Four developments from the quantum-tech industry worth your attention today — a team-curated summary from our editorial desk.
Princeton to Lead $27.9M NSF Institute Tackling Quantum Chip Manufacturing
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $27.9 million over five years to a new Quantum Leap Challenge Institute led by Princeton University, one of eight such institutes sharing $290 million in NSF funding announced August 25. Dubbed MARQUIS (Manufacturable and Resilient superconducting Quantum Information Systems) and directed by Princeton professor Nathalie de Leon, the institute brings together roughly two dozen labs across nine research institutions — including Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University — plus an industry advisory board featuring Google Quantum AI and NVIDIA, to tackle a single bottleneck: reinventing the Josephson junction materials that nearly all of today’s superconducting qubits still rely on.
Source: Princeton University
Pasqal and Eleven Ventures Form Joint Venture to Bring Quantum Computing to Saudi Arabia
Pasqal and Eleven Ventures, a Saudi investment platform founded by HRH Prince Abdulaziz Bin Turki Bin Talal, said they have formed a commercial joint venture called Pasqal Arabia to deploy and scale Pasqal’s neutral-atom quantum computers across Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, in support of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 push into AI and advanced computing. The announcement coincided with Saudi Arabia’s state visit to France, during which Saudi officials toured Pasqal’s headquarters and production site; Prince Abdulaziz will chair Pasqal Arabia’s board. The deal comes as Pasqal separately works toward a Nasdaq listing via its planned merger with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II.
Source: Pasqal Newsroom
IonQ Appoints Two New Board Members as It Absorbs SkyWater’s Chip Fabrication Capacity
IonQ said it has appointed Dr. Eric Ball and Timothy Baxter to its board of directors. Ball brings decades of corporate finance experience, including a decade as senior vice president and treasurer at Oracle, while Baxter was chairman of SkyWater Technology‘s board until IonQ’s recently completed acquisition of the chipmaker, and had previously served as CEO of Samsung Electronics’ North America unit. IonQ chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi said the additions reflect the company’s push toward “rapid scalability in quantum computing manufacturing” as it integrates SkyWater’s chip-fabrication capacity into its platform.
Source: IonQ Newsroom
GSA Convenes Federal Working Group on Post-Quantum Identity Systems
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) said its Office of Government-wide Policy has convened a new interagency working group on federal identity, credential and access management (FICAM) modernization, holding its first meeting on August 12 with roughly 40 participants from 17 federal agencies. The group, created under an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memorandum, will meet biweekly to work through how non-human identities, automation and other modern identity systems fit into the government’s post-quantum cryptography migration, and GSA said it plans to host a hybrid Post-Quantum Cryptography Summit later this year to bring federal and industry stakeholders together on the transition.
Source: GSA
Compiled by our AI editorial team (Quark & Prism), supervised by Mischa Hammann, from primary sources and industry coverage. Spotted an error or have a tip? Let us know. More on our team page. Not investment advice.