D-Wave, Horizon Quantum, Alice&Bob, QCentroid - The Week in Quantum Computing, January 26th, 2025
Issue #267
Quick Recap
Microsoft officialy launched their Quantum Development Kit, competing directly with IBM and Qiskit for developer attention. It is good to have an alternative after what IBM has done lobotimizing Qiskit.
Rigetti Computing India secured an $8.4 million deal with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing for a 108-qubit quantum computer. D-Wave Quantum acquired Quantum Circuits, establishing itself as the first company to provide both annealing and gate-model quantum computing platforms (although companies like Qilimanjaro could make somewhat similar claims). Additionally, Horizon Quantum Computing and Alice & Bob entered a strategic partnership to integrate cat qubit-based quantum error correction technology. A&B researchers also introduced “elevator codes” for quantum error correction that showed over 50 percent qubit overhead reduction for hardware with high noise bias, leveraging recent advancements in cat qubit experimentations.
Qcentroid launched a multi-agent Artificial Intelligence tool to help organizations systematically identify evidence-based quantum use cases, directly addressing adoption barriers highlighted in recent surveys. The University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing, with support from partners such as Xanadu and Haiqu, announced Open Quantum Design, the first open-source full stack quantum computer. Let’s go 2026!
The Week in Quantum Computing
Quantum Computing Use Case Discovery: AI Multi-Agent Tool by Qcentroid
Oscar Bastidas Jossa and Alberto Calvo of Qcentroid have introduced a multi-agent Artificial Intelligence tool designed to assist organizations in discovering quantum computing use cases. The tool uses a three-stage architecture—Interview, Generator, and Deep Research—to transform business needs into structured, scientifically validated quantum use cases. The Interview stage gathers business objectives; the Generator evaluates quantum suitability and matches needs to quantum algorithms; and Deep Research rigorously analyzes feasibility by searching scientific databases and literature. This system addresses key adoption barriers, notably complexity and lack of clear application evidence, as identified in recent survey studies, enabling organizations to make evidence-based decisions about quantum computing adoption. The approach leverages techniques like prompt engineering, modular subgraphs, and Retrieval Augmented Generation.
Horizon Quantum Explores Faster Ways to Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing with Alice & Bob
Horizon Quantum Computing and Alice & Bob announced a strategic collaboration on January 19, 2026, to accelerate development of fault-tolerant quantum computing. Alice & Bob’s emulators, which simulate their cat qubit-based quantum processors capable of quantum error correction, will be integrated with Horizon Quantum’s Triple Alpha development environment. This partnership aims to facilitate a comprehensive compilation pipeline optimized for hardware performance and broaden hardware architecture support within Triple Alpha. Alice & Bob, advised by Nobel laureates and employing over 150 staff, claims its cat qubits can reduce hardware requirements by up to 200 times compared with other approaches.
Rigetti Announces Order for a 108-Qubit Quantum Computer
Rigetti Computing India announced an $8.4 million order from India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing for a 108-qubit quantum computer, scheduled for on-premises deployment at C-DAC’s Bengaluru center in the second half of 2026. This system will use Rigetti’s proprietary chiplet-based architecture, aiming at scalability for error correction and fault tolerance. C-DAC, under India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, plans to integrate this system into its supercomputing data center to support hybrid classical-quantum research and applications in key scientific and industrial domains. The order continues Rigetti and C-DAC’s partnership on hybrid quantum systems, first detailed in a September 2025 memorandum of understanding focused on accelerating Indian quantum research and development.
D-Wave Completes Acquisition of Quantum Circuits Inc
D-Wave Quantum Inc. announced the completion of its acquisition of Quantum Circuits Inc., a developer of error-corrected superconducting gate-model quantum computing systems. This move enables D-Wave to offer both annealing and gate-model quantum computers, supported by Quantum Circuits’ dual-rail qubits, which provide improved error correction and combine the speed and fidelity of leading quantum technologies. D-Wave’s annealing systems, currently in commercial use, have demonstrated quantum supremacy on real-world materials simulation. The company plans to make its initial gate-model system available in 2026. Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave, called the acquisition “a watershed moment,” establishing D-Wave as the first dual-platform quantum computing company. Dr. Rob Schoelkopf of Quantum Circuits joins D-Wave as chief scientist.
