(VentureBeat) Alice&Bob has raised $3.3 million to join the quantum computing arms race by accelerating research that promises to make this type of next-generation computing more stable. The company name refers to standard scientific lingo that labels the sender (point A) and the receiver (point B) of a message as “Alice and Bob.”
Elaia Partners and Breega led the round for the Paris-based startup, which has developed its first prototype. The company is using research that has been developed across an unusual consortium of French universities and research institutes.
There are a range of fundamental scientific problems must be solved to make such computing power, which remains highly volatile, a reality. Getting particles to exist for a useful length of time in a quantum state — “quantum entanglement” — is an enormous physics problem. Once the qubits are asked to start performing any computing tasks, they quickly encounter a host of barriers that initiate “quantum errors” and cause them to break down.
Peronnin and his cofounder, Raphaël Lescanne, officially created Alice&Bob in February to commercialize research being done across France to target the stubborn issue of “quantum errors.” The cofounders are affiliated with France’s Ecole Normale Supérieure, at the Paris and Lyon campuses, respectively.