The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected 15 quantum computing companies for its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, to see if utility-scale quantum computers can be built by 2033.
Selected companies include IBM, HPE, Quantinuum, IonQ, Xanadu, Rigetti, and others from North America, Europe, and Australia and covers multiple approaches to quantum computing, including trapped ions, superconducting qubits, photonics, and silicon spin qubits.
“It’s an honor to be selected to the first phase of QBI along with other leaders in the industry,” says Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook. “One of the challenges from a fundraising and business perspective is how can an investor or customer do due diligence on a quantum computing company.” Programs like QBI provide that validation, he says.
“We’re going to do whatever we can to show that these companies’ plans won’t work, but we’re going to be honest brokers,” says Joe Altepeter, QBI program manager at DARPA, in a video. “And if we find out that it does work after a lot of hard work, a lot of analysis, and a lot of independent testing, then we’re going to tell the other agencies of the government who care about if quantum computers work or not.”
But it’s not just validation the DARPA is offering. According to Nord Quantique, DARPA will provide substantial funding through the multi-stage initiative, with selected companies receiving $1 million to detail their quantum computing concepts – and that’s just to start with.
Those advancing to the next stage could receive up to $15 million to develop comprehensive research and development roadmaps, followed by up to $300 million in the final stage, for building and demonstrating their utility-scale quantum systems.
Nord Quantique plans to use the money to expand its team, says Julien Camirand Lemyre, the company’s president, CTO and co-founder. That’s an opportunity to accelerate the development of the technology, he says.
“By extension, what this will mean for enterprise users is that quantum solutions to real-world business problems will be available sooner, due to that acceleration,” he says. “And so enterprise customers need to also accelerate how they are thinking about adoption because the advantages quantum will provide will be tangible.” Lemyre predicts that useful quantum computers will be available for enterprises before the end of the decade.
“In fact, there has been tremendous progress across the entire quantum sector in recent years,” he says. “This means industry needs to begin thinking seriously about how they will integrate quantum computing into their operations over the medium term.”
“We’re seeing, with the deployment of programs like the QBI in the US and investments of billions of dollars from public and private investors globally, an increasing maturity of quantum technologies,” said Paul Terry, CEO at Photonic, Inc., which is betting on optically-linked silicon spin qubits. “Our architecture has been designed from day one to build modular, scalable, fault-tolerant quantum systems able to be deployed in data centers,” he said.
He’s not the only one to mention fault-tolerance. DARPA stressed fault-tolerance in its announcement, and its selections point to the importance of error correction for the future of quantum computing.
The biggest problem with today’s quantum computers is that the number of errors increases faster than the number of qubits, making them impossible to scale up. Quantum companies are working on a variety of approaches to reduce the error rates low enough that quantum computers can get big enough to actually to real work.
Many of today’s quantum computers are classified as noisy intermediate-scale quantum, or NISQ. They are useful for education, but won’t lead to commercial value, said Juliette Peyronnet, US general manager at Alice & Bob, which makes fault-tolerant cat qubits. “The fact that DARPA is validating that we have to look at fault tolerance is another confirmation that this is where commercial enterprises should also focus,” she says.
“Our roadmap is that by 2030 we’ll have 100 logical qubits, and with 100 logical qubits, it’s when you start scratching the tip of the iceberg in terms of creating value for very specific use cases,” she said. “So we are not talking about full commercial interest, but starting to do things that are completely out of the realm of classical solutions.”
The goal of the QBI is to the select the quantum computing companies and technologies that have the best chance to succeed, says Xanadu’s Weedbrook. “The fact that this program exists indicates that quantum computing industry is maturing at an ever faster rate.”
HPE is taking a consortium approach, partnering with six organizations including Qolab, Quantum Machines, and Applied Materials. The team is focusing on an approach combining quantum and classical computing.
“Working as a consortium, we came up with a less ambitious but more practical target of building high-performance quantum-classical coprocessors that could be met by employing state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication and supercomputing,” says Masoud Mohseni, an HPE Labs distinguished technologist, in a statement.
Full list of 15 companies DARPA selected:
- Alice & Bob — superconducting cat qubits.
- Atlantic Quantum — fluxonium qubits.
- Atom Computing — scalable arrays of neutral atoms.
- Diraq — silicon spin qubits.
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
- IBM — superconducting processors.
- IonQ — trapped-ion quantum computing.
- Nord Quantique.
- Oxford Ionics — trapped-ion qubits.
- Photonic-optically-linked silicon spin qubits.
- Quantinuum — trapped-ion qubits.
- Quantum Motion — silicon spin qubits.
- Rigetti Computing — superconducting tunable transmon qubits.
- Silicon Quantum Computing — precision atom qubits in silicon.
- Xanadu — photonic quantum computing.
There are also three other companies that have been selected, but not yet finalized, DARPA said, and their names will be released in the near future.
There is one big quantum computing player that’s missing from the list — Microsoft. That’s because Microsoft, as well as another quantum computing company, PsiQuantum, were already in the program. In fact, In February, DARPA announced that Microsoft and PsiQuantum, had moved into the validation and co-design stage of the initiative, though the announcement didn’t say how much money was involved.