Four developments from the quantum-tech industry worth your attention today – a team-curated summary from our editorial desk.
IonQ and EPB Launch Tennessee Quantum Communications Research Center
IonQ and Chattanooga-based fiber and power utility EPB (formerly Electric Power Board of Chattanooga) announced a new Tennessee Quantum Communications Research Center, backed by a $15 million investment from IonQ. The center will use EPB’s existing citywide fiber-optic network as a live testbed for quantum memory and entanglement distribution, aiming to move quantum networking technology out of the lab and onto real-world fiber infrastructure. The partners describe it as the first live-network quantum memory lab of its kind in the United States.
Source: IonQ (press release)
NTT and OptQC Sign Capital Alliance to Build a Million-Qubit Optical Quantum Computer
NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) and OptQC, a University of Tokyo spinout building photonic quantum computers, signed a capital and business alliance under which NTT will take a strategic equity stake in OptQC. The partners plan a practical 10,000-qubit-class optical quantum computer by fiscal year 2027, followed by a fault-tolerant, million-qubit-class system by fiscal year 2030, targeting applications in finance, materials science and drug development.
Source: NTT (press release)
Chinese Researchers Demonstrate 16-Qubit On-Chip Photonic Quantum Computing Architecture
Chinese startup Hefei Guizhen Chip Technology Co., Ltd. (No independent company site found yet; linked to its reference profile.), working with researchers from USTC (University of Science and Technology of China), demonstrated a measurement-based quantum computing architecture that encodes 16 qubits from just four photons routed across 16 waveguide paths on a single silicon photonic chip. The system achieved a 98.7 percent average success rate running Grover’s search algorithm, improving on the previous on-chip photonic MBQC benchmark set by the University of Stuttgart. The result is described in a preprint that has not yet completed peer review.
Source: arXiv preprint
Israel Launches “Project Nexus” Tender for a Sovereign National Quantum Computer
Israel’s National AI Directorate, operating within the Prime Minister’s Office, together with the Finance Ministry’s Accountant General’s Department, issued a government tender for “Project Nexus,” a plan to build a domestically manufactured, nationally owned quantum computing platform. The initiative is part of a broader $1.66 billion national AI strategy aimed at strengthening Israeli technological sovereignty; private companies and academic institutions will compete for the contract, with no budget or timeline details yet disclosed.
Source: The Jerusalem Post
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.