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  • 🔵 The Quantum Insider Weekly | Nobel Efforts. Quantum Finance. And More News in Quantum.

🔵 The Quantum Insider Weekly | Nobel Efforts. Quantum Finance. And More News in Quantum.

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FROM THE EDITOR.

t might not have been an especially explosive week in quantum—no billion-dollar funding rounds or nine-figure government infusions (that we lately might have become a little too accustomed to)—but it was a reaffirming one.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics to three scientists whose work rests right at the center of everything happening in quantum technology today: John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis. Their experiments in the 1980s showed that quantum phenomena like tunneling and discrete energy levels don’t just belong to the microscopic world of single particles—they can emerge in large electrical systems too.

That insight may sound almost philosophical now, but it cracked open the door to a technological revolution. The realization that billions of electrons could move together as a single quantum entity laid the groundwork for today’s superconducting qubits—the same kind found in quantum computers developed by Google, IBM, and others.

The timing of the prize feels particularly auspicious for me. It arrives during the International Year of Quantum Science, exactly a century after the first explorations of the theory that continues to reshape how we think about reality. And unlike many Nobel recipients who see the honor as the natural conclusion of a long career, Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis remain active, visible and deeply engaged with the next chapter of the field.

It’s also worth noting what this prize represents something beyond the laureates themselves. In an industry that sometimes feels defined by hype cycles and funding announcements, the Nobel serves as a reminder of the quiet, patient science that made all this possible. Fundamental research. Every superconducting chip, every qubit calibration, every noisy measurement pushing the edge of coherence—these are living echoes of the work recognized this week.

We’ll go a little more deeper into this Nobel prize-winning work and its implications below, but even if this wasn’t the kind of week filled with splashy investments, it was one that grounded the quantum community in its roots. The Nobel Prize didn’t just honor three scientists—it honored a way of thinking that continues to power our progress, one quantized step at a time.

Have a great weekend!

— Matt, Chief Content Officer at The Quantum Insider

INSIDER BRIEF.

ANALYST NOTES.

The Noteworthy & Nuanced

Alice & Bob are no longer just 2 people! The company is planning to hire 100 new employees by mid 2026, nearly doubling its current 150-person team. Backed by a €100M Series B round and a $50M Paris quantum lab, the company will add 90 technical roles across physics, error correction, firmware, and software, alongside 10 business positions.

Diamonds are now even more captivating! Researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Humboldt University in Berlin have developed a method to capture up to 80% of photons from NV centers in diamonds. By embedding nanodiamonds into hybrid nanoantennas and precisely positioning them, the team directed photon emission instead of scattering.

This opening sentence also has an exclamation point! Delft Circuits has published a roadmap showing how its Cri/oFlex cables can overcome quantum computing’s connectivity bottleneck and scale systems to thousands of qubits. Offering up to 8x greater channel density than coaxial systems today (targeting 32x within 18 months), the technology also improves cryogenic reliability and performance. By 2029, Cri/oFlex aims to scale from 256 to 4,096 channels per loader. — 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.

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➡️ The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for proving that quantum phenomena like tunneling and energy quantization can occur at macroscopic scales.

➡️ Their 1980s experiments with superconducting circuits demonstrated that systems containing billions of electrons could behave as a single quantum entity — bridging the gap between quantum and classical physics.

➡️ The laureates’ work laid the foundation for superconducting qubits, which power modern quantum computers at Google, IBM, and other companies.

➡️ Devoret serves as Chief Scientist at Google Quantum AI, Martinis co-founded quantum startup Qolab, and Clarke continues research at UC Berkeley — showing that their influence on quantum technology is ongoing.

➡️ The award arrives during the International Year of Quantum Science, reaffirming that quantum research is not an abstraction but the engine of modern innovation.

Analyst Commentary

A century after quantum mechanics first upended classical physics, the 2025 laureates — John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis — are being honored for work that proved quantum rules do not stop at the atomic level. Their discovery of macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantization confirmed that the strange, probabilistic nature of the quantum world could extend into circuits built by human hands.

It’s a reminder, especially for those who see quantum technology, which can seem speculative or far-off, that today’s quantum computers stand on decades of hard-won experimental evidence. While lots of people think that quantum is the next new shiny thing, the award reinforces that the quantum revolution is not hype — it’s the continuation of a long scientific arc.

Proving Quantum Mechanics Beyond the Microscopic

To lay a little history on you… The Nobel committee pointed out in its announcement that in 1984 and 1985, the trio constructed a superconducting circuit separated by a Josephson junction — a thin insulating barrier that allows quantum effects to emerge. When cooled to near absolute zero, their device didn’t behave like a normal electrical circuit. Instead, it exhibited energy jumps in discrete levels and even “tunneled” between states, mirroring how particles pass through barriers in the quantum realm.

These results marked the first time quantum effects had been directly measured in an engineered macroscopic system. They not only confirmed the predictions of quantum theory but also proved that collective electron systems could act as a single quantum object. This was the birth of macroscopic quantum coherence — the foundation of all superconducting qubit designs in use today.

From Theory to Technology

The Nobel Committee cited the laureates for showing that macroscopic systems can maintain quantum coherence, enabling technologies that depend on long-lived quantum states. What was once a purely academic pursuit now powers the most advanced quantum processors on earth.

