Quantum Tech today is the "Alligator Closest to the Canoe"

What on earth is a "laser milking machine?"

Commercializing Quantum Global brings together more than 700 global participants from Industry, Science, Government, Education, Technology, Investment and Finance worlds for the 3rd annual edition of the event hosted by The Economist this week in London.

The conference had excellent participation despite being run on the same days as the Massive INFOSEC (Information Security) cybersecurity conference being held in parallel in the City.

Being a conference hosted by the Economist, the event kicked off with some very interesting numbers and related facts:

• The UK Photonics industry generates returns of more than £89K per employee per annum, and the same number of people work in photonics as Aerospace which are more than double the pharmaceutical industry.
• Energy is by far the biggest challenge and will continue to be so for the forseeable future
• Seagate in Northern Ireland and Project Silca (Microsoft) are storing data for up to 1 Billion Years
• Photonic Processing (for example Tensor Calculations) could be a £50 Billion industry by 2035 and generate 100K direct jobs.

And Back to the "laser milking machine for cows" which actually does exist. Robots align to the cow with lasers, and the cows learn to milk themselves. Not only does this lower the stress level for cows, the cows increase the quality of yield thanks to this technology which is driven by photonics.

What has changed

The most remarkable change in the conference this year is a confirmation that technologies have moved from experimental stages and now are much closer to production. Psiquantum presented their 2027 Brisbane Australia Quantum Supercomputer which is in production now and features a hybrid Analogue/Digital System.

Discussion on government involvement was also emphasized including discussion with Naftali Bennet of Quantum Source and Jason Palmer of the Economist with the summary that governments need to:

• Make investment into the Quantum industry easy
• Map out the ecosystems
• Create the Infrastructure
• Prepare people in advance for Quantum Advantage
• Practice Radical Generosity
• Participate in Public/Private partnerships

"You Have to Take Big Audacious Bets"

Quantum leaders today including Australia, the UK, and the USA are practicing being Right, Ready, and Early, and there promises to be a huge competitive advantage for early movers. Government investment is necessary as the scope and scale of investments are so huge. A standing room only keynote with Sir Peter Knight (UKRI) explained how the UK government is investing £2.5 Billion on five distinct Quantum Missions.

Countries including Austria and Denmark also presented their Quantum Strategies and particularly impressive is the Copenhagen Quantum Valley which is encouraging global organizations to invest in and develop Quantum technologies together with organizations including Novo Nordisk.

Building a Quantum Computer is Hard

While the progress attained in developing the technology is impressive, all of the stakeholders involved admitted there are an extremely difficult scientific series of accomplishments required for success. A myriad of approaches and different technologies are being tested, and issues to maximize performance include building machines capable of ever greater numbers of Qbits while error correction at scale and speed is still a significant challenge.

What can you do to prepare your firm and industry for Quantum?

1. Be Clear on what Quantum Is and Is Not
2. Open up the path for your users to begin experimenting with Quantum use cases where appropriate
3. Question what this will mean to your industry in 2,3, and 5 years at both board and management levels as well as with practitioners.

What is Quantum?

Industry experts often mean several different things when discussion Quantum technology, and it is important to understand which of the 5-6 technologies you are discussing. Quantum Sensors for example are having a big impact on science, and measurements and experiments are allowing us to understand the world at a much deeper level than ever before.

Forget about Quantum, Think about solving your customer problems

One important point that was stressed is to not emphasize Quantum necessarily, and rather to focus carefully on what your customer problems are and how you can build simple elegant solutions to solve them. Google Maps for example is based on Quantum technology, yet almost no one stresses this when understanding they want to use their handheld GPS.

A fascinating example of using Quantum Sensors involved a hospital in New York City, where invasive emergency surgical procedures related to testing for heart attacks have been replaced with an easy to use machine that requires less than 1 hour training for medical staff. The machine, designed with the input of the entire healthcare ecosystem enables medical professionals to now use Quantum sensors built into medical machinery to scan for heart attacks without any need at all for surgery which is an incredible advancement in quality of life for patients and a enormous cost and risk savings for hospitals.

