Innovate UK has announced the winners of the Quantum Missions pilot competition.
The funding aims to accelerate the QC and QN technologies by increasing their capabilities and removing technological barriers to their commercialisation and adoption.
Advances in quantum have real-world impact. Quantum computers could deliver computation power beyond the capabilities of the most advanced supercomputers.
The resulting benefits could see breakthroughs in drug discovery, financial portfolio optimisation and the empowering of artificial intelligence (AI).
Developments in QN technologies are critical
As the technology advances and brings benefits, it can also bring risks.
When quantum computers become powerful enough, our sensitive data could be intercepted by bad actors to be decrypted later.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) can address this risk and protect our data from any kind of attacks.
To make QKD more widely available, developments in QN technologies are critical.
World’s most advanced quantum network at scale
Gary Cutts, Executive Director Digital and Technologies, Innovate UK said:
By 2035, the UK aims to have deployed the world’s most advanced quantum network at scale, pioneering the future quantum internet.
This funding is designed to underpin that ambition and these innovative projects represent a leap forward on this journey – these are exciting and significant advances in the fields of Quantum Computing and Quantum Networks.
Secure UK’s position as a global leader
Roger McKinlay, Challenge Director, Quantum Technologies, Innovate UK said:
The UK is one of the top countries in the world for creating and attracting quantum companies.
Innovative technologies such as the ones receiving funding in this pilot will help to secure the UK’s position as a global leader in this transformative field.
Further information
The ten successful projects are as follows.
QUDITS2
Partners include:
- Vector Photonics (lead)
- Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult
- Phlux Technology
- University of Bristol
Project QUDITS2 is developing a hardware demonstrator platform to showcase the viability of quantum communication systems using qudits, units that can store and process information beyond 0s and 1s.
Following on from the successful Innovate UK funded QUDITS feasibility study, the consortium will develop a demonstrator using commercially available novel photonics technologies from the UK supply chain, able to operate at optical communications wavelengths.
Packaging advancements for quantum networks (PAGNet)
Partners include:
- Alter Technology Tuv Nord UK (lead)
- Kets Quantum Security
- Senko Advanced Components (Euro)
- Wave Photonics
- University of Bristol
- The University Of Sheffield
Classical algorithms are all vulnerable given enough computational power, leading to the urgent need to start securing data against store now decrypt later attacks.
QN, on the other hand, support the transfer and distribution of quantum information.
QKD networks are the current mature state-of-the-art, focusing on information security that does not depend on the amount of computational power of an adversary.
However, they remain prohibitively expensive for widespread deployment.
This project aims to enhance the field of quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPICs) by developing a comprehensive, plug-and-play packaging solution.
The team will create a new service that guarantees low-loss, high-density, and repeatable packaging of QPICs and will demonstrate the utility of this by showing packaged demonstration devices for QKD and entanglement distribution systems.
Silicon quantum error correction (SiQEC)
Partners include:
- Quantum Motion Technologies (lead)
- University College London
Due to the nature of their components, quantum computers are prone to errors that scale up with their number of qubits and operations, inhibiting them from achieving their true potential.
To prevent this, it is necessary to apply quantum error correction (QEC) at different stages of operation.
The SiQEC project aims to deliver the first demonstration of a spin-based quantum computing system capable of implementing repeated rounds of QEC, a critical milestone toward fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Demonstrating a scalable, industrialised qubit-photon interface (QPI) for distributed quantum computing (Hyperlon)
Partners include:
- NU Quantum (lead)
- Cisco Systems
- University of Sussex
This project directly tackles one of the most critical components of a distributed quantum computer:
- the need for a highly efficient interface between qubits inside computing cores
- the wider light-based quantum networking infrastructure
HyperIon will deliver a full system-level demonstrator of a first-of-its-kind QPI prototype with a clear path towards integration with commercial quantum processing units (QPUs) and robust mass production.
