Alice & Bob And Research Partners Granted €16.5 Million In Public Funding To Make Quantum Computing 10 Times Cheaper - Inside Quantum Technology

Alice & Bob partners with other researchers for a €16.5 million grant in public funding to make quantum computing 10 times cheaper

By Kenna Hughes-Castleberry posted 26 Mar 2024

Alice & Bob, a leader in developing fault-tolerant quantum computers, alongside academic partners ENS de Lyon and Mines Paris – PSL, has announced a significant boost in their quest with a €16.5 million innovation grant from the France 2030 initiative, supported by Bpifrance. This grant underlines the French government’s support, specifically from Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s office, placing Alice & Bob at the helm of a crucial 36-month project aimed at expediting the development of quantum computing by improving efficiency, reducing costs and speeding up market readiness. Theau Peronnin, CEO of Alice & Bob, expressed the company’s honor in being trusted with the mission to advance quantum computing’s practical application, focusing on cat qubits to overcome the industry’s major hurdles, including energy and cost savings for end-users.

The funding is set to support the “Cat Factory” project, an ambitious endeavor to address the complex challenges of quantum computing across various sectors, including nanofabrication, chip design, and electronic control. By optimizing quantum computation from its design to its infrastructure, Alice & Bob aims to drastically reduce construction costs and time to market for quantum computers, promising a tenfold decrease in building costs and a three-year advancement in market readiness. The “Cat Factory” project targets not only the enhancement of quantum computer architecture but also the infrastructure of the enabling technologies to achieve 100 logical qubits operation using only 3 cryostats, thereby significantly reducing the hardware requirements for running an effective quantum computer.

The cat qubit is critical to the project’s objectives, a novel innovation that dramatically lowers the number of physical qubits needed to construct a logical qubit by a factor of 60. This reduction is pivotal in overcoming one of quantum computing’s significant barriers: managing and controlling large qubit arrays. Florent Di Meglio of Mines Paris – PSL highlighted the project’s ambition to streamline the hardware needs for quantum computing, which aligns with Alice & Bob’s strategic focus on fault tolerance and efficiency.

Bpifrance and the French government’s support for Alice & Bob reflects a strong commitment to fostering disruptive innovation and maintaining France’s competitive edge in quantum computing. Paul-François Fournier of Bpifrance and Bruno Bonnell from the prime minister’s office expressed their enthusiasm for supporting Alice & Bob’s development, emphasizing the national strategy to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computing as a foundation for future technological advancements.

The collaboration among Alice & Bob, ENS de Lyon, and Mines Paris – PSL underscores the collective effort required to tackle the engineering challenges of quantum computing. Audrey Bienfait of ENS de Lyon remarked on the excitement and importance of this collaborative effort towards building a fault-tolerant quantum computer. The project’s focus section reveals ambitious goals for reducing control and readout lines per cat qubit and upgrading the Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) infrastructure. These optimizations are crucial to realizing an optimized architecture for fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2027, setting a global benchmark for innovation in the field.

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry is the Managing Editor at Inside Quantum Technology and the Science Communicator at JILA (a partnership between the University of Colorado Boulder and NIST). Her writing beats include deep tech, quantum computing, and AI. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, Scientific American, Discover Magazine, New Scientist, Ars Technica, and more.

Categories:
photonics, quantum computing, research

Tags:
Alice & Bob, cat qubits