Insider Brief
- D-Wave is releasing new information on several business initiatives and product releases. The company also released liquidity and balance sheet updates.
- D-Wave announced plans to build out its feature selection market offerings, which will span D-Wave’s quantum hybrid solvers and professional services.
- Critical Quote: “We’re taking a number of steps to help our customers expeditiously unlock the power of quantum computing for the enterprise, today, including expanding our feature selection offerings to help solve key AI/ML workstreams, enabling access to our Advantage system in new countries including Israel, and adopting new processes and compliance measures to reinforce our commercial-readiness. In addition, we’re building upon our cash position by pursuing a variety of financing options to increase our access to capital and enable us to execute on the growth opportunities ahead.” — Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave.
PRESS RELEASE — –D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS), a leader in quantum computing systems, software, and services and the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers, today announced a series of product and business updates, demonstrating continued progress and momentum of its leadership in driving the commercialization of quantum computing.
Feature Selection Offerings Address Key Machine Learning Problem Sets
As global enterprises increasingly incorporate AI as a fundamental technology component, feature selection – a key building block of machine learning – is emerging as a critical area of focus that applies to multiple industry sectors. D-Wave today announced plans to build out its feature selection market offerings, which will span D-Wave’s quantum hybrid solvers and professional services, in order to apply the company’s systems and services to address the growing need for finding efficient solutions to the most difficult business problems.
D-Wave has built a feature selection offering that focuses on using quantum hybrid approaches to optimize feature selection in artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) model training and prediction. Feature selection is the problem of determining a small set of the most representative characteristics to improve model training and performance in machine learning. It is a critical component of machine learning and yet represents a problem that is very difficult to solve with classical computers. The D-Wave offering is uniquely suited to perform feature selection by constructing and solving a combinatorial optimization problem. Compared to classical alternatives like recursive feature elimination, this approach provides a “one-shot” solution. It avoids potential costly cycles of iterative model training and incremental construction of the solution while generally delivering improved model accuracy and easier interpretation. Based on promising work with a number of D-Wave customers, the feature selection offering is showing early results in areas like fraud detection and TV commercial advertising optimization. Customers can currently access D-Wave’s feature selection offering directly from D-Wave or in AWS Marketplace.
Leap Real-Time Quantum Cloud Service Soon Available in Israel
Extending its global accessibility and reach, D-Wave also announced today it will soon open up availability of the Leap™ quantum cloud service in Israel. Businesses, developers, and researchers in Israel will soon be able to access D-Wave’s Advantage™ quantum computer, hybrid quantum/classical solvers, and the integrated developer environment (IDE) in real-time via Leap to drive the development of business-critical, in-production hybrid applications. In addition to access, Leap offers free developer plans, teaching and learning tools, code samples, an integrated development environment, demos, and a quantum community to help users get started building and deploying quantum applications. On March 8th, Leap will be available in 39 countries globally, including Israel, and will be accessible directly from D-Wave or in AWS Marketplace.
In addition to the global expansion of Leap, D-Wave announced a series of initiatives designed to enhance its production- and commercial-readiness, including SOC 2 Type 2 compliance. SOC 2 Type 2 compliance is a voluntary compliance standard for service organizations, developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), which specifies how organizations should manage customer data. D-Wave is working with external auditors to achieve SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, which are designed to ensure the safety and privacy of customer data.
Liquidity / Balance Sheet Update
Since late October 2022, D-Wave has raised approximately $20 million under the previously announced $150 million Equity Line of Credit (ELOC) with Lincoln Park Capital. The ELOC has been an efficient source of capital during this period. Subject to the ELOC being available in accordance with its terms and under effective S-1 filings (including the 35 million shares to be registered under the recent S-1 filing), D-Wave may seek to access additional capital under the ELOC at whatever points in time the company determines appropriate as an ongoing mechanism to fund D-Wave’s operations. The company’s current cash balance has improved over the cash balance previously reported as of September 30, 2022.
“D-Wave is rapidly accelerating the commercialization of quantum computing,” said Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. “We’re taking a number of steps to help our customers expeditiously unlock the power of quantum computing for the enterprise, today, including expanding our feature selection offerings to help solve key AI/ML workstreams, enabling access to our Advantage system in new countries including Israel, and adopting new processes and compliance measures to reinforce our commercial-readiness. In addition, we’re building upon our cash position by pursuing a variety of financing options to increase our access to capital and enable us to execute on the growth opportunities ahead.”