Their discoveries directly shaped the superconducting qubit architectures used by IBM and Google. John Martinis, in particular, led the Google team that achieved so-called “quantum supremacy” in 2019 — a symbolic milestone showing a quantum computer outperforming a classical one on a specific task. Devoret, meanwhile, continues his work as Chief Scientist at Google Quantum AI, while Clarke remains active at Berkeley advancing quantum sensing and measurement science.

That these researchers are still contributing underscores how quickly fundamental physics can turn into applied technology when the right ecosystem — of theory, experiment, and engineering — aligns.

Bridging the Quantum-Classical Divide

Perhaps the most profound legacy of the trio’s work is philosophical. By demonstrating that macroscopic systems can exhibit quantum behavior, they challenged one of physics’ deepest assumptions: that there exists a strict boundary between the quantum and classical worlds. Their results showed that the divide is not absolute but conditional — determined by materials, temperature, and the precision of control.

That insight has rippled across disciplines and it forms a foundation of where we are today in the industry. It informs quantum annealing, quantum sensors that measure gravitational and magnetic signals, and the superconducting circuits at the heart of today’s most advanced processors. It also reframes how we think about the world — as a continuum where classical reality is simply quantum mechanics viewed at scale.

We celebrate this year’s Nobel and the three scientists it honors. The award recognizes the continuity of quantum progress — a century-long relay from the founders of quantum mechanics to today’s architects of quantum technology. And it recognizes the promise that quantum will continue to contribute to science, society and commerce for centuries to come.

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.

💡 Infleqtion partnered with Silicon Light Machines to integrate its MEMS Displacement Phase Modulator into neutral-atom quantum computers, with an end goal to boost qubit control speed, fidelity, and scalability.

IonQ announced a $2 billion equity offering led by J.P. Morgan, selling common stock and warrants to an entity managed by Heights Capital Management at up to a 100% premium over market price. The investment was described as the largest single-institution equity deal in the quantum industry.

The Florida Opportunity Fund and Quantum Coast Capital signed an MOU to co-invest in quantum technology companies across computing, networking, and sensing, aiming to grow Florida’s quantum ecosystem.

BTQ Technologies partnered with the University of Cambridge to fund research on inverse-designed quantum photonic devices that enhance quantum computing and secure communications.

Stockholm-based FirstQFM AB raised €1.2 million in pre-seed funding led by BSV Ventures to advance its AI foundation models that boost quantum hardware performance and reliability.

French quantum firm Pasqal will invest over $65 million to build its U.S. headquarters at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago, creating at least 50 jobs and benefiting from roughly $21 million in state incentives and loans.

Quantum Brilliance’s room-temperature diamond cluster system, Quoll, was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025 for making quantum computing more accessible and sustainable.

Q-CTRL’s Ironstone Opal quantum navigation system was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025 for delivering GPS-free navigation accurate to within 4 meters over 700 km of flight.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and the Executive Office of Economic Development awarded UMass Boston $3.8 million to expand the state’s leadership in quantum computing, sensing, communication, and cryptography.

ServiceNow’s Quantum Readiness Innovation Brief argues that enterprises must start migrating to quantum-safe systems now. It outlines pillars for preparation (including leadership, centers of excellence, workforce literacy, and strategic roadmapping) noting that major firms are already piloting quantum use cases.

IBM introduced Guardium Cryptography Manager, an AI-powered encryption management system that helps enterprises prepare for security risks from future quantum computers.

Aqora launched a public quantum datasets hub, creating a central platform for researchers to upload, share, and explore quantum-specific datasets.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 940, directing GO-Biz to develop the state’s first quantum technology strategy by July 1, 2026 as part of the California Jobs First Economic Blueprint. The law designates quantum as a top strategic priority, backed by $4 million in new funding.

A Federal Reserve study warns that future quantum computers could decrypt Bitcoin’s historical transactions, exposing private data secured by current encryption standards. The report concludes that while post-quantum cryptography can protect future transactions, no existing method can retroactively secure data already stored on public ledgers like Bitcoin.

Quantum Computing Inc. announced an oversubscribed $750 million private placement of 37.2 million shares to fund commercialization, acquisitions, and production expansion.

The International Quantum Course, launched at ITU’s AI for Good Summit in Geneva, offers a free multilingual online introduction to quantum mechanics, technologies, and applications.

EVENTS.

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.

Nov. 12-14 -- Quantum Machines, the leading provider of advanced hybrid quantum-classical control solutions, will host AQC25, the second Adaptive Quantum Circuits Conference.

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.

Dec. 9-11 -- Q2B 2025 Silicon Valley Q2B is back for the eighth year in a row, connecting the international quantum community computing ecosystems. The event will feature top academics, industry end users, government representatives and quantum computing vendors from all over the world.

Dec. 17-18 -- Science Diplomacy - Bridging divides in a fragmented world will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference explores how science diplomacy can bridge divides and promote innovation, competitiveness, and international cooperation.

January 27 and 28, 2026 -- Qubits 2026 D-Wave is bringing its annual user conference, Qubits, to Boca Raton, Florida. The event will be held at The Boca Raton resort.

April 27-30 -- The Quantum Matter International Conference & Expo (QUANTUMatter2026) will take place at the Barceló Sants Hotel in Barcelona. The conference to foster the incubation of new ideas & collaborations at the forefront of quantum technologies, emerging quantum materials and novel generations of quantum communication protocols, quantum sensing and quantum simulation.