One of the most interesting funding deals of the fall just happened: the Silicon Valley chip designer NVIDIA invested an undisclosed sum of money in QuEra, a Boston startup that is building quantum computers.<\/p>\n
With the announcement last week, NVIDIA joins Google and SoftBank in betting on QuEra<\/a> \u2014 and solidifies QuEra\u2019s spot as the best-capitalized quantum startup in Massachusetts, with more than $275 million raised since it was founded in 2018.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also NVIDIA\u2019s most notable local move since March, when it announced<\/a> it would set up a new research center in the Boston area, the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Computing Research Center. QuEra and NVIDIA plan to collaborate using the new center\u2019s resources, according to a press release<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n I dropped by QuEra\u2019s offices over the summer to catch up with Yuval Boger, the company\u2019s Chief Commercial Officer, and see the computers they are building and operating. One of them is already available to people who want to use it on Amazon\u2019s \u201cBraket\u201d cloud service. <\/p>\n Quantum vs. traditional computers<\/p>\n Traditional computers rely on millions or billions of switches called transistors, and those switches can be in either an \u2018on\u2019 or \u2018off\u2019 state. This binary encoding (0s and 1s) underpins all of today\u2019s computers. In contrast, quantum computers are built around quantum bits, or qubits. Qubits can exist in a \u201csuperposition\u201d of both the 0 and 1 states at once, as well as any quantum state in between. <\/p>\n How sophisticated is this stuff? QuEra\u2019s qubits are individual atoms of the metal rubidium, controlled by lasers.<\/p>\n Because of that, many proponents of quantum computing say that it will be better at simulating complex phenomena \u2014 like weather, the way drugs behave inside a person\u2019s body or the chemical reactions inside a battery. But today\u2019s quantum computers are still somewhat error-prone and rough around the edges. <\/p>\n \u201cConventional wisdom these days is that in two or three years, quantum computers will be sufficiently strong to solve some chemistry and material science problems,\u201d Boger said. \u201cIt\u2019s not surprising that it\u2019s chemistry and material science [first], because these are problems that exhibit quantum mechanical properties. How does a molecule behave, and so on. <\/p>\n \u2018Q Day\u2019 is on the horizon<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe in five years, you\u2019ll be able to use a quantum computer to optimize your financial portfolio better. Maybe in 10 or 20 years, you\u2019ll be able to, for better or worse, break the world\u2019s encryption using a quantum computer,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n That\u2019s a problem that many governments and corporations are already thinking about. They call it \u201cQ Day\u201d \u2014 the day when someone somewhere develops a powerful enough quantum computer that can break encryption systems. The U.S. government \u2014 and many major corporations \u2014 have identified it as a major cybersecurity threat.<\/p>\n When I visited QuEra\u2019s office, I had to sign an attestation that I was a citizen of the U.S. That\u2019s because quantum computing technology, and exports of it, are controlled<\/a> by the Department of Commerce as vital to the country\u2019s national security.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are building some of the world\u2019s most advanced quantum computers and … a lot of people want to understand what\u2019s in them.\u201d<\/p>\n Already, Boger said that the early users of QuEra\u2019s quantum computers have been trying to solve problems such as the best placement for electric-vehicle chargers and a better understanding of the effects of new drugs when clinical trial populations are small.<\/p>\n Boston is a quantum computing hotspot<\/p>\n \u201cThe quantum computing ecosystem in Boston is really one of the hotspots in the U.S.,\u201d Catherine Lefebvre said. \u201cWith all the experts at MIT, Harvard and other top universities \u2014 you have a lot of investors too \u2014 there are all the ingredients for a very strong ecosystem.” <\/p>\n Lefebvre tracks the industry as a senior advisor to the Open Quantum Institute<\/a>, which aims to ensure that quantum computing is developed \u201cfor the benefit of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n QuEra\u2019s technology \u201cis pretty advanced, and they\u2019re moving fast and steadily,\u201d she said. But compared to other companies, they are still a \u201csmall player,\u201d with a small team and facility. <\/p>\n But Lefebvre said that \u201cit is way too early to pick a winner\u201d among the many startups \u2014 and larger companies, such as IBM and Microsoft \u2014 that are developing quantum computers.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most interesting funding deals of the fall just happened: the Silicon Valley chip designer NVIDIA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[49,48,285,9695,290,18642,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-147809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-computing","11":"tag-quantum-computer","12":"tag-quantum-computing","13":"tag-quera","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}