Businesses create quantum alliance to scale industrial growth

‘The industrialisation of quantum computing represents a material opportunity,’ NTT Data’s CTO for the UK and Ireland said.

Quantum start-up Nu Quantum has teamed up with other companies in the sector to form a new alliance aimed at speeding up the development of data-centre scale quantum computing through open collaboration.

The newly launched Quantum Datacenter Alliance (QDA) is led by Nu Quantum and currently comprises of Oxford Quantum Circuits, Quantinuum, QuERA and QphoX along with software giants NTT Data and Cisco to address issues surrounding scalability, networking and the interoperability of the technology.

2025 has been dedicated to quantum by the United Nations in a bid to boost research and development in the sector and QDA’s announcement today (10 March) comes just after Microsoft announced a quantum “breakthrough” with its Majorana 1 chip.

Moreover, last month, Amazon launched Ocelot, a quantum computing chip which the company claims can reduce the cost of implementing quantum error correction by up to 90pc.

QDA participants, some of which are spinouts from Cambridge and Oxford universities, have already made a splash in the industry. Last year, Microsoft used Quantinuum’s ion-trap hardware with its new qubit virtualisation system to run more than 14,000 experiments “without a single error”.

While in 2023, Equinox and Oxford Quantum Circuits partnered up to provide the Irish access to a quantum computer in Tokyo through one of Equinox’s data centres.

Alliance lead Nu Quantum has collaborated with Cisco and the National Quantum Computing Centre, building on its deployed quantum projects.

In 2018, the start-up’s founder Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero received the prestigious Jocelyn Bell Burnell national medal – the same year, she founded the company.

“We are proud to found the QDA with some amazing partners. The interactions we have had so far have been incredibly enlightening and underline the importance of cross-industry discussion to accelerate the maturity of the quantum computing industry,” said Palacios-Berraquero, who is also the company’s CEO.

Tom Winstanley, the chief technology officer and the head of new ventures at NTT Data UK and Ireland said that the “industrialisation of quantum computing represents a material opportunity”.

“I am delighted that NTT Data UK&I is participating in the QDA to explore the potential in open collaboration with quantum network, hardware and solution providers.”

“As a global leader in networking, Cisco acknowledges the critical role of cutting-edge research in driving innovation,” said Bill Gartner, the senior VP and general manager of Cisco’s optical systems and optics.

“Quantum networking, as a catalyst for distributed quantum computing, aligns closely with our strategic objectives of creating flexible, high-performance, and energy-efficient network solutions.”

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