QuEra Computing startup born from researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) called QuEra Computing said on Wednesday it raised $17 million from investors, including Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc.
It’s the latest quantum computer hardware maker to come out of the lab at a time when funding for the nascent technology is booming.
QuEra was co-founded in 2019 by pioneers in quantum computing and quantum science and technology at Harvard and MIT – Mikhail Lukin, Markus Grenier, Vladan Vuletic, Dirk Englund and Nathan Gemelke.
QuEra Computing showed off the programmability of their 256-qubit quantum simulator—a special-purpose quantum computer built for solving certain types of problems.
International Business Machines Corp, whose quantum computers are already available through the cloud, is aiming for a 1000-plus qubit machine in 2023. Although it’s hard to compare the performance of the different machines just based on the number of qubits, say several researchers of quantum computers.
For those looking to try out the QuEra machine, Keesling said the goal is to make it available through the cloud by the third quarter of next year.
While there is some debate about when quantum computers will be able to crack real-world problems, researchers believe quantum computers could operate millions of times faster than today’s advanced supercomputers, potentially making possible tasks such as mapping complex molecular structures and chemical reactions to boosting the power of artificial intelligence.
According to euronews
