Quantum computers and diamonds

Quantum Brilliance CEO Mark Luo discusses how his company is pioneering quantum computing with synthetic diamonds, offering a miniaturised and energy-efficient alternative. He highlights the company's rapid growth since its spin-out from the Australian National University, its unique approach to quantum technology and the enormous commercial potential of quantum at the edge.

Abbey Phillipps: I'm Abbey Phillipps for the Finance News Network, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with the CEO of Quantum Brilliance, Mark Luo. Mark, welcome to the network.

Mark Luo: Thank you, Abbey. It's a pleasure to be on the network.

Abbey Phillipps: First up, could you provide an overview of what Quantum Brilliance does?

Mark Luo: No problem. So, Quantum Brilliance is a diamond quantum technology company. We utilise synthetic diamonds in order to help companies make useful sensors, computers. What we do at Quantum Brilliance is not just making the diamond materials available, but we actually utilise the diamond to build super powerful computers that are also known as quantum computers, and these quantum computers are able to do a whole range of tasks at much lower energy costs, and do complex calculations that just can't be done by today's computers.

Abbey Phillipps: So, Mark, could you talk a little more about how Quantum Brilliance got started, where the company came from, and what role has the existing infrastructure and ecosystem in Australia played in its growth?

Mark Luo: So, Quantum Brilliance was a spin-out from Australian National University. The research that it spun out from came from over two decades where Australia is a world leader in diamond quantum technology globally. The research that it has achieved actually has allowed Australia to become a global leader in this specific scientific field. We actually spun out in 2020 when we had to go to the next stage of taking the company towards commercial outcomes, and this includes being able to export our current products, being able to engage with international leading experts to develop the technology further.

What we've done in the past four, five years since we spun out has been quite remarkable. We now have about 85 staff globally across seven cities in three countries. We have signed about $50m of total contract value across supercomputing centres to defence aerospace, and I have to say that would not have been possible without Australia's research infrastructure and the ecosystem that has supported us. For example, we're very deeply embedded with the University of La Trobe, as well as RMIT and ANU, but we also engage with a range of research infrastructure, like ANFF, or even getting people like S3B Semiconductor Services Bureau to support us in our next phase of growth. So, without Australia's wonderful research infrastructure and ecosystem, none of our global achievements would have been possible.

Abbey Phillipps: For people who are unfamiliar with quantum computing, could you explain its potential in comparison with classical computing, and how Quantum Brilliance's approach is different from what other companies are doing?

Mark Luo: So, quantum computing uses quantum bits. In classical computing, you've got ones and zeros as your bits. In quantum computing, you use your quantum bits in order to do computation or sensing. The reason why quantum bits are very powerful is you're able to encode information densely into one quantum bit, and that basically allows super dense information encoding, and if you have two spheres where you can encode a lot of information, then you can achieve super correlation. And so what that means is, even with 64 quantum bits, as Google demonstrated in 2019, you are then able to do computation that is physically impossible for a large supercomputer. And so the future is quite impressive with quantum calculations, but also even for quantum sensing, because you're able to detect physical properties that you can't use with modern classical electronics, so that you can have, for example, more accurate satellites, being able to have on-site pathology, being able to detect minerals at a much higher accuracy, all using quantum information theory.

Where Quantum Brilliance is different is, in order to get a quantum bit, you have to remove decoherence. And what is decoherence? Decoherence is vibrations, room temperature changes, anything that can cause a quantum state to lose its properties so that the quantum bit is no longer useful. That's why other companies use very large fridges or vacuum systems or high-power laser in order to retain that quantum property for as long as possible. So, for example, when you look at an IBM quantum computer, it's got a dilution fridge that is colder than the temperature outside of the universe, it's minus 270 degrees. Or you have these really high-power lasers that other companies have that is fragile and quite dangerous.

What Quantum Brilliance is doing differently is because we're using synthetic diamond as the material to do that quantum bit… Diamond is a very rigid material, so that quantum bit stays there without needing large fridges, high-power lasers or vacuum systems, so therefore you can have quantum sensors or quantum computers that can be deployed anywhere, anywhere from a satellite to a vehicle to even our laptop, or into a submarine, and that changes the deployability of quantum and normalises quantum systems, like your Intel chips, your Nvidia GPUs. And so that is what makes Quantum Brilliance quite a unique company, which is to enable mass-deploy quantum technology anywhere, everywhere, in all types of environments.

Abbey Phillipps: And Mark, following on from that, what are your advantages of your technology over other approaches?

Mark Luo: The advantages of Quantum Brilliance's technology is the ability to achieve extraordinary miniaturization. So, for quantum computers, you can get down to the size of a lunchbox. For quantum sensors, you can actually… People have already built prototypes that are the size of a credit card, so that means that you have mass deployability.

The second advantage is very low power consumption. So, for our quantum computers that we've actually installed on client premises, it's only consuming about 400 watts.

