Horizon Quantum is part of a new crop of startups that focus on building new tools for building software for quantum computers. The Singapore-based company, which is hardware-agnostic but also launched a close partnership with Rigetti Computing in 2018, today announced that it has raised a $3.23 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital India. Previous investors SGInnovate, Abies Ventures, DCVC, Qubit Protocol, Summer Capital and Posa CV also participated.
Breakthroughs in quantum computing keep coming – the latest quantum processor designed by Google has solved a complex mathematical calculation in less than four minutes; the most advanced conventional computers would require 10,000 years to get to an answer. Here’s the problem though: even as scientists perfect the quantum computing hardware, there aren’t many people with the expertise to make use of it, particularly in real-life settings.
Breakthroughs in quantum computing keep coming – the latest quantum processor designed by Google has solved a complex mathematical calculation in less than four minutes; the most advanced conventional computers would require 10,000 years to get to an answer. Here’s the problem though: even as scientists perfect the quantum computing hardware, there aren’t many people with the expertise to make use of it, particularly in real-life settings.
As quantum computers become ever more powerful, how can we be sure that the answers they return are accurate? A team of physicists, including Horizon’s CEO Joe Fitzsimons, have developed a new method to use one unreliable quantum processor to verify another and implemented it on five different quantum processors.
As shared by Dr Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, 2021 will be the year when quantum computing will start to blossom, and Singapore is at the forefront of this exciting field. In this session, Michael Brett, Principal Specialist at Amazon Braket, welcomes our CEO Dr Joe Fitzsimons who introduces Horizon’s classical to quantum toolchain and explains how Horizon is leveraging Amazon Braket to build solutions that have the potential to revolutionise other industries.
Singapore, a skyscraper-laden, tropical paradise known for its business-friendly policies. With the second-highest GDP per capita (PPP) in the world, it’s no wonder this island city-state — one of the Four Asian Tigers — has some of the most innovative startups in the world. This goes for startups in the quantum tech ecosystem, too, with a handful so far founded within the last half a decade.
Quantum algorithms for practical machine learning models can load data from QRAM in constant time without violating the search lower bound. The study, published in Quantum Machine Intelligence Journal, was conducted by Jansen Zhikuan Zhao, Jack F., Patrick Rebentrost, Vedran Dunjko and Joe Fitzsimons (Horizon’s CEO).
Dr Si-Hui Tan had already developed a keen interest in mathematics and science in secondary school. From Raffles Girls’ School she went on to pursue advanced mathematics and a degree in physics, and eventually earned herself a post-doctorate degree in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Today, the 40-year-old is the chief science officer at a local start-up, Horizon Quantum Computing. The company aims to make quantum computing more accessible to software developers.
This new approach doesn’t require any communication between the client and server once the data has been passed off, while providing some data security for a variety of quantum computations. The study was conducted by Jonas Zeuner, Ioannis Pitsios, Si-Hui Tan (Horizon's CSO), Aditya N. Sharma, Joe Fitzsimons (Horizon's CEO), Roberto Osellame and Philip Walther.
Driven by the vision of quantum computing as a revolution in computing technology, Joe Fitzsimons quit his tenured faculty position to found Horizon Quantum Computing in 2018. Drawing on over 15 years’ experience in quantum computing and computational complexity theory, today he fully dedicates his time to Horizon with the goal of making quantum computing a general-purpose computing technology capable of addressing some of the world’s most challenging computational problems.
Identical particle entanglement can be coaxed into mediating other forms of entanglement that are already widely used in quantum computing and communications technologies, as recently demonstrated by a team of researchers from the University of Nottingham and University of Basel. Horizon's Technical Product Manager Jayne Thompson offered her opinion as part of a Scientific American article about the study.
Science Magazine puts the spot on quantum illumination, often dubbed "quantum radar", and the important role played by work that our Chief Science Officer Si-Hui Tan did during her PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, back in 2008, comparing quantum with entangled photons and coherent states.
Late last year, the world of quantum computing achieved a significant milestone. A quantum processor developed by Google was able to solve a complex mathematical calculation in just three minutes and 20 seconds. In comparison, the most advanced supercomputer to date would have taken more than 10,000 years to solve it.
Quantum technologies can be designed more efficiently if they can be trained in self-improvement. A team of researchers in Singapore and China, including Jayne Thompson, who recently joined Horizon Quantum Computing as a Technical Product Manager after doing research for Centre for Quantum Technologies, have demonstrated this potential through engineering a new method to machine learn quantum-enhanced probes for precision sensing applications.
No matter how fast. No matter how powerful. No matter how many qubits can be entangled. No matter how long those qubits can remain entangled. The quantum computer industry will never reach its full potential unless people can actually use quantum computers. Horizon Quantum Computing, a Singapore-based quantum startup, was founded with the mission of making quantum computing more people-friendly in mind, according to Joe Fitzsimons, the company’s CEO.
Quantum computing has gained significant interest over the years because of its potential to solve problems beyond the reach of the most powerful supercomputers. Singapore’s Horizon Quantum Computing is a startup that aims to make quantum computing much easier to access and in turn become a part of a bigger tech revolution.
Today we announce that we have increased our seed financing to SGD 4.5 million (USD 3.23 million) thanks to a seed-plus round led by Sequoia Capital India with participation from previous investors SGInnovate, Abies Ventures, DCVC, Qubit Protocol, Summer Capital and Posa CV.The additional funding will allow us to accelerate the speed at which we can bring our innovative technology to market, to further engage with customers and early adopters and to continue strengthening our team.
“After an academic career at top universities in Ireland, the U.K. and Singapore, Joe Fitzsimons spun off Horizon Quantum Computing, a quantum software company, from CQT in 2018. The tipping point was on the horizon, he said, and he wanted to be established by the time one of the big tech companies announced that they had achieved quantum supremacy.”
Horizon Quantum Computing is proud to sponsor Q2B 2019. Organized from 10 to 12 December in San Jose, California, this three-day conference brings industry, government and research institutions together to stimulate application discovery and development. Dr. Joe Fitzsimons, CEO of Horizon Quantum Computing, will be sharing the company’s latest achievements at the talk “From queues to qubits: compiling classical code for quantum processors”.
“Quantum advantage means demonstrating computational supremacy for a meaningful problem, showing that a quantum processor has been built which is more useful than a conventional computer for at least one problem,” said Fitzsimons. “The path to large-scale quantum computing is more of a marathon than a sprint. The current result certainly places Google at the front of the pack, but there is still a long way to the finish line.”