[PAPER] Geometry- and Topology-Informed Quantum Computing
Gunhee Cho’s book, “Geometry- and Topology-Informed Quantum Computing: From States to Real-Time Control with FPGA Prototypes,” reframes quantum computing as a systems engineering challenge that integrates quantum circuits with classical real-time control. The work is organized around three tracks: real-time quantum error correction decoding with hardware acceleration (using field-programmable gate arrays), geometric tools for circuit optimization, and quantum cryptography with streaming post-processing. The text emphasizes infrastructure—developing reproducible templates, robust pipelines, verification processes, and practical metrics like bounded latency and p99 behavior.
Building the world’s first open-source quantum computer
Researchers at the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Science and Institute for Quantum Computing have launched Open Quantum Design, a non-profit organization offering the world’s first open-source, full stack quantum computer. Founded in 2024 by Drs. Crystal Senko, Rajibul Islam, Roger Melko, and CEO Greg Dick, Open Quantum Design prioritizes collaboration and transparency over commercial competition. The platform uses trapped-ion technology and provides open access across hardware, electronics, and software, supporting over 30 software contributors and numerous institutional partners—such as the University of Waterloo, Haiqu, the Unitary Foundation, and Xanadu. By enabling broader access to real quantum hardware and fostering shared development, Open Quantum Design aims to accelerate research and training in quantum information science and technology.
Alice & Bob Develops Elevator Codes to Slash Error Rates on Cat Qubit Quantum Computers
Alice & Bob, a quantum computing company specializing in cat qubit technology, unveiled “Elevator Codes,” a new error correction method designed to reduce bit-flip rates on their cat qubit quantum computers. According to a recent arXiv preprint by Diego Ruiz and Peter Shanahan, this approach uses logical ancilla qubits that “move” through repetition codes, achieving up to 10,000 times lower logical error rates while requiring only about triple the hardware overhead compared to current codes. The method could notably advance fault-tolerant quantum memory and enable complex molecular simulations sooner than expected. Elevator Codes are specifically tailored to the noise characteristics of Alice & Bob’s architecture, indicating potential to accelerate practical quantum computation.
[PAPER] Elevator Codes: Concatenation for resource-efficient quantum...
**Main Contributions and Findings** This paper introduces “elevator codes,” a two-dimensional local quantum error correction code tailored for biased-noise qubits, where phase-flip errors dominate over bit-flip errors. The core contribution is a concatenated code architecture that leverages a phase-flip repetition code as the inner code and a high-rate bit-flip code as the outer code, both implemented using only nearest-neighbor connectivity at the physical level. The authors demonstrate, through extensive numerical simulations, that elevator codes significantly reduce qubit overhead compared to thin rectangular surface codes and thin XZZX codes in the regime of strong noise bias (η ≥ 7 × 10⁴). For instance, at a phase-flip error rate pZ = 10⁻³ and noise bias η = 2 × 10⁶, elevator codes achieve a logical error rate of 10⁻¹² with over 50% reduction in qubit overhead relative to leading alternatives. This work is timely, as recent experimental advances in cat qubits have realized such high noise biases, making the proposed architecture immediately relevant for near-term hardware. The findings highlight that, under strong bias, addressing phase-flip and bit-flip errors in separate code layers is optimal for resource efficiency. **Technical Approach** The elevator code construction is based on the concatenation of two classical codes: an inner phase-flip repetition code and an outer high-rate bit-flip code. The inner code provides high distance against phase-flip errors (dZ), while the outer code, implemented at the logical level, corrects residual bit-flip errors with minimal