Insider Brief
- IonQ and D-Wave have joined as founding members of Q-Alliance, a new initiative in Lombardy aimed at creating one of the world’s leading quantum hubs.
- The alliance, backed by the Italian government, seeks to accelerate quantum research, industrial adoption, and workforce development through an open and collaborative framework.
- Combining D-Wave’s annealing systems and IonQ’s trapped-ion technology, Q-Alliance will support both near-term applications and long-term quantum computing research.
IonQ and D-Wave, two publicly traded U.S. quantum computing companies, are joining as founding members of Q-Alliance, a new initiative in Lombardy described by organizers as the foundation of “the world’s most powerful quantum hub.”
The alliance, formalized in Como with a memorandum of understanding, is designed to accelerate quantum research and industrial applications as part of Italy’s broader digital transformation agenda, according to a news release. It is backed by the Italian government’s Interministerial Committee for Digital Transition and supported by Undersecretary of State Senator Alessio Butti.
Q-Alliance will serve as an open platform connecting universities, research institutions, and private industry. The program aims to train young researchers through scholarships and internships, promote collaboration across scientific disciplines, and position Italy as a European center for quantum development.
D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz said the company’s quantum annealing systems — already in commercial use for optimization problems — will support immediate application development within the alliance.
“This is a historic moment for Italy and for the quantum industry. Q-Alliance supports Italy’s mission to become a global epicenter of quantum leadership, accelerating breakthrough research, industrial innovation and the development of a quantum-ready workforce,” Baratz said in the release. “D-Wave is the only company in the world building both annealing and gate quantum computing technology. It is also the first company to commercialize quantum computing, with customers around the world using our technology today to run business operations and address highly complex computational problems. We believe D-Wave’s production-grade annealing quantum computing technology will serve as a critical component of the Q-Alliance, fueling quantum application development and adoption now.”
D-Wave, listed on the NYSE under ticker QBTS, is also developing a gate-model system to complement its annealing technology.
IonQ, traded on Nasdaq as IONQ, brings its trapped-ion quantum systems to the partnership, which the company has positioned as a key technology for building scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computers. The collaboration between D-Wave and IonQ gives the alliance a cross-architecture foundation spanning both annealing and gate-based approaches.
Italian officials described Q-Alliance as a strategic investment in digital sovereignty and innovation capacity. The initiative’s open framework is intended to balance government participation with private-sector leadership and international scientific cooperation.
