PsiQ Relocates from UK to Silicon Valley

(FinancialTimes) British quantum computing experts who co-founded PsiQ have relocated from the UK to Silicon Valley; a move driven partly by a need to raise capital according to sources. Hermann Hauser, co-founder of UK-based chip designer Arm, which is now owned by Japan’s SoftBank, and an early investor in PsiQ explained to FT, “They rightly concluded that they couldn’t access the capital in Europe so moved to the Valley.”
The PsiQ website explains the company is devoted to “General purpose silicon photonic quantum computing. Quantum computing promises to solve many important problems that could never be solved on any conventional computer.”
O’Brien, who is currently a co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Future of Computing, was interviewed in early January by the Innovator about next generation computing technologies, such as quantum computing, which has the potential to create machines that can handle far more complex tasks such as designing catalysts for extracting carbon from the air, room temperature superconductors, and new pharmaceuticals.
Several PhD graduates of the two UK labs have followed the researchers to Palo Alto, where the start-up has set up shop close to Stanford University.