Active Cypher Shows Vulnerability of Conventional Encryption

(Forbes). Forbes enterprise contributor Tom Coughlin takes a look at several items but this summary focuses on his discussion of recent claims by Active Cypher on how conventional computers running quantum computer algorithms are endangering current encryption and look at general funding for international quantum computing startups.
Active Cypher, has built a conventional computer with massive parallel processors (NVIDIA cards) running quantum algorithms, called QUBY. It was showing the system at Microsoft’s internal Ready and the RSA conference. The company was making the point that conventional encryption (RSA and AES) are nearing the end of their usefulness. Of course, a true quantum computer will be much more efficient running quantum algorithms than this device, but devices such as this demonstrate the coming vulnerability of current encryption.
Active Cypher’s Dan Gleason said in an interview that, “With just $600 in hardware QUBY has been able to demonstrate calculations that take years on conventional computers can be solved substantially quicker.” He goes on to say that, “Between quantum-optimized algorithms and artificial intelligence, cracking mathematically based cryptographic algorithms such as AES will become much easier.
In terms of funding there are efforts on quantum computing underway at many Universities and companies in the US and around the world. According to Nature, by the start of 2019 private investors had funded at least 52 quantum-technology companies globally since 2012, many of them spun out from Universities. The October 2019 Nature article estimates that in 2017 and 2018 companies received at least $450 M in private funding.