This project which was presented by Kit Yee Au-Yeung of Sandbox AQ was super insightful:

Get out of the lab

The message emphasized to people working in the industry included

1. A well characterized customer Need is the DNA of a Great Invention and involves a concise description of the Problem, the Population impacted, and the Measurable Outcomes your target customers will receive.
2. Map the Ecosystem and Understand all the players needs
3. Cultivate Cross Functional Teams

One New AI Graphics Chip consumes the same amount of electricity as an American household

Did Someone say Sustainability? A recurring theme in all the panels and presentations were the needs to urgently address the amount of energy consumed in computing. Quantum may offer some advantages due to significant improvements in efficiency, however this will not be enough. All professionals involved in computing need to immediately begin to address Sustainability issues and take decisions that are both responsible and respectful to the environment. At the current rates of energy usage, AI alone will consume more energy than the entire nation of Germany by 2028 (so just 5 years from now.) This is a major issue.

One potential solution presented by Ian White of the University of Bath is how Photonics can improve both speed and energy efficiency long term.

Time as a Service

Did you know that people used to sell "Time as a Service?"

Not that long ago, enterprising young people would take a train out to Greenwich with the most precise clock at the time worldwide, set their watch aligned to Greenwich official time, and then head back into the City of London and "sell" the correct time to busy finance workers. Voila! The first Time as a Service offering was born.

Today we all take having the exact time as a given, and in fact technologies including our GPS systems and modern Power network infrastructure would fail in a matter of just hours if we were unable to precisely control the time.

Just last week, the jamming for example of GPS signals near Finland required two Finnair commercial jets to divert their flight paths as they were unable to get precise readings on their locations, a major security risk.

Time and Entanglement are related- Is time a derivative of Entanglement?

This was a complex question, and while I certainly do not have a clear idea of the answer, there was one point in this discussion that remains very clear:

QUANTUM UNLOCKS NEW BUSINESS MODELS

Consider just UBER and Google Maps as examples which without Quantum technology and highly accurate timekeeping would be impossible to deliver on.

Today there is an opportunity for 100X improvements in Time Discernment and this brings incredibly exciting opportunities for the future.

How will you participate?

There's an awful lot of Crap out There. Bust The Hype

This quote from Sir Peter Knight kicked off a very lively discussion on 2025 which has been declared by the United Nations "The International Year of Quantum."

Let us be very careful not to follow the "AI" bandwagon where hype is far far ahead of reality, and rather be sure to keep expectations clear and recognize not only the exciting advantages of Quantum and also the massive challenges and obstacles which are not yet overcome.

Novo Nordisk Quantum Mission

Lene B. Oddershede of the Novo Nordisk Foundation presented their Quantum Mission and stressed:

1. To Build an Ecosystem It's important to convince companies at the Top
2. This is a long journey and those who succeed will be competitive. Those who do not will not survive.
3. Collaboration is an essential part of the ecosystem.

One of the most interesting elements of the Ecosystem Novo Nordisk Foundation is participating in as part of their efforts is the creation of a Quantum Foundry where Pharmaceutical Industry expertise is being combined with Quantum technology experts and critically a legal and ethical framework is being developed to ensure technology is properly protected.

To Build an ecosystem you need Excitement

The national Quantum strategy of Denmark, the Quantum Investment Strategy of Novo Holdings, and investments of €200 million (Novo Holdings) and €200 Million (Danish Sovereign Fund) allocated to Quantum together with excitement from international partners make this a compelling development towards the future.

