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FROM THE EDITOR.

It’s the tail end of summer — I know, I’m bumming you out — and the quantum news flow has eased into a light rhythm, like calm ocean waves sloshing onto the shore during the last days of an August holiday. But don’t get lulled into sleeping on this market. Even in a quiet week, you have to really pay attention. There are signals worth noting.

Here are some signals I’m seeing. The Financial Times reports that IBM and Google are still publicly aiming for industrial-scale quantum computers before 2030 — an ambitious goal given the gulf between today’s prototypes and million-qubit systems. These are two corporate giants and two leaders in quantum that aren’t prone to excessive hype. Scalability, complexity and cost still loom large once you try to scale beyond lab conditions, but the confidence is telling.

The situation these teams are facing — caught between the boldness of vision and the grind of execution — is a familiar one in deep tech. It’s also where timelines tend to stretch. The debate on quantum may be past its “if” moment and the “when” may still up for debate, but the teams seem focused and confident. (More on this below.)

Meanwhile, the investment side of the sector, Quantinuum, whose name popped up in a few news stories this week, is sending its own signals. Serendipity Capital reported a 31.6% jump in net asset value per share in the first half of 2025, crediting much of that to Quantinuum’s performance. The firm highlighted gains in computational power and error correction, as well as mentioning Quantinuum’s global reach and some of its recent monster deals.

Keep your eyes on Quantinuum. It’s a force to be reckoned with in the quantum industry.

To connect all of these signals to the bigger picture, these are like threads that tie together what might be a full-fledge narrative: the industry is inching closer to scale, investors are already picking their bets, and the timelines — whether five years or thirty — will shape who emerges as quantum’s first real market leaders.

Have a great weekend!

— Matt, Chief Content Officer at The Quantum Insider

INSIDER BRIEF.

• Quantum Race in the Final Stretch?

• China’s Record-Breaking Array

• Quantum Reservoir Computing For Drug Discovery

• Quantinuum Driver

• Germany's High-Tech Agenda

• Survey: High QEC Awareness, Low QEC Capabilities

• Quantum Advantages May be Beyond Imagination

• Xanadu and DISCO Collaborate

• Quanta Invests in Quantinuum

• Rigetti Reports Losses as Tech Progresses

• Quantum Computing Inc. Reports Steep Losses

• Quantum Memory Sounds Great

ANALYST NOTES.

The Noteworthy & Nuanced

Riverlane has released its 2025 Quantum Error Correction (QEC) survey, with participation from over 300 quantum professionals. The overwhelming majority agrees that QEC is essential to scaling quantum computing, yet there is a clear gap between awareness and capabilities. 96% expect to rely on external support - perhaps more would like to develop the tech in-house, but 41% cite limited training as the main barrier, followed by a lack of best practices or clear guidelines (28%) and difficulties securing resources (28%). Official Riverlane Blog

Quantinuum continues its streak of breakthroughs, this time fueling a 31.6% rise in net asset value per share in H1 2025 for Serendipity Capital. Earlier Quantinuum secured selection for DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, launched a $1B joint venture with Al Rabban Capital, and achieved key computational and error-correction milestones. Serendipity is outperforming broader venture capital sector benchmarks, and has expanded its leadership team in order to continue riding the growth wave. — Alan Kanapin, Analyst at The Quantum Insider

The Research Rundown

Check out this week’s handpicked quantum research. These are studies headed for real-world impact: improving accuracy, reducing latency, using fewer resources, or solving problems that classical methods struggle with. These are early developments, but they hint at where quantum might earn its keep.

• Researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology, Waseda University, and Fujitsu developed a hybrid quantum–classical approach to solve inverse kinematics for robotic arms by encoding joint postures as qubits and using quantum circuits for forward kinematics.

• Researchers from Moth Quantum investigate how fault-tolerant quantum computers could enhance procedural content generation in games by mapping classical PCG techniques to quantum algorithms. They propose a proof-of-concept game, Knotty Jones, which uses a quantum algorithm to compute the Jones polynomial exponentially faster than classical methods.

