Is Quantum Computing Moving from Theoretical to Startups? (msn.com) 38
The Boston Globe reports that "More money is starting to flow into the nascent field of quantum computing in Boston, turning academic research at MIT and Harvard labs into startups."
In September, Northeastern University announced it will build a $10 million lab at its Burlington campus to explore applications for quantum technology, and to train students to work with it. And companies based in other countries are setting up outposts here to hire quantum-savvy techies....
"It's still pretty early" for quantum computing, says Russ Wilcox, a partner at the venture capital firm Pillar. "But a number of companies are starting to experiment to learn how to make use of it. The key factor is that the field is progressing at an exponential rate." In 2018, his firm made an early investment in Zapata Computing, a Boston startup building software for quantum computers and selling services — including ways to analyze the new cybersecurity risks that a powerful new class of computers could introduce....
In the current fiscal year, the federal government budgeted about $900 million to advance the field of quantum information science, which includes quantum computing....
[S]everal local venture capital firms are getting comfortable with placing bets on the quantum computing sector. Glasswing's Rudina Seseri says that her firm is "seeing momentum pick up," although the sector is "still in the warm-up phase, not yet in the first inning." But some of the technology being developed by startups, she says, "is so meaningful that if they get the technology to work at scale, they will be incredibly valuable."
That said, much of the revenue available to these companies today comes from researchers in academic and corporate labs trying to understand the potential of quantum computers. Sam Liss, an executive director in Harvard's Office of Technology Development, thinks that "the large commercial opportunities for quantum are still a long way off." The OTD helps attract corporate funding to Harvard research labs, and also helps to license technologies created in those labs to the private sector. "Technologies have a way of getting oversold and overhyped," Liss says. "We all recognize that this is going to take some time."
Large companies like Amazon, Google, and IBM are trying to move the field forward, and startups are beginning to demonstrate their new approaches. In the startup realm, Liss says, we're seeing enough new companies being formed and attracting funding "to support a thesis that this will be a big thing."
In September, Northeastern University announced it will build a $10 million lab at its Burlington campus to explore applications for quantum technology, and to train students to work with it. And companies based in other countries are setting up outposts here to hire quantum-savvy techies....
"It's still pretty early" for quantum computing, says Russ Wilcox, a partner at the venture capital firm Pillar. "But a number of companies are starting to experiment to learn how to make use of it. The key factor is that the field is progressing at an exponential rate." In 2018, his firm made an early investment in Zapata Computing, a Boston startup building software for quantum computers and selling services — including ways to analyze the new cybersecurity risks that a powerful new class of computers could introduce....
In the current fiscal year, the federal government budgeted about $900 million to advance the field of quantum information science, which includes quantum computing....
[S]everal local venture capital firms are getting comfortable with placing bets on the quantum computing sector. Glasswing's Rudina Seseri says that her firm is "seeing momentum pick up," although the sector is "still in the warm-up phase, not yet in the first inning." But some of the technology being developed by startups, she says, "is so meaningful that if they get the technology to work at scale, they will be incredibly valuable."
That said, much of the revenue available to these companies today comes from researchers in academic and corporate labs trying to understand the potential of quantum computers. Sam Liss, an executive director in Harvard's Office of Technology Development, thinks that "the large commercial opportunities for quantum are still a long way off." The OTD helps attract corporate funding to Harvard research labs, and also helps to license technologies created in those labs to the private sector. "Technologies have a way of getting oversold and overhyped," Liss says. "We all recognize that this is going to take some time."
Large companies like Amazon, Google, and IBM are trying to move the field forward, and startups are beginning to demonstrate their new approaches. In the startup realm, Liss says, we're seeing enough new companies being formed and attracting funding "to support a thesis that this will be a big thing."
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Maybe.
Are They? (Score:5, Funny)
Is Quantum Computing Moving from Theoretical to Startups?
Maybe, Maybe Not.
Re:Are They? (Score:5, Funny)
More clearly, that's maybe and maybe not.
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More clearly, that's maybe and maybe not.
Awesome. Government will be able to confirm and deny their existence.
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Let's hope (Score:2)
Quantum computing does not become the next blockchain, and provides actual value.
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Blockchain as a technology is very useful. It's just how it's pushed as some kind of magic sauce that makes everything better just to sell things. There's a similar problem with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Blame the application not the technology.
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Blockchain as a technology is very useful. It's just how it's pushed as some kind of magic sauce that makes everything better just to sell things. There's a similar problem with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Blame the application not the technology.