overhead. The inner code is a repetition code with variable dZ and fixed dX = 1, enabling simple two-dimensional layouts and transversal logical CNOT gates. The outer code is chosen to have dZ = 1 and non-local stabilizers, unconstrained by physical connectivity, and is executed using logical operations between inner code blocks. Three outer codes were studied: [15,9,3], [15,6,5], and [16,3,8], all selected for efficient decoding via the BP+OSD decoder. The syndrome extraction for the outer code is performed sequentially using a single logical ancilla, minimizing space overhead. The decoding strategy accounts for the hypergraph structure induced by transversal CNOTs, and the simulations use a circuit-level biased noise model with explicit error rates for all gate types. The overall code distance is the product of the inner and outer code distances for each error type. **Results and Impact** Numerical simulations show that elevator codes outperform both thin surface codes and thin XZZX codes in terms of qubit overhead for logical memory. At pZ = 10⁻³ and η ≥ 2 × 10⁶, elevator codes require three times fewer qubits than XZZX codes and more than twice fewer than thin surface codes to achieve a logical error rate of 10⁻¹². In the near-threshold regime (pZ = 10⁻², η = 10⁶), elevator codes maintain over a twofold overhead reduction compared to XZZX codes and a fivefold reduction relative to thin surface codes for logical error rates down to 10⁻⁹. The logical error rate scaling for the outer code is empirically fitted as pXL(pX, dZ) = dZ^c (a pX)^b, with detailed parameters provided for each code. The overhead of elevator codes closely approaches that of standalone repetition codes up to logical error rates of 10⁻¹², demonstrating that the addition of the outer code incurs minimal extra cost while dramatically extending the achievable logical error rate. The results establish elevator codes as a leading candidate for quantum memory in biased-noise architectures, with immediate applicability to cat qubit platforms and potential for further optimization by employing larger, higher-rate outer codes. This work advances the practical realization of resource-efficient, fault-tolerant quantum memories tailored to the noise characteristics of emerging hardware.
Quantum-Guided Cluster Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization
Researchers from Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab introduced the quantum-guided cluster algorithm, a hybrid optimization method designed to improve solutions for hard combinatorial problems like Max-Cut. Their approach leverages correlation data—precomputed using sources such as the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm—to guide collective variable updates, overcoming limitations of traditional simulated annealing and classical cluster algorithms, which often get trapped in local minima or lose efficiency on problems with complex constraints. The method efficiently explores solution spaces by flipping correlated variable groups identified through quantum-derived insights. Demonstrations show that this quantum-guided technique outperforms classical heuristics on select graph instances, suggesting practical benefit for constrained combinatorial optimization.
Press Release: QMill announces a six-fold leap in reaching quantum advantage
QMill, a quantum algorithm and software company based in Espoo, Finland, announced simulation results indicating a six-fold improvement in the requirements for quantum advantage. Their new algorithm can allegedly achieve quantum advantage using just 48 qubits at 99.94% accuracy, compared to prior estimates of 200 qubits at 99.99% accuracy. This algorithm allows a quantum computer to outperform El Capitan, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, and enables verification of quantum computations with a regular laptop. These findings, led by Chief Scientist Mikko Möttönen and CTO Ville Kotovirta, are based on QMill’s mathematical estimations and numerical calculations; they await experimental validation and peer review. QMill aims to make practical quantum verification and speed-up accessible in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era.
