Alice&Bob, a French quantum computing start-up, is having a busy week, claiming to have surpassed error-correction records established by Google and Amazon, while also announcing new funding of almost $30 million.
The Paris-based company is using superconducting cat qubits (named for quantum computing’s official mascot, and explored in research by Yale University and others) to build a fault tolerant quantum computer. The notion of a fault tolerant quantum computer has been thought to be a decade away, but numerous recent advances in error correction announced by many companies are making it seem like we should revise that forecast.
In a recently published paper, Alice&Bob claimed to have created qubits that can resist a specific type of common quantum computing error called bit-flips. Bit-flip errors, along with phas-flip errors represent a big reason why qubits usually have a useful life measured only in nanoseconds or milliseconds. Companies working in this area often taking a quantitative approach–building up as many qubits as possible to make up for their short life-span.
Alice&Bob instead focused on creating higher-quality cat qubits that eliminate errors by design, and in doing so was able to increase resistance to bit-flip errors to almost two minutes, up from previous records of a few milliseconds established by none other than Amazon and Google, the start-up said.
“This result confirms our choice of superconducting cat qubits as the building block for our quantum computer. It also consolidates our roadmap, the next step being removing the phase-flip error,” said Alice&Bob founder Raphaël Lescanne.
If this finding can be translated to a commercial quantum computer, it could radically reduce the number of qubits required to tackle problems, the company said. To prove it, Alice&Bob may need more money, so it’s fortuitous but perhaps not coincidental that the firm this week said it completed its Series A fundraising round, securing EUR 27 million (about $29.7 million) to further advance its efforts to commercialize its technology. The round was led by existing investor Elaia, a venture capital firm; French investment bank Bpifrance, through its Digital Venture fund; and VC Supernova Invest. Existing investor Breega also participated.
In other quantum news this week, check out our recent story on quantum gravity gradiometry.
Elsewhere, QuantWare said it can build customers a 25-qubit quantum processing unit in 30 days, according to a TechCrunch report. That’s one way to get started quickly with quantum.
Meanwhile, Rigetti, which earlier this month became the latest publicly-traded quantum computing company, announced financial results that included 48% year-over-year revenue growth.
Finally, another small Paris-based quantum firm made big news: Pasqal partnered with Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil producer.