Alphabet’s Second Secretive Quantum Computing Team Working on Algorithms & Applications

(Wired) Neither Google nor its CEO Sundar Pichai have said much about another quantum computing team at Alphabet, at its secretive lab X.
X, formerly known as Google X, is dedicated to incubating “moonshot” technologies that might underpin new Google-scale businesses. Its small group of quantum researchers is not building its own quantum computing hardware. The group’s leader is more interested in creating new algorithms and applications to run on quantum computers, and building software libraries that allow conventional coders to use the exotic machines.
“Hardware’s very interesting [but] it’s really software that gets the majority of the value creation,” said Jack Hidary, the serial entrepreneur who leads X’s quantum research, in a November talk at Carnegie Mellon University.
Hidary’s biography on a book he authored about “applied” quantum computing, published last year, says he and his team work at X on quantum algorithms and software libraries; they sit in the X building and report to the lab’s chief, Astro Teller.