The other advantage is mass production. And, ultimately, for any type of technology, you need to get your unit price down, and it needs to be repeatable and mass-manufacturable. And using synthetic diamond and leveraging off the semiconductor sector actually allows you to have a mass-deployed, low-cost, room-temperature, low-energy-consumption, mass-manufacturable technology for quantum sensing or quantum computing solutions.

Abbey Phillipps: So, Mark, you touched a little on this already. I was wondering if you could outline for our viewers what quantum at the edge is and could mean, what challenges you're facing in bringing quantum to the edge, and where you're at in terms of a timeline.

Mark Luo: Yeah, that's a really good question. So, quantum computing at the edge is analogous to needing to have artificial intelligence at the edge. Now, when you look at ChatGPT systems in terms of having that edge deployability, it's actually not that intelligent. In order to increase the level of sophistication, quantum technology could really enable that for basically even being able to process more dynamic information much faster with less data that needs to be trained. So, quantum at the edge is really able to transform industrial robotic systems. It's able to transform signal processing for having satellites being able to have onboard processing. It's able to also have quantum sensing at the edge to change how we do healthcare, change how we do position, navigation and timing for level 5, level 6 driverless systems, and also all robotic systems, and that's the power of quantum at the edge.

Where the industry is at at the moment is there's about 40 companies globally that have selected synthetic diamond to be part of their future product roadmap for quantum at the edge. You've got companies like Bosch, Thales, Lockheed Martin. Computing, you've got people like Fujitsu, Quantum Brilliance. And for quantum Internet, you've got AWS that has also selected synthetic diamond to build the next generation of secure internet. And so I would say the rate of adoption for quantum at the edge, whether it's from sensing, computing to quantum communications, sensing is now till the next five years, computing is the next four to seven years, and quantum communications is probably the next five to ten years, so we're actually not that far away off having a real-life deployable system into day-to-day applications that can make a material impact on our lives.

Abbey Phillipps: So, Mark, could you comment on the commercial potential of quantum at the edge?

Mark Luo: So, quantum at the edge has two limbs to it. One is quantum computing, the other one is quantum sensing.

Within quantum computing, it's estimated to be a $100bn market, and we think the edge market will be at least 50 per cent of that $100bn market, and that's because you will need to have mass-deployed quantum computers that is engaged in edge or distributed computational calculations, similar to having different types of computer chips in offices or in hospitals. That's the first limb.

The second limb is quantum sensing. Quantum sensing is estimated to be approximately a $10bn market. The global sensing market is about $300bn. And sensing as a market, by using quantum sensors at the edge, is highly prevalent because sensors are meant to be dynamic, deployable, and easy to integrate and engage with.

One example of a quantum sensor is having a quantum sensor that can do better battery electric vehicle management. If you look at the statistics, it's probably at least 10 million EVs that will be sold by the end of the decade, and if every vehicle has a quantum sensor, that's easily over a $1bn market. That's a concrete example of a quantum sensor that is deployable at the edge.

Abbey Phillipps: Now, Mark, could you comment on your partnership with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee? How did this partnership come about and what are the objectives of this collaboration?

Mark Luo: So, Oak Ridge National Labs is quite an amazing partnership that we're very excited and proud about. So, we've been working with Oak Ridge National Labs since 2020, mostly on the software development side. What we're doing at Oak Ridge National Labs is deploying the first cluster of quantum computers on premise. The reason why it's a very big deal is because on-premise quantum computing is how people are really able to discover what kind of application algorithms are possible, and have a physical device to engage with.

So, we're deploying that next year, and we're already starting to work with them on different computational chemistry workflows, and that engagement would allow us to achieve some landmark applications. That is possible because there's a physical on-premise quantum computer paired with the computational algorithms that allows us to discover what is possible. A lot of that will be shared incrementally over the next 12 to 18 months, so please stay in the loop about the achievements that we will be able to demonstrate.

Abbey Phillipps: And, Mark, finally, Quantum Brilliance is supporting the Semiconductor Australia 2024 conference. Could you tell us why you're involved in this event, and how you see Australian companies contributing to the global semiconductor sector?

Mark Luo: So, S3B is a organisation I'm a humongous fan of. They've done an amazing job in terms of uplifting Australia's semiconductor capability, and the global semiconductor total market value is expected to hit a trillion dollars by the end of the decade. There is a lot of opportunities for Australia to really participate in.

Australia, for example, is known to have invented Wi-Fi, but failed to commercialise it. We have lots of fantastic semiconductor engineers that have been participating in integrated quantum chip design, and we also have capabilities in packaging within Australia itself already.

So, what S3B was established to do was to identify the areas of strength of Australia and how does it connect to the global semiconductor value chain, for example, in Taiwan or in US, and where we can have a sustainable competitive advantage. So, without S3B being able to connect the dots across the global value chain and what Australia's competitive strength are, which quantum technology is one part of it, I don't think Australia will be able to take a percentage of that $1 trillion market share. So, that's why we're a huge supporter of S3B and everything that they're doing to support entrepreneurs, SMEs and even large companies participate in the global semiconductor value chain.

Abbey Phillipps: Mark, thank you very much for your time. Have a great day.

Mark Luo: Thank you, Abbey.

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