Nato Deep Tech Quantum Lab

NATO are involved in the Quantum Labs located in Denmark, and are focused on a Quantum Ready alliance for transatlantic security. Matija Matoković Deputy Head, Innovation Unit at NATO and an Academic at University of Cambridge presented on the Quantum ready alliance, and emphasized the importance of System Building Activities which include:

• Infrastructure
• Funding
• Availability
• Global Reach

Now it's time for IBM

IBM have for decades been a pioneer in Quantum, and this year at the conference Jay Gambetta presented a very exciting fact:

"IN THE HARDWARE ROADMAP THERE ARE NO OBSTACLES"

So exciting to so many in the audience was the notation that "QPUs are Exceeding Bruce Force Computing," marking a new era in the development of Quantum Technologies. Wow.

Projects presented included the University of Washington, and a fascinating use case by Moderna on "Predictions on Secondary Structures."

Jay also presented the IBM Quantum Strategy, and how they viewed the combination of QISKIT Functions Cataloges and moving from circuits to programming functions" combining QISKIT together QPUs.

Joint Ventures and Partnerships everywhere

During the conference a project together with Q-CTRL was presented with a 9X increased likelihood of success, and the colocation of an IBM Quantum Computer together with the Fugaku RIKEN Center for Computational Science was announced, as was an exciting new partnership with Pasqal (France.)

Analogy to Y2K- "It's too late already"

Post-Quantum Security

For those of you who are well versed in Quantum Security challenges, you can skip over this next paragraph. Here is the challenge:

A Quantum Computer has the capability to break RSA encryption, something that is very hard (thousands of years for a classic computer) and yet just seconds for a Quantum computer. What this implies is that many of the documents and data intended to be kept secret have already been "harvested" in the anticipation of being able to break the encryption codes and thus read formerly confidential information.

"A lot of this is about awareness"

One challenge in many organizations is that "Cryptographers sit in the basement and no one listens to them."

Ann Dunkin Chief Information Officer at the U.S. Department of Energy explained that in their organization it was the opposite, with the Cryptographers "sitting on the top floor, and the spooks are in the basement."

The main statement here was to "Stop the Bleeding right away" and understand where Quantum provides real risks to data safety and integrity.

Organizations including Google, Zoom, Meta, and i-message (Apple) are already moving to be post-quantum secure for example.

Q-Day is not yet confirmed

While the day where Quantum supremacy is not yet known everyone in the industry agrees it is a matter of when, not if, and the timelines now being discussed are very short (2,3,5,10 years for example.....)

So where is this actually being used?

Ilyas Khan of Quantinuum, Robert Bruckmeier of BMW Group, and Tom Standee at the Economist demonstrated in detail practical use cases where Quantum technologies are making a difference.

Starting with a reflection that in 2017 when Blue Yard held a major event in Munich as a tipping point for Quantum, the sentiment today has moved from "Why are you wasting your time with this?" to "Wow this is very important."

BMW have a joint effort together with Airbus leveraging Quantum Chemistry and Quantum Computers together with Classic super computers for example to understand chemical reactions of platinum and how to improve efficiency.

Lithium Ion Batteries are also being studied in detail for improved performance using similar approaches.

In automotive design, simultaneous optimization for airflows are being delivered at speed and with far greater efficiencies replacing wind tunnels with aerodynamic simulations. As Bruckmeier noted "this is the point we've all been waiting for" with 30K times for effectiveness energy wise in development.

What about LLMs and QC?

Actual acceleration in solving equations were explained using LLMs joined to Quantum Computers.

Keys for Success include:

1. Hardware Stack
2. Software Stack
3. Teams to implement with both Domain Expertise and Quantum Expertise

The conclusion?

"The Glass is Pretty Full."

Perhaps my favourite quote from the conference came from Ramy Shelbaya CEO and Co-Founder at the fascinating company Quantum Dice who noted "Accept what people are saying even when it's Wrong."

What does it mean?

Looking at spinoffs from universities, the panel including Quantum Dice, Orca, Qubits, IQ Capital, University of Waterloo/Keysight and moderated by Laura Foster at techUK was an awesome discussion entitled "I'm spinning around, move out of my way" explaining what it takes to go from university spin-out to scalable success.

Joseph Emerson of Waterloo/Keysight noted a very important and while somewhat obvious often overlooked point "Get Customers to Pay."

