From The Register, January 16:
Banking giant believes Quantinuum key to optimizing investment portfolios
The wave of generative AI may have captured the world's attention, but that hasn't stopped the flow of capital into quantum computing as JPMorgan Chase and others plow more cash into the emerging tech.
The banking giant, along with Mitsui & Co. and Amgen injected $300 million into Honeywell-backed quantum computing startup Quantinuum to accelerate development of a "universal fault-tolerant quantum computer" and the requisite software to commercialize such a machine.
Launched in late 2021, Quantinuum has already raised $625 million, and with this latest cash infusion, the company's valuation now tops $5 billion.
The upstart is the result of a merger between Cambridge Quantum and Honeywell Quantum Solutions. Since then Quantinuum has gone on to develop the H-series of trapped-ion quantum computers.
This particular breed of quantum systems utilizes electromagnetic fields to suspend charged particles in free space. Qubits — the base unit of compute for these quantum systems — are then stored in the electronic state of each ion while operations are performed using lasers.
Quantinuum's H1 system can wrangle up to 20 trapped ion qubits. While that might not sound like a lot next to competing systems like IBM's 433 qubit Osprey system, more doesn't always translate into higher performance or greater capability. We're told factors like decoherence and the quality of the qubits themselves often plays a bigger role than quantity.
JPMorgan Chase was an early customer of Quantinuum and its predecessors quantum systems, including its H-series systems, going back to 2020.
"Financial services has been identified as one of the first industries that will benefit from quantum technologies," said Lori Beer, global CIO for JPMorgan Chase, in a statement....
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