Sovereign high-performance entangled photon source for quantum networking (QNET-EPS)
Partners include:
- Lumino Technologies (lead)
- Alter Technology TUV Nord UK
- Redwave Labs
- Vodafone Group
- Heriot-Watt University
A key success factor for the UK’s ambition in quantum networking will be availability of Entangled Photon Sources (EPS) with sufficiently high entangled photon pair generation to support commercially viable services.
There is no mature EPS hardware internationally and a lack of UK supply chain.
The aim of QNET-EPS is to develop the technology and UK supply chain for sovereign, high performance EPS.
Hybrid testbed for quantum computing: bridging deterministic light sources and silicon photonics
Partners include:
- AEGIQ (lead)
- IQE
- Psiquantum
- The University of Sheffield
This project aims to create a testbed for networked quantum information processing operating in channels widely used in telecoms.
Through innovative approaches, the project will enhance single photon sources (SPS) performance to meet the rigorous demands of quantum computing while advancing techniques for scalable growth.
This will enable photonic qubit networking, demonstrating the functionalities of new hybrid architectures to advance fault-tolerant quantum computing systems.
Entanglement enhanced quantum integrated networks (EQUIN)
Partners include:
- Toshiba Europe (lead)
- British Telecommunications
- HSBC Global Services (UK)
- University of York
QKD can protect data transmissions with guaranteed security, by transmissions encoded in photons across telecom optical fibre networks.
Data encrypted with QKD is intrinsically immune from attacks by quantum computers or AI.
This project will expand the capabilities of QKD networks by:
- integration of emerging cryptographic algorithms that are resistant to quantum computers
- integration of systems communicating with entangled photons
EQUIN will deliver flexibility to operate with familiar yet resistant cryptography, state of the art QKD and protocols to interface with emerging quantum computers and the quantum internet.
Single-photon enhanced quantum optical network detector (SEQOND)
Partners include:
- Redwave Labs (lead)
- Covesion and Fraunhofer UK Research
High fidelity, modular and scalable receivers are essential for QKD, scalable quantum computing and the quantum internet.
To address this need, SEQOND will develop and demonstrate a novel approach for quantum receivers, utilising up-conversion to achieve higher performance while maintaining low cost and provide a route to exploit quantum memories.
This new technology will be demonstrated on a commercial quantum network.
Quantum testbed advancements through 2D trapping architectures (Q-TATA)
Partners include:
- Oxford Ionics (lead)
- Bay Photonics
- Riverlane
Trapped ions are the most powerful QCs, measured by Quantum Volume.
However, all existing trapped-ion QCs utilise 1D chip designs with limited ability to route qubits around the chip, with runtimes and errors increasing exponentially with the qubit count.
Thus, Qubit routing is a key bottleneck in scaling quantum computers.
Q-TATA addresses this challenge by enabling highly efficient routing in ion-trap systems with proven world-record gate fidelity.
Extending this layout to 2D significantly increase the speed in multi-qubit systems to up to 1,000,000 times.
QEC readout testbed: SEEQC’s scalable digital QEC ready qubit readout chip integrated with Rigetti’s Novera QPU
Partners include:
- SEEQC UK (lead)
- Cambridge Consultants
- Oxford Instruments Nanotechnology Tools
- Rigetti UK
- National Quantum Computing Centre
- University of Edinburgh
To reach the UK’s one-million quantum operation(1M-QuOp) target by 2028, and ensure further scaling to reach 1Tera QuOps by 2035, quantum computers must run efficient quantum error correction (QEC).
Quantum information is extremely delicate and quickly lost, therefore speed and quality of qubit error readout and processing is critical to ensure errors are quickly corrected and do not build up in the system.
This is true of any kind of quantum computer.
This project integrates SEEQC’s scalable readout system with a leading Rigetti UK QC, which will deliver a full-stack QEC readout system.
This will address the key technical bottleneck of qubit readout, providing a clear upgraded path to scale up quantum computers.
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