Inside Quantum Technology - Get The Latest Quantum News & Events Here

“A business-focused science and technology publication covering quantum computing, quantum communications, quantum life science, quantum finance, and related research and industry developments.”

Inside Quantum Technology ranked 8th on Sponsor Scout’s list of the 23 most sponsor-active Science newsletters, as ranked by their Newsletter Leader Score. Although it says, “Written by Brian Siegelwax · Newsletter Editor and Writer,” I’m going to take this opportunity, while The Quantum Dragon isn’t looking, to share credit with Dr. Alan Meckler and Dr. Sandra Helsel.

This week’s IQT News:

• IQT’s “Week-that-Was” on LI Aug 28-Sept 4, 2026
• What do you wanna talk about?
• IQT Sunday Edition
• You’re legally responsible.
• Emerging Industrialization for Quantum Chemicals and Quantum Life Science

This week’s The Premium Quantum Dragon (Substack):

• Diraq’s 1st Computer Deployment (Pending)
• Conductor Quantum’s QCircuitEval
• Quantus QTC
• Diffraqtion’s Quantum Camera
• Classiq has more algorithms than you.
• Okay, Origin Quantum, that’s pretty cool.
• Who bought IonQ’s Superion 256?

This week’s Friends of The Quantum Dragon (inline):

• “Transition and protection are not the same thing.” by Simon Pamplin, CTO at Certes
• “Error-corrected systems will still produce residual logical errors.” by Dr. Eyal Bairey, VP Research at Qedma Quantum Computing

In this edition:

• Congratulations, Martijn De Kok!
• Laurent Prost’s Emotional Support Qubits
• What’s a “quantum computer?”
• QuSecure did my kind of field testing.
• Bill Bell’s Soup to Qubits
• “Transition and protection are not the same thing.”
• The Quantum Leap’s S/M/L Guide to “Quantum”
• IBM’s Rows and Rows of Quantum Computers
• A Fridgeside Chat with Strangeworks’ whurley!
• Vescent has a bourbon-based drink!
• “Error-corrected systems will still produce residual logical errors.”
• You’re legally responsible.
• Pasqal’s QoolQit Contest is live.
• Quantum Noise Detector

Congratulations, Martijn De Kok!

Martijn De Kok just started a new job as a Radio Frequency Engineer at Orange Quantum Systems, and he knows why I’m congratulating him in this newsletter. More than shaking his hand, actually, I’m eager to meet up with him someday and going to go grab that cup of Joe. Coffee, in my humble opinion, is the language of peace. This link may require a LinkedIn account.

Laurent Prost’s Emotional Support Qubits

Dr. Aggie Branczyk got this started by invoking emotional qubits, but Laurent Prost kicked it up a notch by adding the word “support.” Let the record show that there is no such thing as an emotional support dragon; like cats, they absolutely couldn’t care less. If you bring a tribute of gold, however, I’ve observed The Quantum Dragon fake it, though. This link may require a LinkedIn account.

Yuval Boger’s “Quantum Bits”

What’s a “quantum computer?”

Before digital computers, we had human computers. People did the calculations by hand. Following that tradition, I know many folks who define quantum computers as anything doing the calculations. It could be humans with paper and pencils. It could be CPUs or GPUs. From now on, when I hear that, I’ll open up Yuval Boger’s “Quantum Bits” to the DiVincenzo Criteria pages.

“QuSecure’s post-quantum security platform reached technology readiness level seven (TRL 7) after soldiers used it to protect and monitor tactical mission systems during a U.S. Army field exercise.”

QuSecure did my kind of field testing.

Thanks to QuSecure for the trip down memory lane. I didn’t do anything involving protecting or monitoring data connections, but I have fond memories of [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and especially [REDACTED]. And the part about QuSecure not being permitted to identify the systems? Ah, a good time was had by all.

Bill Bell’s Soup to Qubits

There’s more to this edition of Quantum Campus than this story about Xanadu, which means extra kudos for keying on it for the newsletter’s title. In case you missed it, as I did, the manufacturing facility that Xanadu will be building with its new financing from the Canadian government previously housed a Cambpell’s Soup factory.

“Transition and protection are not the same thing.”

“The most important part of the G7’s message is the recognition that quantum can no longer be treated as a distant technology problem. Organisations are being told to start their PQC transition now, but transition and protection are not the same thing. Mapping cryptographic assets, understanding dependencies and building migration plans are essential, but none of those activities protects the sensitive data moving through vulnerable systems today.

