Grants
Nu Quantum has won a series of UK Government project Grants (via IFS / ‘Innovate UK’ service) . Since ~2022 the applications have all been strategically focussed to mature the critical technology required to form scalable Quantum Networks.
In 2022 Nu Quantum won 3 ‘Feasibility Studies’ that progress in parallel both QPI and QNU fundamentals:
- INTERCOM : Ion Photon integration (with University of Oxford)
- CALYX : Atom-Photon integration (with Cold Quanta / Infleqtion)
- Medusa : Integrated Photonics (’PIC’) switching and detection (with University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of Glasgow, and Cisco as End-User)
These 3 projects had grant values of ~$650k each but provided the credibility and experience to allow the business to bid and win the very strategic ‘IDRA’ contract, below.
In 2023 Nu Quantum bid and won project Quarrefour under a joint UK/Canada scheme, with a grant value of ~$400k. This is a pure Theory (QEC) project where Nu Quantum collaborates with a leading quantum software software house (softwareQ https://www.softwareq.ca/ ). The project benchmarks and matures compliers suited to multi-core QC systems; perfectly aligned with the hardware developments in IDRA.
Procurement contracts
In 2023, Nu Quantum won two highly significant revenue-recognising contracts from the UK Government: IDRA and LYRA (details below), booking a total of $11M.
IDRA - $8M
The National Quantum Computer Centre, enabled by NSSIF, will be a customer for a 2-year joint project with Nu Quantum, which aims to accelerate and de-risk technological progress in the field of quantum coherent networking for quantum computers. The technologies created by Nu Quantum will be evaluated, tested, and deployed within a test-bed framework, which if successful, could eventually connect multiple quantum computing devices. The final testbed will be deployed at the NQCC Facility based at Rutherford Appleton Labs, Oxford.
The total contract value is $8M delivered over 2 years / 8 contract Quarters.
LYRA - $3M
LYRA is a project won under a UK Gov / Innovate UK ‘SBRI’ competition - 100% funded and recognised as Revenue. Contract value is ~$3M delivered over 6 Quarters / 18 Months.
The project ‘A Modular path towards Industrialised and Scalable Quantum Networking’ - delivers a working ‘prototype product’ instantiation of a complete QNU plus a separate ‘Test Harness’ that faithfully emulates the behaviour of 4 ion-trap nodes. The project’s ethos is to prove the operation of a 4 node network outside of an optics lab and in a more datacenter like environment, with promises of autonomy and upgradeability. The project thus delivers a complete ‘test-bed’ that allows the prototype QNU to prove it’s performance in the context of (emulated) Ion QC nodes. The expectation is set that the Test Harness could be replaced with real Ion-Trap nodes and the QNU could actually instantiate entanglement.
Commercially the project has Cisco as a public End-User / Lead Customer of the system plus a strong array of companies assembled as a ‘Customer Requirements Council’. These companies have committed to be engaged with the project and provide input to the roadmap in the form of future requirements. The project started with 5 members in CRC (plus Cisco) : Airbus, NTTData, Nvidia OQC, & Quantinuum. It has subsequently added QuEra and thus has representation from 3 different QC modalities. Ions (Quantinuum); Atoms (QuEra) and Superconducting (OQC).
Intersection between IDRA and LYRA
The two projects are highly synergistic - IDRA’s ambition is to ‘move the needle’ on state-of-the-art rate and fidelity of a quantum network; LYRA has an orthogonal goal of industrialisation and modularisation with ‘useful’ but less than SoA performance. As capability is delivered from IDRA and follow-on projects it can be adopted by LYRA in an increasingly productised form.