For those of you in deep tech (Quantum tech) looking for Venture Capital investors the message from both Nardo Manaloto (Qubits Ventures) and Jordan Billiald (IQ Capital) noted a number of questions and considerations for Quantum technology companies looking to raise VC money:

• What is Your Sales Story vs your Collaboration Story?
• What will be your business strategy as either a standalone or through integration?
• Are you delivering projects or products? Where is the consistency, agreement, and alignment?
• Less 1 offs, more product
• How strong is your customer validation?
• Talk about product, not features, product not services
• Do you have an actual product?
• What is your competitive advantage?
• Where does your idea fit, and how big is that market?
• Product (What)- Market (What) - Revenue- (How Much)- Validation
• "Are you tracking your traction?"
• Product Roadmap- where is the execution considering Technology, Science, IP, Hiring, Customers
• "Build a Company, Have a Team that are not all alike. Who is your team and what are the missing gaps considering Co-Founders, Advisors, future team members?" Diversity.

Red Flags

Investors get to know the founders and the teams- what is motivating them to do this?

Where are the step changes in capabilities?

Important for VC: "People and their ability to clearly communicate."

Technical Founders Fall Down Badly in Go-To-Market

One common theme that repeatedly came up is that technical founders frequently did not clearly understand Go-To-Market and as a result were making mistakes. I come back to the question of "are you tracking your traction" and think this is an incredibly powerful question to reflect on.

The question that Nardo of Qubits returned to was "Did you Fail?" and reflected "Failure is forward progress."

Breaking Through the Fog

Soft funding is incredibly important with quantum technologies, and the common consensus was that it was easier in the UK currently to attain government funding for Quantum.

In an earlier discussion (referenced above) with the former prime minister of Israel Naftali Bennet, Bennet emphasized for example that placing portfolios of bets on Quantum should be done without being overly onerous- in other words, government should provide the money and then "get out of the way."

This discussion as well did get in to the details of the Power Law, and how important this is particularly in USA VC funding. For readers outside the Venture Capital world, the Power Law is a concept that one investment can return an entire fund. As an example, should a fund be $100 million, the one investment in one portfolio company would return a minimum of $100 million to the manager. The implications are clear:

• Your story has to be 10X or greater
• Do you have what it takes to be a Unicorn or Decacorn?
• Is the USA the right place for you to be looking for money?
• How well do you understand the power law and the implications to your companies?

Richard Murray co-founder and CEO at ORCA which was one of the pioneers to build rack mountable Quantum computers emphasized the importance of team and noted that "Team is Everything" and "Double Down on Talent that really moves the needle."

Quantum is the alligator closest to the canoe

Aparna Prabhakar of Schneider Electric discussed in detail sustainability and the challenges of sustainability for data centres and IT infrastructure.

One encouraging note was that parallel computing (Quantum technology) has lead to more efficient energy usage, and for example an IBM project together with Cleveland Clinic lead to faster drug discovery with lower energy consumption.

As Prabhakar noted, "we are only reacting to AI" currently and she emphasized that "we need to be thinking about Quantum right now."

"Show me the Money!"

The now infamous quote of Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) really does apply to many investors in Quantum today. Shaun Geaney, PhD of Standard Chartered bank explained how Quantum has become a Core Business Initiative.

Cases involving Quantum technologies at Standard Chartered included:

1. Data Science and Innovation
2. Prediction of flooding and the use of a reservoir machine learning layer which was incredibly fast to train
3. SC Ventures (Corporate Venture Capital initiatives) investing in the latest technologies and participating together with corporate and government

Mike at Q-Ctrl (referenced above) noted that

"Quantum has reached the point where it is outperforming classical computing."

Google Quantum AI remarked they were already working with a select number of key customers to push the limits of Quantum technologies and fully benefit.

How well does your #Strategy challenge assumptions about the #future and the technologies that will most impact your organizations?

Congratulations to the Economist Impact on another incredibly successful event #EconQuantum