The G7 is also right to highlight ‘harvest now, decrypt later’. If information needs to remain confidential for ten, twenty or thirty years, its exposure window has already started. Once that data has been intercepted and stored, organisations cannot retrospectively protect it when a cryptographically relevant quantum computer arrives.

The real challenge will be legacy infrastructure. Replacing cryptography embedded across decades of applications, supply chains and interconnected systems is not something organisations can achieve overnight. Security therefore needs to be abstracted away from individual applications and infrastructure and attached directly to the data, allowing the cryptography protecting it to change without repeatedly rebuilding the systems underneath.

The G7 describes PQC as a foreseeable evolution of cryptographic best practice rather than a standalone compliance exercise, and that distinction is critical. Organisations should not be working towards a single moment when they can declare themselves ‘quantum ready’. They need crypto agility, where algorithms, keys and policies can continuously adapt as standards and threats change.

Quantum readiness is not just about completing one migration. It is about building an architecture capable of handling continuous cryptographic change while ensuring the data that matters remains protected throughout the transition.”

Simon Pamplin will be speaking at PQC+IQT, which is coming to New York City October 25-26.

The Quantum Leap’s S/M/L Guide to “Quantum”

IBM’s Rows and Rows of Quantum Computers

A Fridgeside Chat with Strangeworks’ whurley!

Despite my LinkedIn profile photo, I’m an advocate of moving beyond the image of a “golden chandelier” as representative of quantum computers. They don’t all have that. Nevertheless, I’m jealous I never thought up “fridgeside chat.” That’s good. I console myself by knowing that an organization named The Red Fridge Society had a little bit of an advantage over me here.

https://bsiegelwax.substack.com/p/a-different-kind-of-quantumai-synergy

Vescent has a bourbon-based drink!

I’ve been following Vescent since Russ Fein of Corporate Fuel introduced me to it. I only liked it then, but I absolutely love it now. The company has been honored with having a bourbon-based drink named after it. The drink is called “The Timekeeper,” which is quite apt for an organization that sells an atomic clock. This link may require a LinkedIn account.

“Error-corrected systems will still produce residual logical errors.”

Following the announcement that Qedma Quantum Computing, the HQC² team at the University of Copenhagen (KU), Denmark, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) demonstrated the value of error mitigation in delivering accurate quantum chemistry results, Dr. Eyal Bairey, VP Research at Qedma Quantum Computing, provided this exclusive comment:

“We agree that scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing will ultimately require error detection and correction. Error mitigation is not a replacement for error correction, and no serious company should present it that way.

The important distinction is between asymptotic and finite quantum advantage. Error mitigation alone is not expected to deliver asymptotic, exponentially scaling quantum advantage. But it can significantly accelerate finite quantum advantage: achieving useful results for concrete, finite-size problems on today’s hardware. In fact, error mitigation has been a crucial ingredient in many of the major quantum-advantage demonstrations reported to date.

Error mitigation will also remain important in the era of quantum error correction. Error-corrected systems will still produce residual logical errors, while the number of high-quality logical qubits will remain limited. Error mitigation can address those remaining errors, and it becomes more efficient when combined with error correction because the correction process produces valuable syndrome information. Qedma’s SALEM approach demonstrates how this information can be used to reduce logical errors with substantially lower overhead than approaches that ignore syndrome data. Error detection and correction are also part of Qedma’s product roadmap.

The path forward is layered: use mitigation to make current hardware more useful while building error-corrected systems that mitigation can further improve. Error correction is the long-term foundation; error mitigation is part of how we get there, and remains valuable as the technology evolves.”

Image generated by Google’s language model AI.

You’re legally responsible.

The Quantum Dragon was feeling entrepreneurial, allowing neighboring villagers to store their valuables near his cave. The prevailing opinion was that no one in their right mind would ever approach a dragon’s cave. Red dragons breathe fire, after all. But what The Quantum Dragon didn’t realize was that he was accepting legal responsibility for their treasures….

“Explore Pasqal’s new open-source, hardware-agnostic Python library for analog quantum programming.”

Pasqal’s QoolQit Contest is live.

This is a different kind of contest. Reproduce a research paper, explore an industrial use case, and/or extend the QoolQit codebase for Pasqal; then build it and prepare a presentation for them; and then hope and pray that you’ll receive… wait for it… Pasqal compute hours in appreciation. I’m so old, I remember when that used to be called “work,” and you’d get paid for it.

Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.

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.

• Michael Spencer’s “Xanadu is now a Canadian Sovereign Quantum Play” can be summed up with his phrase, “I am concerned.”
• Marin Ivezic praised IonQ’s paper, but he criticized the press release and media coverage of it.