Powerful new developer tools increase the versatility of the Microsoft Quantum platform
On January 22, 2026, Microsoft announced significant updates to its Microsoft Quantum Development Kit (QDK), aiming to streamline and expand quantum software development. The open-source QDK now offers deeper integration with Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot, allowing developers to easily write, test, and debug quantum code across languages such as Q#, OpenQASM, Qiskit, and Cirq. New domain libraries and workflows, notably for quantum error correction and chemistry, reduce the expertise needed for researchers to implement complex quantum solutions. The chemistry toolkit, designed by chemists, supports robust reproducibility via Windows Subsystem for Linux and Docker. These advances demonstrate Microsoft’s focus on making quantum programming more accessible and effective ahead of future fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Demonstration of low-overhead quantum error correction codes
A team led by Ke Wang and Dong-Ling Deng demonstrated two low-overhead quantum low-density parity-check codes using a 32-qubit quantum processor. The researchers implemented a distance-4 bivariate bicycle code and a distance-3 punctured bivariate bicycle code, with logical error rates per logical qubit per cycle of (8.91 ± 0.17)% and (7.77 ± 0.12)%, respectively. Utilizing a two-dimensional superconducting architecture with overlapping long-range couplers, they achieved simultaneous measurement of all non-local weight-6 stabilizers through periodic, efficient syndrome extraction. Published in Nature Physics (January 22, 2026), these results establish the feasibility of scalable, low-overhead quantum error correction in superconducting processors this year, addressing a central challenge for practical fault-tolerant quantum computing.
The Simple Reason Why I Won’t Buy Quantum Computing Stocks in 2026
In 2025, following Google’s December breakthrough with its Willow quantum chip, stocks of companies focused on quantum computing—including IonQ, D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Quantum Computing Inc.—experienced significant surges, particularly among retail investors. D-Wave Quantum and Rigetti Computing became two of Robinhood’s top 100 most popular equities. Despite retail enthusiasm and bold forecasts like McKinsey’s projection of $1.3 trillion of value created for select industries by 2035, the article notes these companies are generating only nominal revenue and remain highly speculative. The sector’s sky-high valuations appear driven more by hype than fundamentals, with most investors lacking a deep understanding of the complex technology.
ZenaTech Progresses its Proprietary Quantum Computing Hardware Platform for Defense, Homeland Security and Government Applications - ZenaTech
ZenaTech announced progress on its proprietary quantum computing hardware platform aimed at supporting United States Defense, Homeland Security, and government applications. The Vancouver-based company is procuring key components and targets completion of a five-qubit prototype by late 2026. The hardware will process large, complex datasets from ZenaTech’s drones and drone swarms, providing real-time insights for mission-critical defense and intelligence operations. ZenaTech CEO Shaun Passley, Ph.D., called the prototype an “important foundational step” for vertically integrated, autonomous systems. The platform is intended to support advanced artificial intelligence projects, including Eagle Eye for defense and Clear Skies for weather management.
A bit of history: 1st: ‘computers’ were people trained to solve complex problems (see movie “hidden figures”) 2nd: computers used to be big and expensive. They needed specially trained people to operate them. Then came mini-computers which took up less space, but had limited function and were used to control machines (look up Naked Mini). Then Intel decided rather than use a complex custom circuit to use a programmable system to, if my memory server, run a Mainframe disk drive. A couple of hobbyists wrote an article for Popular Electronics using that processor and a bunch of 100 pin connectors (because they found those on sale for the 50 or so kits they thought they would sell) They got a thousand orders within a week and the hobby computer craze started. A couple of kids in California though they could sell pre-built hobby computers for those who didn’t want to solder their own and allowed others to write programs for it (you may have heard of that company…Apple).
Up until this point if you wanted more than one person to have access to a computer (or wait in line for hours to access the mainframe, you had to connect using a simple keyboard and monitor setup.
While we now can have in our hands computers which are far more capable than the old mainframes there are somethings that your desktop can’t provide: reliability and scale. A computer center (whether its company owned, shared or a cloud center) has is redundant communications links, 24/7 power with regularly tested backups and the reliable hot swappable components. On a mainframe you can replace processors, memory , mass storage without shutting anything down. On a smaller scale, what looks like a tower computer, if its a server will have redundant power supplies, error correcting memory and mass storage which can support disk failure with replacement disk able to be swapped in and the system restored in the background. What happens when say the redundancy fails, major airlines have to stand down operations for several days. What happens if the bank’’s data center fails, all their ATMs stop issuing money.
Hey, great read as always. This update on quantum is super helpful! The Qcentroid AI tool for finding use cases realy hit home. Adoption is such a big hurdle, so leveraging AI there makes a lot of sense. Very smart!