• Researchers from the Latin-American Quantum Computing Center and the University of Surrey developed a purely quantum neural network to forecast short-term wind speeds using meteorological data from Brazil. Their QNN performed competitively across different locations and altitudes, showing strong generalization even on unseen data, and suggesting that QNNs could be a more sustainable alternative to traditional AI models by reducing training complexity and energy use.
  
  — Cierra Choucair, Journalist & Analyst at The Quantum Insider

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INSIDER SPOTLIGHT: Leaders Say Quantum Computing Race Enters Final Stretch, But Scaling Challenges Still Loom

➡️ IBM and Google have both set targets to deliver industrial-scale quantum computers before 2030, shifting the race from theory to engineering execution.
➡️ Scaling from sub-200 qubit prototypes to million-qubit machines faces persistent hurdles in stability, interference, manufacturing, and error correction.
➡️ Diverging error-correction strategies, competing qubit technologies, and cost pressures are likely to narrow the field to well-funded or government-backed contenders.

Analyst Commentary

The long-theoretical race for a practical quantum computer has entered a new phase — it’s now less about proving the physics, more about proving the engineering, according to a recent report in the Financial Times. IBM and Google are betting they can reach the practical quantum computing phase before the decade closes, a target that just a few years ago would have sounded like hype. Now, I’m not so sure it’s hype, but an achievement that is becoming more and more reachable

The move from fewer than 200 qubits today to millions is not just a matter of adding parts. Qubits remain fragile, short-lived and prone to interference. Past efforts have buckled under scaling stress — IBM’s 433-qubit Condor chip saw significant crosstalk, according to the FT report, while other vendors have warned that today’s superconducting designs hit unpredictable limits at scale. Solving these problems requires not only technical advances but also radical changes to how quantum machines are built, cooled, and interconnected.

Error correction has emerged as the clearest dividing line in this effort to commercialize quantum. Google is committed to surface code, which scales well in theory but demands millions of physical qubits to be useful. IBM favors low-density parity-check codes, which could slash qubit requirements by 90%, but hinge on achieving long-range connections — a non-trivial challenge in superconducting systems. These design bets carry strategic consequences: the winner’s approach could set industry standards for a generation.

The choice of qubit type — from superconducting to trapped ions, neutral atoms, photons, and more exotic designs — may ultimately decide who scales fastest. While IBM and Google are pushing their current technologies, rivals like Microsoft are exploring qubits built from exotic states of matter, aiming to leapfrog the incumbents. But with high capital costs and daunting manufacturing complexity, analysts expect the field to consolidate around a handful of well-funded players or those with deep government backing.

The stakes remain enormous. A large-scale quantum computer could unlock new materials, accelerate AI, optimize global supply chains, and break today’s encryption. That potential continues to draw heavy private and public investment, even with timelines measured in years — or decades, depending on who you ask. If IBM and Google are right, the 2030s could begin with the first truly industrial quantum machines. If the more cautious view proves correct, the race may stretch well beyond a generation.

Either way, the sprint is on — and for the first time, the finish line feels visible, if still distant.

DATA SPOTLIGHT.

PacketLight Networks and NEC demonstrated quantum key distribution over a 400G dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) network using a dual-fiber setup. They integrated NEC’s QKD system with PacketLight’s PL-4000M 600G Muxponder, achieving 100% data throughput and low latency, verified via a 100GbE tester. The QKD ran over a dedicated parallel fiber, maintaining quantum signal integrity. The result: a cost-effective, scalable quantum-safe model with zero performance tradeoffs on existing high-capacity infrastructure.

INDUSTRY HIGHLIGHTS.

🇩🇪 Germany’s upcoming High-Tech Agenda, launching in autumn 2025, names quantum technologies as one of six priority sectors (alongside AI, microelectronics, biotechnology, fusion energy, and climate-neutral mobility) to boost economic competitiveness, secure supply chains, and accelerate commercialization.

👩‍💻 NVIDIA’s CUDA-QX 0.4 update expands its quantum error correction platform with GPU-accelerated decoders, automated detector error model generation, and a generative AI-powered quantum eigensolver, streamlining the design-to-deployment workflow for error-correcting codes.

