IBM Partners with Unity Fund to Provide Grants for Access to IBM Q Systems

(IBM.Blog) IBM has announced a partnership with the Unitary Fund to provide funding for grants and priority access to certain IBM Q systems. Similar to IBM’s quantum computing mission, the Unitary Fund wants to create a quantum technology industry that benefits the most people. It does so through a ‘micro-grants’ program. Applicants provide a simple explanation for their project; if funded, awardees receive half of the award up front to kick-start the project, and the remainder about halfway through. Since the launch of the program, the Unitary Fund has funded six projects which are interoperable with Qiskit.
IBM explained, “Our collaboration with the Unitary Fund enables us to further develop a more active community around quantum computing that welcomes and fosters newcomers to the field, help them become quantum ready, and prepare them to take advantage of this new technology.”
By hosting Qiskit Camps in the United States, Europe, South Africa, and Japan, helping out with local hackathons, and directly funding Qiskit projects via the IBM Q Awards program, has seen that significant ideas originate when people — from students, researchers, developers, and educators — are simply given the opportunity to collaborate and experiment. Consider these statistics highlighting the strong community and ecosystem that has been built by IBM Q in just three years: 170,000+ users have run more than 100B executions across all systems, downloaded Qiskit more than 260,000+ times, and published more than 200+ third-party research papers.