Blockchain's curse, is synonymous with hemp. It's only real punishment was to be intertwined with a completely related industry infected with Greed.
We didn't learn then either.
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Blockchain as a technology is very useful.
It's a solution in a desperate search to find a problem to solve that has not already been solved with simpler, more efficient, approaches. Plus it is not even that new, the core ideas having been around for at least thirty years.
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I'm still mystified as to what exactly blockchain can do that public key cryptography can't.
Contract. Sign it with your key, I sign it with mine, get a third party witness to sign it with theirs. Unbreakable.
Currency? We've had perfectly good federal banking systems for hundreds of years.
Ledgers? Blockchains are a poor fit, because most businesses DONT want their frigging dirty underwear out for the public to expect, and anyway, we have a perfectly functional 2 sided accounting system thats worked spectacul
Sabine Hossenfelder's take on Quantum is spot-on (Score:3, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Sabine Hossenfelder's take on Quantum is spot- (Score:2)
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Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Is Quantum Computing Moving from Theoretical to Startups?
In principle, I didn't think we could know where it is *and* where it's going, with any certainty. :-)
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Is Quantum Computing Moving from Theoretical to Startups?
In principle, I didn't think we could know where it is *and* where it's going, with any certainty. :-)
What we can do, though, is talk about the probability distribution.
The people who used to invest in cryptocurrencies are now looking for the next next-big-thing. Some long shot that will let them salivate over imagined mega-successes. There's a chance that quantum computing could be that pipe dream.
This time the answer is yes (Score:2)
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Around the turn of the millennium, people were leaving universities in droves for startups. As we now know, most of those weren't viable - investor money is the only reason they lasted even a few years. But the early movers made a lot of money.
There's no way quantum-related businesses are remotely viable... but that doesn't really matter to those involved. To put it very bluntly and cynically - there is a big, big push in academia right now (in the US, at least) to spin your research off into a startup. And
This this the next... (Score:2)
...the next bubble that will suck up VC money and deliver nothing?
Quantum computing is looking a lot like fusion: we'll have practical, useful implementations "in just a few years".
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I expect that quantum computing will be extremely useful in a very small subset of applications. Some of them are rather valuable, though, so it may well pay for the money invested.
But I don't expect any mass-market use of quantum computing. Certainly not until it can be run at room temperature. (There may be some uses "in the cloud", where a centralized computing resource is shared with lots of other folks.)
Nope (Score:2)
But scam-"startups" in the Quantum-Computing space are an old thing. This stuff still does not work beyond toy examples and it is unclear whether it ever will. It will certainly not work for real problems anytime soon. It is a hype driven by hopes, fantasies and some hardware that cannot actually perform, but is enough to con people with a limited clue into thinking this stuff is real.
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Hey, that's not fair! Google got in the headlines a bit ago for declaring quantum supremacy ... for a few weeks, until somebody made traditional computers faster ... at simulating a quantum event. Just because quantum computers struggle to compete at predicting quantum results doesn't mean they are over-hyped!
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Well, looking at what all gets "declared" today, you are certainly right. "Declaring" something today basically means "Look here now!" and has no actual meaning beyond that. They could also just do a loud "ping" and be about as meaningful.
Fuzzy logic. (Score:3)
In essence quantum computing replaces hard results with a statistical outcome that is depending on keeping the QC from picking up so much noise that the answer becomes statistically insignificant. The more complicated the QC, the less margin.
Milking the hype aside, there's no investment upside in the foreseeable future.
Statistically speaking, yes (Score:2)
Theoretical vs Startups (Score:2)
I read that as more, moving from researching if it is possible to misrepresenting mundane computing as the latest magical buzzword. Like making everything blockchain and AI. While these technologies have practical applications, too many disreputable companies seem to try to make these technologies appear to be magical and revolutionary, though complete misrepresentation.
But it's cool! (Score:2)
Warm-up phase (Score:2)
the sector is "still in the warm-up phase, not yet in the first inning."
Well THERE'S your problem...
Typically, you don't want your quantum computer to warm up.
Probably (Score:1)
Using the same technique that allowed the "breakthrough" in "AI"; redefining the term to something achievable and then prancing about declaring victory.
Any actual computing yet? (Score:2)
Nope... At the moment, the only use for quantum computing is selling books and getting investment for research.
I'm starting QUANTUM STUFF COMPANY (Score:2)
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