Show me the money!
Fundraising, stock prices, and timelines... oh, my!
The Quantum Dragon is unusually interested in money this week. He’s raising funds. He’s short selling stocks. He’s even looking at the broader quantum technology market, including quantum sensing and quantum networks. There are a lot of interesting companies out there that aren’t getting nearly enough attention.
IQT NORDICS 2025 (MAY 20-22) ANNOUNCES THREE ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS
IQT NORDICS in Gothenburg, Sweden is rapidly approaching. Three additional speakers have been announced: Marvin Holten, DiaSense, Goran I Johansson, WACQT and Camilla Johansson, QSIP will participate in the Nordics region’s largest annual quantum computing event that rotates amongst Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Sponsorship and registration information are available at www.iqtevent.com.
Zapata AI Job Seekers
If you were laid off by Zapata AI and would like a free listing in this newsletter, please reach out and let me know. I’ll maintain a list in The Quantum Dragon until everyone on the list has been gainfully employed elsewhere or is otherwise no longer actively job seeking. I might extend this offer to all job seekers, but I’ll start with these layoffs.
Shawn Gibford Industrial PHDc: Quantum Applications in the Life Sciences
Dr. Francesco Benfenati Quantum Solutions Engineer
How to Raise Money for your Quantum Company
The reason why you should read this article, if you’re seeking capital, is that Russ Fein is a Managing Director at Corporate Fuel Partners, which recently led a $5M series seed funding for Vescent, a manufacturer of frequency combs, lasers, and controls. In other words, Mr. Fein knows what he is looking for.
[REVISITED] Beyond NISQ: The Megaquop Machine
The problem with the public discourse is that we’re allowing the wrong companies to be the face of the industry. For 2 prominent examples: I've heard Prof. Preskill say multiple times that D-Wave’s quantum annealers have no proven advantage, and I've never heard him or Prof. Aaronson mention IonQ in any capacity.
“I have no quantum computing investments of any kind.”
- Prof. Scott Aaronson
This list was previously published in The Quantum Dragon and came from Prof. Preskill's Q2B talk and slides:
Hardware: Google (transmon), AWS (cat) [ENS, Alice & Bob], QCI/Yale (dual rail) [AWS], Yale (GKP) [Nord Quantique, ETH], MIT (fluxonium) [Atlantic Quantum]
Decoding: Google, Riverlane/Rigetti, Harvard/QuEra
Error correction: Harvard/MIT/QuEra, Atom/Microsoft, Quantinuum/Microsoft
Codes: IBM
Error mitigation: Qedma
Cost reduction: Google
Circuit optimizations: Phasecraft
Hating Sergio Gago is not authorized.
Sergio Gago has provided a short status report on the quantum industry. My only issue with the post is that D-Wave’s Alan Baratz should be the definitive loser in the AI-generated illustration. In fact, he should be losing to Dr. Su (AMD) or Mr. Gelsinger (Intel), not Mr. Huang (Nvidia). This link might require a LinkedIn account.
The stock market only behaves rationally; how can this happen?
First Technologies First
The Saturday, January 11th edition of “Dr. Bob Sutor – Quantum and AI” offers a unique twist on the ongoing stock market discourse, and of course it’s correct. Other quantum technologies are more mature than quantum computing, so it’s reasonable to place the timeline for useful quantum computing after those become practical.
What happened to Zapata?
Dr. Max Radin provides the first post-mortem I’ve seen on the company. There’s good news at the end, stating that many “Zapatistas” have been able to find employment or entrepreneurship. The only question the article doesn’t answer is why the hell anyone listens to Sabine Hossenfelder.
What’s your quantum address?
Thanks to Dr. Aggie Branczyk for sharing this on Bluesky. You can enter your address with whatever degree of precision you like, and the app will return your quantum state as if the Earth were a Bloch sphere. It will also plot your location on the Bloch sphere. It’s an interesting exercise in the encoding of classical information onto qubits.
Opinions are my own and do not represent the views of my employers, business partners or my wife.
What’s another D-Wave lie among friends?
If you’re not yet subscribed to Sergio Gago’s Quantum Pirates Substack, you just missed one of the greatest lines (above) in publication history. Another great one follows soon thereafter: “But if you want advice, spend more time with your kids.” We need that wisdom to offset the bullshit spewed by D-Wave and IonQ.
What the hell does that mean?
Oh, so that’s what it means. If you have any questions yourself, check out Alice & Bob’s glossary. It’s got short-and-sweet answers, and then you can click for more detailed explanations. The long answers appear to be written for laypeople, and I’ve spotted a few analogies hidden among them.
Vote for your favorite Lie joke.
Bambordé Baldé and Quantum Formalism asked you to vote for your favorite Lie joke out of 8 submissions. Unfortunately, due to The Quantum Dragon’s schedule, voting ended 2 days ago. However, there are links to YouTube and LinkedIn where you should hopefully be able to find the results of the voting.
Jim Cramer on the gamification of QC stocks
CNBC’s Jim Cramer joined Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg in taking a big steaming dump on the 4 quantum computing stocks. But what’s interesting about this particular video clip is that he explains a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes as some day traders try to snatch short-term gains.
Quantum Socrates
The philosopher Socrates emphasized dialogue, critical thinking, and ethical behavior. The philosopher Microsoft is emphasizing quantum computing, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence. The latter will be sharing its philosophy throughout 2025, the International Year of Quantum.
Inside Alice & Bob and Pasqal
Take a video tour inside Alice & Bob’s superconducting quantum computer and Pasqal’s neutral atom quantum computer. That’s always interesting, of course, but what’s also interesting this time around is YouTube’s automatic translation of the audio from French to English.
Aaaaannnd now I’m hungry.
I don’t normally share dead-end algorithms, but I support Dr. Korbinian Kottmann’s depiction of a quantum circuit as a sandwich. It looks like a BLT, but I don’t know what the 4th ingredient is, and I’m guessing it’s on rye bread. Interestingly, 600 epochs on real hardware is indeed enough time to make and eat a sandwich.
Inside the Proton
This is admittedly waaaaay outside my wheelhouse, but this Simons Foundation’s Quanta Magazine article by Charlie Wood and Merrill Sherman has visualizations and animations that can’t not be in this newsletter. Yes, that’s an intentional double negative. I’m awarding bonus points for the phrase “gluon dandelion.”
The Voice of Quantum
I know what you’re thinking: How can I call HKA Marketing Communications the “voice” of quantum if their press releases are written? Well, that’s why HKA is the official public relations agency for the UN-designated International Year of Quantum (IYQ) and I’m not.
A New Way to Give Talks
Everything about Prof. Bob Coecke’s talk is different — and better — than any talk I can recall off the top of my head. He’s sitting at a desk instead of standing. There are slides that actually have visuals instead of giant slabs of text. There’s joking and laughing. There are book giveaways. Overall, this is how it should be done.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Quantum Computer
Berin Iwlew, in a conversation unrelated to cryptography, sent me an emoji with a cowboy hat. Somehow, the image reminded me of the classic scene from Dr. Strangelove. I can’t shake the feeling that someone really ought to write an article or a book with this title.
Quantum Noise Detector
Alan Ho and Prof. Michael Biercuk inspired the Resuscitated Quantum Bullshit Detector, but the original(?) has resurfaced on Bluesky. It’s back to reposting a simple “bullshit” or “not bullshit,” so The Quantum Dragon will continue to monitor for challenges, controversies, and debates under this new name from Dr. Bob Sutor.
Do dead-end algorithms have a future? Shockingly, some people still think so.
Useful quantum computing is 15-30 years away? SAP is taking the opposite extreme without naming its industry partners.
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.