Handing a lab prototype of the chip to the Financial Times to inspect, he said he found Cruz\u2019s comments on US innovation writing the story of the 21st century \u201cpretty ironic\u201d.<\/p>\n
Just before the speech, Reilly had turned down a lucrative opportunity to move his team to Microsoft\u2019s headquarters in Washington state to continue their quantum work, preferring to remain in Australia<\/a>, where a nascent quantum industry is beginning to blossom. <\/p>\n \u201cMany teams, including colleagues from Microsoft Sydney, have contributed to the development of intellectual property that has been utilised in the Majorana 1 initiative,\u201d Microsoft acknowledged in a statement to the FT.<\/p>\n Quantum computing<\/a> exploits the physics of subatomic particles to perform functions beyond the capabilities of existing computers. Australia\u2019s prominent role in its development has been built on top of breakthrough academic work in the 1990s.<\/p>\n The Australian government has looked to build on that legacy by establishing a \u201cnational quantum strategy\u201d, and last year led a A$940mn ($610mn) investment in PsiQuantum<\/a>, a US company co-founded by Australian Jeremy O\u2019Brien, to build a quantum computer in Brisbane \u2014 the company\u2019s first full-scale site. PsiQuantum this week raised <\/a>$1bn from new investors including BlackRock, Temasek and Nvidia\u2019s venture arm which valued the company at $7bn.<\/p>\n The government also established Quantum Australia \u2014 a near-A$20mn fund aimed at boosting collaboration and development \u2014 while the National Reconstruction Fund, a government incubator, also backed diamond technology company Quantum Brilliance with a A$13mn investment last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sydney now has one of the highest concentrations of researchers in the field, and dozens of companies have emerged in specific areas related to the technology. <\/p>\n The A$150mn Sydney Nanoscience Hub has also been set up on the University of Sydney campus, where Emergence Quantum, Reilly\u2019s new company, is based. <\/p>\n The hub, a sleek modern facility standing among the university\u2019s historic sandstone buildings, contains two A$2mn quantum computers. It also has one of the world\u2019s quietest rooms \u2014 benefiting from western Sydney\u2019s compacted shale bedrock that helps absorb vibrations \u2014 where an electron microscope has been built to see atoms.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not an accident that we are setting up in Australia, which has been a world leader in quantum tech for more than two decades,\u201d said Reilly.<\/p>\n With Thomas Ohki, a fellow academic who also led Microsoft\u2019s quantum research in Sydney, he decided to establish his company to provide the \u201cmissing link\u201d that quantum computing start-ups need to move from the laboratory to commercialisation of the technology.<\/p>\n
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