Russia Funding & Launching Campaign to Build Working Quantum Computer

(Nature) Russia has launched an effort to build a working quantum computer. The government will inject around 50 billion roubles (US$790 million) over the next 5 years into basic and applied quantum research carried out at leading Russian laboratories.
“This is a real boost,” says Aleksey Fedorov, a quantum physicist at the Russian Quantum Center (RQC), a private research facility in Skolkovo near Moscow. “If things work out as planned, this initiative will be a major step towards bringing Russian quantum science to a world-class standard.”
Russia’s New Funding Intended to Help Scientists Develop Own Approach Quantum Computing
Russia is far from milestones being achieved by others in quantum computing. “We’re 5 to 10 years behind,” says Fedorov. “But there’s a lot of potential here, and we follow very closely what’s happening abroad.” Poor funding has excluded Russian quantum scientists from competing with Google, says Ilya Besedin, an engineer at the National University of Science and Technology in Moscow.
Scientists in Russia Developing Own Approaches to Build Quantum Computers
Scientists in Russia are already developing their own approaches to building large-scale quantum computers, says Alexey Ustinov, a condensed matter physicist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, have received grants from the Russian government to set up research groups in Russia. “Russian labs can’t yet compete with the likes of Google,” he says. “But the initiative is a promising start to increase the level of quantum research in Russia. We will see where this will lead.”