Quantum computers have an almost mythical status among data scientists and researchers. The dream of emerging out of the NISQ (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) era into a world of fault-tolerant qubits generating unbreakable encryption or solving climate change keeps many startups going despite difficult investment propositions with longer return horizons.
But quantum technologies don’t only inspire wonder and excitement — they are also a growing geopolitical concern. More and more countries are setting up ambitious quantum strategies, and the US has placed export controls on equipment that supports quantum technology development to China.
As part of its €1bn National Strategy for Quantum, France just launched what is called the PROQCIMA initiative. The aim of the €500mn program is to develop a universal fault-tolerant quantum computer with 128 logical qubits by 2032. And the Ministry of Defence has selected a cohort of five quantum startups to battle it out for the funding.
One of the companies selected is Alice & Bob. The startup says it has developed what it calls cat qubits. Without getting too technical (meaning trying to bend our minds around qubit superposition), this significantly reduces one of the major issues with quantum development, namely error correction.
Its cat qubit is protected against what is called bit-flip errors, where the qubit’s state flips from 1 to 0 or vice versa. These can occur due to interactions with the environment or imperfections in quantum gate operations, and lead to computational inaccuracies.
According to research conducted by the company in collaboration with Inria, the French national research institute for digital science and technology, this approach could mean a 200-fold reduction of the resources needed to execute complex quantum algorithms, including code-breaking applications.
