is hosted and operated by CEA at TGCC.

Led by IQM Quantum Computers, the Q-Exa consortium has collaborated with the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) to integrate a 20-qubit quantum computer into Germany's SuperMUC-NG supercomputer. The Q-Exa project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with an investment of over 40 million euros, aims to connect quantum processing units (QPU) based on superconducting circuits to a supercomputer and to develop interfaces and control tools for this purpose. 

Vibrint, a leading innovator in federal technology solutions, today announced it has teamed with quantum technology pioneer QED to codevelop a range of solutions that will allow federal government agencies to ensure quantum safety in critical infrastructure, defense and intelligence.

Korean mobile carrier SK Telecom will launch a next-generation quantum cryptography chip next week, marking the industry's first secure chip utilizing QRNG and PQC technologies to prevent hacking. Named "Q-HSM," this product continuously generates unpredictable random numbers through a Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) and incorporates post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms based on complex mathematical principles. This dual-layer security capability enables it to reliably defend against quantum attacks.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has initiated a new tender process to seek R&D partners to scale up the country’s most powerful quantum computer to 300 qubits. In addition to increasing the qubit count, VTT will examine, together with the selected partner, whether it is possible to optimize the quantum computer to solve specific types of mathematical problems. VTT has previously developed 5-qubit and 20-qubit quantum computers with current partners, and a third system featuring 50 qubits is set to launch in the second half of 2024.

The French quantum computing startup C12 has completed a second round of funding of €18 million (~USD 19.35 million), which will be used to accelerate the development of its carbon nanotube-based quantum computer. It is understood that the company completed a seed round of funding of USD 10 million in 2021, and this new investment brings its total raised funds to nearly USD 30 million.

The German logistics service provider Hermes has established a partnership with QuantumBasel to leverage quantum computing to enhance its delivery operations. This collaboration will explore quantum solutions to improve existing software, address operational challenges, and drive innovation in logistics. As part of the partnership, QuantumBasel will provide Hermes with access to the technology environment of D-Wave's annealing quantum computers and quantum hybrid solvers. 

Fujitsu announced yesterday that it has received an order for a gate-based superconducting quantum computer from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) on May 15, 2024. This quantum computer is scheduled to go online in early 2025 and to be operated by the Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI technology (G-QuAT) of AIST. It is reported that this is the first time that a Japanese vendor has received an order for a commercial quantum computer system.