Executive Summary: May 2023
For quantum computing to become part of the computational approaches to real world problems, it must be trusted. That will require benchmarking. This month, France demonstrated its leadership and commitment into making quantum benchmarking real and reliable. The nation also continues to build international collaborations and partnerships in deep tech areas, including quantum technologies. Quantonation, a pioneer in startup funding for the quantum ecosystem, announced that it led VeriQloud’s funding round. It also demonstrated France leadership in quantum startup funding.
Policy
Canada, France to Collaborate on AI, Quantum Science as Part of New Joint Committee on Innovation
The governments of Canada and France have created a joint committee meant to expand collaboration between the two countries on science and technology research. In its first meeting held this week, the group decided on quantum science and artificial intelligence (AI) as its first priority research area. We also see French businesses continuing to release innovative quantum-based products to make quantum more useful for everyday computational challenges.
Capital
Quantonation Leads VeriQloud’s €1.9 Million Funding Round
VeriQloud announced the successful completion of its latest funding round. The company has raised €1.9 million in an investment round led by Quantonation, the leading investment fund in quantum technologies.
Business
Eviden Launches Qaptiva, a Quantum Application Development Platform
Eviden, the Atos business leading in digital, cloud, big data and security, launched Qaptiva, its new Quantum Computing offering to enable real world application development and usage, using best-of-breed quantum computing technologies.
France Invests in Quantum Ecosystem: Q2B 2023 Paris
Delivering the keynote, executive director at French public sector investment bank Bpifrance Pascal Lagarde emphasized why quantum investment is big news.
“We are on the forefront of the development of deep tech entrepreneurship, which has a continuum of financing from a very early stage tech transfer to mature companies, and quantum technology for us is deep tech technology,” he said. “The ecosystem, the creativity and innovation in quantum technology in France are very strong compared to the rest of Europe. For example, the first funds to exclusively target quantum technology were launched in France in 2018.”
Quantum Computing has the potential to be revolutionary in many computation-heavy area’s: ranging from drug discovery to financial applications. The reason? Higher accuracy and faster computation times. However, one question is often neglected: at which cost? We’ve seen that supercomputers and data centres can consume an enormous amount of energy. Will quantum computers be the next energy-thirsty technology, or are they instead the gateway to a green computing era?
Research
With the support of the national program on measurements, standards, and evaluation of quantum technologies MetriQs-France, a part of the French national quantum strategy, the BACQ project is dedicated to application-oriented benchmarks for quantum computing. The consortium gathering Thales, Eviden, an Atos business, CEA, CNRS, Teratec, and LNE aims at establishing performance evaluation criteria of reference, meaningful for industry users.
Eviden, ColibrITD and ONERA Join Forces to Build the First Hybrid Quantum Combustion Platform
Eviden, an Atos business, ColibrITD and ONERA today announce the launch of VulQain, a research project, funded by the French Defense Innovation Agency, to build the first end-to-end hybrid platform to address the phenomenon of combustion and its challenges, including its complexity and non-linearity. By integrating Eviden’s quantum computer emulator and ColibrITD’s quantum software on ONERA’s classical simulation platform, the project team aims to reduce carbon emissions, lower the energy footprint of high-performance computing (HPC) centers and help develop safer engines and turbines in the future.
Eviden Simplifies Supercomputing Federation with New JARVICE XE Software Module
Eviden, the Atos business leading in advanced computing, today announces a new software module, Federation Pack, to accelerate organizations’ abilities to connect and federate HPC clusters and Supercomputers around the world.
Quantum Fluids of Light Come into Sharper View
Experiments probing quasiparticles in semiconductor microcavities offer unprecedented insights into the dynamics of quantum fluids of light.
Physics Nobel Prize Winner Alain Aspect Talks Quantum Computing
Alain Aspect is a French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022 for his groundbreaking work in the field of quantum mechanics, in particular for his pioneering research into the properties of entangled particles. Aspect’s investigations illuminate quantum physics’ strangest features. His 1982 Bell’s inequalities experiment with entangled photons helped settle the 1935 Einstein-Bohr controversy. He and his former Ph.D. student, French physicist Philippe Grangier, then demonstrated wave-particle duality for a single photon. Aspect discussed his career and his insights into quantum computing in an interview with EE Times.
Education and Events
Overview of Upcoming Application-oriented Benchmarks for Quantum Computing in France and Abroad
A one- day seminar was held to review the approach supported by France’s National Quantum Strategy towards such a reliable and objective benchmarking tool will be presented and similar international initiatives will be highlighted.
Teratec Forum 2023: Addressing Challenges and Opportunities in HPC, AI, and Quantum Computing
The 2023 Teratec Forum was held May 31 and June 1 at the Parc Floral de Paris. This premier event united top experts and organizations in the fields of simulation, HPC/HPDA, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing among major French and European manufacturers.
For more market insights, check out our latest quantum computing news here.
