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.

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.

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.

Welinq, a leader in quantum networking technology, has launched the first commercial quantum memory designed specifically for quantum data centers with world-record performance. Quantum computing is reaching a turning point: with more than 100 individual quantum computers deployed in dedicated infrastructures, the next challenge is networking them into scalable, high-performance architectures.

PsiQuantum today announces Omega, a quantum photonic chipset purpose-built for utility-scale quantum computing. Featured in a newly published paper in Nature, the chipset contains all the advanced components required to build million-qubit-scale quantum computers and deliver on the profoundly world-changing promise of this technology. Every photonic component is demonstrated with beyond-state-of-the-art performance. The paper shows high-fidelity qubit operations, and a simple, long-range chip-to-chip qubit interconnect – a key enabler to scale that has remained challenging for other technologies. The chips are made in a high-volume semiconductor fab, representing a new level of technical maturity and scale in a field that is often thought of as being confined to research labs. PsiQuantum will break ground this year on two datacenter-sized Quantum Compute Centers in Brisbane, Australia and Chicago, Illinois.

Today, IonQ announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with each of SK Telecom and ID Quantique (IDQ), a global leader in quantum safe networking and sensing headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland with offices in Seoul (South Korea), Vienna (Austria), and Boston (USA), to acquire a controlling stake in IDQ. Alongside the transaction, IonQ expects to enter into a strategic partnership focused on quantum with SK Telecom, the largest wireless telecommunications operator in South Korea.

In a milestone that brings quantum computing tangibly closer to large-scale practical use, scientists at Oxford University Physics have demonstrated the first instance of distributed quantum computing. Using a photonic network interface, they successfully linked two separate quantum processors to form a single, fully connected quantum computer, paving the way to tackling computational challenges previously out of reach. The results have been published today in Nature.

The “Photonic Technologies” call is now open for applications. NWO and the PhotonDelta Foundation want to further stimulate early-stage research on photonic technologies in this way. This will ultimately allow groundbreaking photonic materials, photonic chips, devices and systems to be delivered. A total of 7 million euro is financed by PhotonDelta.

Xanadu has achieved a world-first in the quantum computing industry by successfully building a universal photonic quantum computer consisting of four modular and independent server racks that are photonically interconnected and networked together. This 12 qubit machine, known as Aurora, consists of 35 photonic chips and a combined 13 km of fiber optics all operating at room temperature.

SEEQC, the first company to create digital chips to power full-stack quantum computing systems that work with all quantum computing technologies – has raised $30 million to further accelerate the capabilities and commercial rollout of its chip platform. The round was led by NordicNinja and Booz Allen Ventures with participation from SIP Capital, alongside existing investors EQT Ventures, M-Ventures (Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) BlueYard Capital, FAM and Asset Management.