Aug 11 – Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) just made a bold move into quantum computing with a $36.7 million stake in IonQ (NYSE:IONQ), revealed in its latest SEC filing. That instantly puts the e-commerce giant among the largest tech investors in a publicly traded quantum hardware company. IonQ’s trapped-ion quantum computers already power workloads on AWS’s Braket service, so this deal looks like more than just a passive bet. IonQ shares popped about 7% after the news.
In France, quantum startup Alice & Bob, alongside Inria, has unveiled a new Heart Code method for preparing magic states using only 53 qubits, 8.7% fewer than leading methods, while cutting processing time by a factor of five. The approach runs on their current cat qubit hardware, boosting scalability without major retooling.
In the meantime, Japan rolled out its first entirely domestic superconducting quantum computer at Osaka University, in pursuit of technology independence, and Quantinuum, funded by Honeywell (NASDAQ:HON), teamed up with the Technology Innovation Institute in the UAE to boost Gulf quantum research.
All of this shows that the big Tech, startups, governments are pushing to commercialize quantum theory, now, and sooner, at less cost and on grand scale.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.