Quantum News Briefs November 5: Aqarios Launches Quantum Platform Luna to Bring Quantum Applications Closer to End Users • Finland’s Quantum Algorithm Pioneer Quanscient Secures €5.2M to Bring Engineering Simulation into the Quantum Era • Rigetti & Riverlane Integrate Real-Time & Low Latency Error Correction on Rigetti QPU • Qulab Receives $3.5M from Development Bank of Japan • Payments Innovation Alliance Releases New Report Detailing the Potential Impact of Quantum Computing on Payments

Sandra Helsel

3 weeks ago

Munich-Based Aqarios Launches Quantum Platform Luna to Bring Quantum Applications Closer to End Users

Munich-based Aqarios today announced the launch of Luna, a platform that simplifies and accelerates quantum application development. After a successful closed beta phase, Luna is now available to the public, providing businesses, developers, and researchers with access to a comprehensive suite of quantum tools. Luna democratizes quantum computing, making it accessible to users of all technical backgrounds.
Luna eliminates the steep learning curve associated with quantum computing, allowing businesses to directly tackle complex challenges without the need for specialized quantum knowledge. Whether optimizing supply chains to reduce costs and delivery times, solving energy grid issues by improving load distribution and integrating renewable energy sources, or enhancing logistics by finding the most efficient routes under dynamic conditions, Luna empowers companies to address problems traditionally too complex for classical methods.
By harnessing quantum computing’s power to analyze numerous variables at once, Luna enables businesses to find optimal solutions faster and more effectively than traditional methods.
he platform excels in solving complex optimization problems, offering over 40 ready-to-use optimization scenarios and more than 30 specialized algorithms designed for these tasks. Luna simplifies the quantum computing process by:

- Providing a user-friendly interface that enables users of all skill levels to run quantum algorithms without prior knowledge, while still offering full customization options for advanced users.
- Automatically transforming classical data into formats suitable for quantum computations.
- Providing unified access to quantum hardware, eliminating infrastructure barriers.
- Including a suite of benchmarking tools to evaluate and enhance performance across quantum and classical approaches.
- Enabling organization-wide collaboration and resource management, streamlining team efforts.

Finland’s Quantum Algorithm Pioneer Quanscient Secures €5.2M to Bring Engineering Simulation into the Quantum Era

Finnish technology company Quanscient, a leader in cloud-based multiphysics simulation technology and quantum algorithms, announces today its new growth funding of €5.2 million. The round was led by prominent Nordic early-stage venture capital firm Crowberry Capital and joined by Speen Holding with follow-on investments from Finnish early-stage venture capital investors Maki.vc and First Fellow. The new funding will enable Quanscient to bring engineering simulations into the quantum era.
Quanscient has built the world’s first Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) platform that seamlessly integrates a unique combination of cloud-native multiphysics solvers, advanced cloud computing, and future quantum integration. The platform offers engineers over a hundredfold increase in simulation throughput to enable fully digital R&D processes, addressing complex technology challenges in industries like fusion energy, 6G/7G, advanced semiconductors, biomedical, automotive, and aerospace.
Advanced CAE simulations enable engineers to explore multiple design alternatives, minimizing risk and improving product performance compared to costly and time-consuming real-world testing. However, legacy CAE solutions struggle to support the rapid iteration required in modern development. Unlike traditional simulation software licensing, Quanscient offers unlimited user access, fostering smoother collaboration and greater accessibility for large, geographically distributed teams. This model provides engineers with up to 100 times greater simulation capacity than legacy solutions, empowering them to tackle more complex problems and iterate faster.

Rigetti & Riverlane Integrate Real-Time & Low Latency Error Correction on Rigetti QPU

Rigetti (Nasdaq: RGTI), a pioneer in full-stack quantum-classical computing, announced the successful demonstration of real-time and low latency quantum error correction on a Rigetti quantum computer.
Fault tolerance is the point at which lengthy operations can execute without a single error, due to the application of quantum error correction. Reaching this stage, and in turn realizing the full potential of quantum computers, will require the co-development of quantum error correction and quantum computing technologies. Rigetti and Riverlane’s recent work demonstrating real-time and low-latency quantum error correction on Rigetti’s 84-qubit Ankaa™-2 system is an important step in our journey towards developing fault tolerant quantum computers.
Among the quantum error correction resources being developed are classical algorithms that identify errors that occur during quantum computation. These classical algorithms are known as decoders. A challenge in improving the utility of decoders is addressing the problem of the backlog of computations that accumulates as the decoder processes data. To avoid the backlog problem, the decoding needs to occur at the same speed as the quantum circuit. This experiment demonstrated decoding times faster than the 1\unit\micro threshold for generating measurement data on a superconducting qubit device — ensuring that the backlog problem is avoided and showcasing that low-latency feedback can be maintained during quantum error correction operations.

In Other News: DataCenter Reports “Qulab Receives $3.5M from Development Bank of Japan”

Qulab, a California-based quantum computing startup founded by former Google execs has secured a a $3.5 million investment from the state-owned Development Bank of Japan, as reported by Dan Swinhoe of DataCenter on November 4. The company launched out of stealth over the summer.
CEO Alan Ho was previously at Google, where he was a product and program management lead for the Google Quantum AI team. CTO John Martinis is another Google alum and led the Quantum AI Lab team that developed a quantum computer that could outperform classical supercomputers on a specific task in 2019.
Robert McDermott, who will head up hardware at Qolab, is the Roeske Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The company is focused on superconducting qubits and enhancing qubit coherence.

Payments Innovation Alliance Releases New Report Detailing the Potential Impact of Quantum Computing on Payments

Nacha’s Payments Innovation Alliance, a membership program bringing together diverse global stakeholders seeking to transform the payments industry, announced on October 4 it has has published Protecting Payments in the Quantum Era: What You Need to Know.
This free publication outlines the basics of quantum computing, explaining key concepts and how it differs from classical computing. It explores the potential applications of quantum computing in the financial sector, particularly in payments, highlighting opportunities for innovation and efficiency. The report also addresses the significant threats quantum computing poses to current cryptographic standards and discusses recent developments in quantum technologies, the urgent need for quantum-safe cryptographic solutions and the next proactive steps to prepare payments industry leaders for the quantum era.