🔒️ The Quantum-Safe 360 Alliance (Keyfactor, IBM Consulting, Thales, and Quantinuum) released its first white paper offering a roadmap, best practices, and case studies to guide organizations in transitioning to post-quantum cryptography.

☁️ KDDI will lead a NEDO-funded project to build an AI-quantum common platform by 2027, combining AI with multiple quantum hardware types to enable intuitive, cloud-based use without specialized expertise.

💸 Quanta Computer will invest about $50 million in Quantinuum, acquiring 0.49% ownership through 1.87 million Series B preferred shares valued at $26.77 each. The move aligns with Quanta’s long-term advanced computing strategy and expands its presence in emerging quantum technologies.

🖋️ ITTI has signed an exclusive deal to distribute SignQuantum’s quantum-resistant e-signature technology across Latin America, targeting banks, insurers, and public sector clients. The self-hosted add-on uses NIST-recommended post-quantum algorithms and QANplatform’s blockchain for immutable time-stamping.

🤝 Xanadu and DISCO Corporation are partnering to develop advanced wafer processing methods to produce ultra-low loss photonic integrated chips. The collaboration is intended to reduce optical losses and streamline photonic chip manufacturing.

🖥️ Oxford Ionics has delivered its QUARTET trapped-ion quantum computer to the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre, where it will support commercial use case development under the NQCC’s testbed programme.

🚀 MOTH has launched Space Moths, a first-of-its-kind massively multiplayer online game where levels are generated on-demand by live quantum computers, debuting at Gamescom 2025. Built with Onward Studios for Roblox, the game showcases MOTH’s generative quantum AI and represents a milestone in bringing quantum technology into real-world entertainment.

❓️ Quantum Computing Inc. reported a Q2 net loss of $36.5 million due to rising costs and a $28 million non-cash warrant charge, while revenue dropped to $61,000.

📦️ Amazon Web Services has launched “program sets” on its Braket quantum platform, enabling users to batch up to 100 circuits into a single task, effectively cutting execution times by up to 24x and reducing costs by minimizing per-circuit overhead.

🔉 In this week’s Quantum Economy Podcast, Anders Indset speaks with Simone Severini, Distinguished Engineer at Google and former AWS quantum lead, about the role of quantum computers as instruments of discovery. Severini emphasizes that the near-term focus should be on advancing architectures and error correction, which he identifies as the field’s central challenge.

EVENTS.

Aug. 31– Sept. 5 -- IEEE Quantum Week 2025 will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Sept. 16-18 -- Quantum World Congress 2025 will be held at Capital One Hall in Greater Washington. The event is a chance for the world’s quantum ecosystem to come together and bring a quantum-ready future into focus.

Sept. 24-25 -- Q2B25 Paris at Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris, France.

Sept. 29-Oct. 1 -- Quantum.Tech Europe is taking place in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The event will bring together the whole quantum supply chain to drive forward the commercial applications of Quantum Technologies.

Oct. 6-10 -- 8th International Conference for Young Quantum Information Scientists (YQIS25) will take place in Barcelona, Spain. YQIS is a conference series organized by and for PhD students and early-career researchers working across the broad field of quantum information.

Oct. 8 -- The Fifth Anniversary of The City Quantum & AI Summit will take place at the Mansion House in the City of London this year with the subtitle Race for Growth.

Oct. 8 -- The Quantum Insider, in partnership with the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County and Quantum Coast Capital, will host Quantum Beach 2025, an officially recognized event of the International Year of Quantum (IYQ2025). Register here.

Oct. 13-17 -- Quantum Reference Frames 2025 will bring together leading experts on quantum reference frames and the many related subjects in the first focused event in the new era of quantum frame covariance. QRF 2025 is co-funded by the Quantum Information Structure of Spacetime consortium.

Oct. 19-21 -- Q+AI will be held in New York City. This event will uncover the coming wave of Quantum + AI, include 50+ speakers, daily mentoring sessions and 16 sessions, one continuous track.

Nov. 10-12 -- European Quantum Technologies Conference 2025 will be held at Øksnehallen, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Dec. 1-4 -- QUEST-IS 2025 Quantum Engineering Sciences and Technologies for Industry and Services From Quantum Engineering to Applications for Citizens. EDF Lab, Paris-Saclay, France.