None of the companies involved say how much the investment is. There is no reference to the investment in yesterday’s IBM annual report.
However, Cambridge Quantum Computing’s financial filings state that 166,164 shares in the company had been allotted on 19 February for an amount paid of $20 million, and by yesterday, 22 February, the number of shares allotted had increased to 1,230,405, with the amount paid stated as $25 million – an increase of $5 million. The return to Companies House does not say who has the new shares.
Quantinuum CEO Ilyas Khan (pictured), said: “IBM has been a great advocate for the creation of a growing quantum ecosystem as well as an early investor in Cambridge Quantum and now Quantinuum.”
The agreement means that IBM will expand its IBM Quantum Hub with Cambridge Quantum Computing, “providing clients with greater access to IBM’s quantum computing systems”.
These include IBM’s recently announced 127 qubit processor, Eagle, as well as its quantum expertise and the open-source quantum development kit, Qiskit, “to drive and develop the quantum ecosystem”.
Khan said: “We are excited to expand access to IBM Quantum hardware and Qiskit, providing our clients with solutions developed for state-of-the-art quantum computing hardware. We continue to utilize a broad range of quantum processors including IBM, given their position as a leader in superconducting quantum computers, a critical and important part of the growth in the capabilities of quantum computers.”
The 2021 deal to create Quantinuum saw the merger of Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum. Under the deal, announced in June 2021, Honeywell, a pioneer of computing in the 1950s and 1960s, invested $270-$300 million in the venture.
Khan said then: “Quantinuum is now the largest and most advanced integrated quantum computing company in the world.”
Today Quantinuum said the further “investment and business collaboration provides an example of how Quantinuum is poised to accelerate the development of quantum computing and innovation of quantum technologies to deliver real-world quantum-enabled solutions for some of the most intractable problems that classical computers have not been able to solve”.
