D-Wave and NEC Announce Joint Activities to Bring New Hybrid Technologies, Applications, and Services to Customers in Japan

(GlobeNewsWire) NEC Corporation, a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, and D-Wave Systems Inc., a leader in quantum computing systems, software and services, today announced that they have begun joint activities to combine the compute power of NEC’s systems with the quantum computing power of D-Wave’s systems, software and cloud service to bring those combined capabilities to customers in Japan. NEC has made a US$10 million investment in D-Wave in connection with this initiative.
The two companies will work together on the development of hybrid quantum/classical technologies and services that combine the best features of classical computers and quantum computers; the development of new hybrid applications that make use of those services; and joint marketing and sales go-to-market activities to promote quantum computing.
The partnership will focus on the following areas:
1. Development of Hybrid Technologies and Services
NEC and D-Wave will build on the existing hybrid tools of D-Wave’s Leap™ quantum cloud service to develop hybrid services capable of solving large combinatorial optimization problems at high speed, by combining D-Wave’s quantum annealing technology with NEC’s supercomputers.
The newly developed services will be available to customers of both companies through Leap.
2. Development of Hybrid Quantum Applications
NEC and D-Wave will create practical business and scientific quantum applications in fields ranging from transportation to materials science to machine learning, using Leap and the new joint hybrid services.
The two companies will apply D-Wave’s collection of over 200 early customer applications to six markets identified by NEC, such as finance, manufacturing and distribution.
The two companies will also explore the possibility of enabling the use of NEC’s supercomputers on D-Wave’s Leap quantum cloud service.
3. Conduct Joint Marketing Activities to get enterprises started building quantum applications.
NEC and D-Wave will conduct joint marketing activities, including conferences, media activities, training, use case collateral and quantum computing challenges later in 2020 to get enterprises started building hybrid quantum applications.
The companies will also develop joint go-to-market programs to bring quantum computing further into the enterprise in Japan.
NEC will also keynote Qubits, D-Wave’s annual user conference. Qubits is an invite-only customer, partner and user event that brings the community of quantum pioneers together to share, learn and extend the practice of building quantum applications. Hosted in Fall 2020, Qubits will be a virtual event covering multiple time zones, including a focus on Japan Standard Time to ensure global access and benefit.