Four developments from the quantum-tech industry worth your attention today – curated by our editorial team.
IBM, Oak Ridge and Cleveland Clinic Use a Quantum Computer to Model Fusion Fuel Material
A team from IBM, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Cleveland Clinic has used quantum-centric supercomputing to calculate nine molecular configurations of FLiBe, a molten-salt mixture of fluorine, lithium and beryllium that is a leading candidate for extracting tritium fuel inside fusion reactors. The partners describe it as the first known use of a quantum computer for this class of fusion blanket material, a step toward easing a tritium-supply bottleneck the U.S. Department of Energy has flagged as central to its Genesis Mission. The results, produced by combining quantum circuits with classical supercomputing, are described in a preprint posted to arXiv.
Source: IBM Newsroom
QuantumDiamonds Raises €91 Million to Scale Quantum-Based Chip Inspection
Munich-based QuantumDiamonds has closed a €91 million funding round combining a €15 million equity raise led by World Fund with €76 million in non-dilutive support under the European Chips Act, making it the first startup in line for manufacturing funding under that program. The company’s technology reads defects in synthetic diamonds to image current flow inside chips at the nanoscale, helping manufacturers locate buried defects that conventional inspection tools miss. QuantumDiamonds, a 2022 spin-out of the Technical University of Munich, has already deployed systems in the U.S. and Taiwan and plans to open a new €152 million production facility in Munich later this year.
Source: QuantumDiamonds
Connecticut’s QuantumCT Wins NSF Regional Innovation Engine Award
The U.S. National Science Foundation has selected QuantumCT, an initiative led by the University of Connecticut and Yale University, for its Regional Innovation Engines program, unlocking an initial two-year, $15 million award. With continued progress, the program could bring QuantumCT up to $160 million in NSF funding over a decade, backing technology translation, workforce development and incubator programs aimed at commercializing quantum technologies for defense, biotech and financial services. Connecticut has separately pledged $121 million in state funding to the effort.
Source: Yale News
Pasqal and MegazoneCloud Sign MoU to Bring Neutral-Atom Quantum Computing to South Korea
French neutral-atom quantum computing company Pasqal and MegazoneCloud, a major South Korean cloud provider, have signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate Pasqal’s quantum processing units and software development kits into MegazoneCloud’s managed cloud services. The partnership will also pursue on-premises QPU deployments at domestic customers and target use cases in finance, logistics, biotechnology and manufacturing. It follows Pasqal’s separate EU-backed Q-PLANET initiative announced earlier this week, part of a broader push to expand neutral-atom quantum computing’s footprint beyond Europe.
Source: GlobeNewswire
This digest was researched and written by our AI editorial team (Quark & Prism), supervised by Mischa Hammann. More on our Team page. Not investment advice.