PSiQuantum to build first utility-scale quantum computer in Australia

PsiQuantum is betting big on its ability to build what it said will be the world’s first utility-scale quantum computer in Brisbane by 2027 with help from the Australian government.

The Palo Alto-based startup has received a US$620 million ($940 million AUD) investment from Australian Commonwealth and Queensland Governments to build a practical quantum system capable of solving commercially useful problems for critical industries, such as renewable energy, minerals and metals, healthcare, and transportation, the company revealed this week.

“A utility-scale quantum computer represents an opportunity to construct a new, practical foundation of computational infrastructure and in so doing ignite the next industrial revolution,” said Prof. Jeremy O’Brien, PsiQuantum CEO, in a press statement. “This platform will help solve today’s impossible problems and will serve as tool to design the solutions we so desperately need to safeguard our future.”

Quantum computing differs from the current silicon-based computing systems in that it uses quantum bits, or qubits, rather than binary zeroes or ones to process information. Consequently, quantum computers can store far more information than classical systems and thus potentially process massive amounts of calculations running in parallel within seconds, far faster current computing systems. For example, Google currently has a quantum system that it claims takes three-and-a-half minutes to solve a problem that a supercomputer would need 10,000 years to do.

PsiQuantum uses a photonics-based approach to quantum, encoding qubits into particles of light, and it leverages infrastructure from the semiconductor manufacturing industry to fabricate and test millions of photonic devices. The company’s plans for its first utility-scale system will be in the regime of 1 million physical qubits and hyperscale in footprint with a modular architecture that will leverage existing cryogenic cooling technologies, it said. 

Ambitious plans for practical quantum

PsiQuantum’s plans to build a practical quantum system in just three years’ time are ambitious, however, as the most advanced quantum systems are only just reaching the resilient stage of quantum computing, with practical systems some years off.

While many companies – Microsoft, Google, and IBM among them – are in the race to build practical systems, there are currently two main challenges to this goal: the number of quantum bits, or qubits, that a single computer has, and how reliable those qubits are. A comparable analogy is the aim of traditional computer manufacturers to put more gates on a single chip and having them work reliably.

Commercially viable quantum computing depends on the reliability of logical qubits, with a requirement for there to be at least 1,000 of them for a system to be considered in the practical range.

Microsoft and quantum-computing company Quantinuum announced earlier this month that they have reached a new high in quantum error correction, pushing the quantum industry to a new phase of development called the resilient stage. The next phase would be scientifically useful quantum, which requires 100 reliable logical qubits, with practical coming after that.

Microsoft, among others, is an investor in PsiQuantum, which could bolster the company’s efforts to real its goal. Meanwhile, IBM already has demonstrated a 433-qubit quantum processor, and aims to raise the number to 1,000 or more qubits – and thus to the practical stage – by 2025. 

With technologies like generative artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly evolving and demanding more computing power than current chips can handle, quantum computing is seen as key way forward to solve the limitations of silicon that companies are currently pushing to meet modern processing needs.

With its utility-scale system on the horizon, PsiQuantum already has lined up partners in pharmaceuticals, semiconductor manufacturing, aerospace, chemicals, and financial services to deliver applications for its Brisbane-based quantum-computing center once it’s operational, the company said.