The Colorado-based company said this morning that it is working with a Tel Aviv software company, Classiq, to make 100-qubit quantum circuits a reality.
“ColdQuanta is developing a powerful quantum computer that can solve real-world problems,” said Paul Lipman (pictured), ColdQuanta’s president of quantum information platforms. “Our partnership with Classiq allows us to create an easy on-ramp for customers so that they can model and execute complex circuits with ease.”
The companies said the new platform could be “to create, simulate and execute unique quantum circuits to address a wide range of finance, material science, supply chain and machine learning challenges”.
The platform will use ColdQuanta’s Hilbert quantum computer, that they said will offer companies and researchers the opportunity to simulate and execute 100-qubit quantum circuits, with even larger models becoming available in the future.
Nir Minerbi, CEO of Classiq, said: “As the industry moves from toy problems solved by toy circuits running on small quantum computers to solving real problems that require complex circuits on larger quantum computers, there is an acute need for a high-level platform to develop these circuits quickly and efficiently.”
The companies have not said when they expect the platform to be available for users. But they are holding a webinar on the project in mid-February.
They said that large quantum circuits are key to solving real-world problems that can’t be solved by classical computers. Quantum circuits are typically measured in qubits – a shortened form for “quantum bit”, the basic unit of quantum information.
Unlike the familiar bit used in conventional computing for the past 80 years, which is either 0 or 1, a qubit can be in both states at the same time.
The partnership said this morning: “The number and quality of qubits is a good first approximation to the power of a quantum computer. As the number of qubits grows, the utility and complexity of a quantum computer increase.”
With more qubits, companies “can balance more extensive financial portfolios, simulate more complex molecules and vaccines, analyse more difficult supply chain problems and tackle larger machine learning datasets”, they added.
Minerbi said: “Our quantum algorithm design platform … lets the user focus on the ‘what’ – the desired functionality – and automates the process of creating the ‘how’ – the exact quantum circuit that delivers this functionality.”
ColdQuanta said last year that Hilbert is based on work over the last several decades by Mark Saffman, now ColdQuanta’s chief scientist for quantum information and professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lipman, a physicist, joined ColdQuanta in April 2021 after five years as CEO of BullGuard, a UK-based consumer and small business security company.
Caruso became chairman and acting CEO of ColdQuanta in 2020, after stepping down from Zayo, which he founded in 2007. Two private equity companies, DigitalBridge and EQT, bought Zayo in 2020 for $14.3 billion. Caruso has stepped back from his direct role in ColdQuanta, and is no longer on the board, but remains a shareholder.
