PsiQuantum today announced a $10.8M contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, N.Y., continuing a partnership that began in 2022. This phase will give AFRL a design space for comparative quantum circuits on PsiQuantum’s circuit tapeout, part of its ongoing Omega quantum chipset manufacturing with GlobalFoundries. As AFRL’s hardware design partner, PsiQuantum will supply its high-performance Barium Titanate (BTO) Electro-Optic phase shifters and integrate BTO into AFRL-designed optical circuits. PsiQuantum’s 300mm BTO material is believed to be the world’s highest-performing electro-switch material. The company will also provide essential quantum circuit components. Once designed, constructed, and screened for performance, the company will deliver these completed chips to AFRL, who will then validate their capabilities to address other Air Force use cases.

The UK government is investing £121 million in quantum technology to tackle crime, fraud, and money laundering, while reinforcing its global leadership in the field and driving economic savings.

The Integrated Quantum Networks Hub will address the challenges underpinning the establishment of a “quantum internet”, by developing the novel technologies, protocols and industry standards necessary for the deployment of a secure, scalable, quantum communications infrastructure for the UK and beyond.

Sparrow Quantum, a leading European supplier of photonic quantum chips, has secured €21.5 million in Series A funding to accelerate the development and commercialization of its world-leading quantum chip technology. The investment round was led by PensionDanmark, with strong backing from EIFO and Novo Holdings and additional investments from existing investors 2xN, LIFTT, and the European Innovation Council. This investment will enable Sparrow Quantum to meet the growing demand for photonic quantum hardware by accelerating R&D, expanding chip production, and bringing next-generation quantum chips to market.

SandboxAQ, a global leader in enterprise quantitative AI, announced the addition of Ray Dalio, Horizon Kinetics, BNP Paribas, Google, and NVIDIA to its Series E funding round, which raised over $450 million. The investments underscore the confidence in SandboxAQ’s vision and the transformative power of its Large Quantitative Models (LQMs), which are redefining how enterprises leverage AI to tackle complex scientific and quantitative challenges.

Nearly 20 quantum computing companies have been chosen to enter the initial stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), in which they will characterize their unique concepts for creating a useful, fault-tolerant quantum computer within a decade.

The procurement contract for EuroQCS-Italy, the EuroHPC quantum computer to be located in Italy, has been signed by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and quantum computing company Pasqal, the selected vendor.

Today, ETSI announces the launch of its post-quantum security standard to guarantee the protection of critical data and communications in the future. The specification “Efficient Quantum-Safe Hybrid Key Exchanges with Hidden Access Policies” (ETSI TS 104 015) has been developed to enhance security mechanisms, ensuring that only authorized users with the correct permissions can access sensitive data to decrypt them.

KDDI Research, Inc. (“KDDI Research”), and Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation (“Toshiba Digital Solutions”) have developed a multiplexing technology for quantum key distribution (QKD) that is theoretically impossible to eavesdrop. This technology assigns secret keys to the C-band and high-volume data signals to the O-band, enabling multiplexed transmission over a single optical fiber. Furthermore, utilizing this technology, we have successfully transmitted secret keys and high-capacity data signals at 33.4 Tbps over 80 km for the first time.

MIT researchers developed a photon-shuttling “interconnect” that can facilitate remote entanglement, a key step toward a practical quantum computer.