Quantinuum is pleased to announce that applications are now open for the Quantinuum SG Grand Challenge 2026, a global innovation challenge designed to bring together researchers, developers, scientists and innovators to explore practical applications of quantum computing.

Organized by Quantinuum and supported by Singapore's National Quantum Office and Aqora, the three-month program aims to foster collaboration across academia, industry and the quantum developer community while supporting the continued growth of Singapore's quantum ecosystem.

A Platform for Quantum Computing Innovation

Participants will work in teams to develop solutions across a range of challenge areas, including chemistry and molecular simulation, optimization, AI for quantum systems, quantum error correction, condensed matter and materials science, and open innovation. Throughout the program, participants will have access to mentoring, technical enablement and Quantinuum quantum computing resources.

Singapore Grand Finale

Selected finalist teams will be invited to present their work at the Grand Finale hosted in Singapore before representatives from academia, and industry. The event will celebrate innovative applications of quantum computing while providing an opportunity for participants to engage with Singapore's growing quantum community.

Join the Challenge

The Quantinuum SG Grand Challenge welcomes participants from around the world. Whether you are an experienced quantum researcher or beginning your quantum computing journey, the program offers an opportunity to collaborate, learn and contribute to the development of practical quantum applications.

Applications are now open. Spaces are limited and subject to review and approval.

• Researchers from Quantinuum, Caltech, the University of Chicago, and Harvard created a rare topologically ordered state of matter on Quantinuum's System Model H2 and used it to perform protected universal quantum gates with non-Abelian anyons.
• The work explores an alternative approach to fault tolerance by using topological properties to protect quantum information. This could reduce the need for magic state distillation, which can (in some circumstances) be resource-intensive.
• Quantinuum continues to show leadership in fault tolerance, with successful demonstrations spanning world record error rates to exotic approaches like topological computing

Quantum computing is all about putting the exotic properties of physics to work. Qubits can exist in two states at once, like the famous cat that is both alive and dead. Qubits can also be entangled, where the state of one will instantaneously affect the state of another - even when they have no way to “talk” to each other. Qubits can even be teleported, moving a quantum state from one place to another without physically moving it through space.

These features give quantum computing its power. But the ‘spooky’ nature of quantum computing doesn’t stop there: our quantum computers are potent enough to make exotic states of matter out of our qubits, and to perform calculations that would warp the mind of more traditional thinkers.

A new approach

In a recent paper published in Nature, researchers at Quantinuum teamed up with Caltech, the University of Chicago, and Harvard to create a rare ‘topologically ordered’ state of matter from our qubits.

When the qubits become ‘topologically ordered’, they become more than individual particles, now ‘related’ to each other in a specific way. This is like how hydrogen and oxygen act as individual gas particles alone, but you can put them together in a certain way so that they become water, a liquid, and an entirely different creature.

When the qubits become topologically ordered, the quantum information that they carried individually gets spread out over the whole system, which acts as a sort of protection from noise. This is like how a net makes a stronger barrier than a bunch of un-knotted ropes.

Once the researchers had topologically ordered qubits, they used the exotic particles that resulted (called non-Abelian anyons) to compute, performing error-protected gates and measurements.

To perform gates, the researchers 'braided' the anyons, which is like changing the shape of the “net”. This is something like the children’s game ‘cats cradle’. Through a sequence of changes to the “net”, the quantum computer can perform full calculations, one day helping scientists to understand the secrets hidden in the world around us.

Why go to such trouble? Well, for the love of discovery of course - but the team had an additional, specific motivation. One of the biggest challenges in building practical quantum computers is protecting them from errors while still being able to perform every operation needed for computation (this is referred to as universality).

This work takes a fresh approach to this challenge. Unlike traditional quantum error correction, the special properties of topological matter enable a universal set of fault tolerant gates without relying on expensive magic state distillation.

Why this matters

Quantum error correction is essential for large-scale quantum computing. While it protects fragile quantum information from noise by turning delicate physical qubits into robust logical qubits, it also introduces a significant constraint: not every quantum gate can be performed directly on logical qubits.

For decades, the standard solution has been to supplement error-corrected operations with magic states. These specially prepared quantum resources enable universal computation but can come at a steep cost - in many estimates of future fault-tolerant quantum computers, magic state preparation dominates both the physical qubit count and the runtime of useful algorithms.

Reducing this overhead has therefore become an important goal in quantum computing. This new approach may significantly reduce the cost by enabling the ‘topological preparation’ of magic states, eliding expensive protocols like distillation. If universal computation can be performed without large-scale magic state distillation, quantum computers could require significantly fewer physical qubits and spend much less time generating computational resources before running useful algorithms.

We will never stop exploring

While there is still considerable work ahead to understand the practical implementation and scalability of these ideas, this result expands the landscape of what's possible in quantum fault tolerance.

Of course, this impressive demonstration describes just one approach we are taking to fault tolerance at scale. We will continue to push forward with topological computing alongside more traditional approaches to quantum error correction, as well as exploring everything we can imagine in between. We are looking at a number of ways to reduce the resource cost of magic states in particular, and are making strides in multiple dimensions. With machines that are both flexible and accurate enough to do it all, who can resist?

• Quantinuum continues its progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computing, with a series of peer-reviewed breakthroughs in fault-tolerant operations.‍
• Our progress is not only scientific; it is commercial. By improving logical-qubit reliability and encoding efficiency, Quantinuum is reducing the resource overhead required to scale its quantum computers toward commercially useful workloads.‍
• These results were achieved on commercial Quantinuum hardware, reinforcing that our architecture is not just setting new standards, but building a practical foundation for customers, partners, and researchers preparing for the fault-tolerant era.

Fault-tolerant quantum computing is the threshold the industry must cross before quantum computers can solve the hardest, highest-value problems with confidence. To be commercially useful at scale, the question is not simply who can build more qubits. It is who can build reliable, efficient, scalable systems that reduce technical risk and accelerate the path to commercial usefulness.

Quantinuum is progressing on that path.

Last year, in partnership with Microsoft, we published a breakthrough in logical computing, demonstrating logical qubits that outperformed their physical counterparts by a factor of 800. We are proud to announce that this work is now being published in Nature, one of the most highly regarded scientific journals in the world.  

This work highlights our leading fidelities, as shown in Table 1:

Since then, we’ve accelerated our efforts to reach large-scale fault tolerance and advanced what we believe to be the core building blocks of fault-tolerant quantum computing, from logical-qubit teleportation and multiple error-correction breakthroughs to one of the first meaningful computations using logical qubits. Importantly, these results were achieved on commercial Quantinuum hardware, demonstrating not just scientific progress, but a practical and efficient path toward scalable, customer-ready fault tolerance.

A Recap of Our Recent Technical Progress‍

Since the work with Microsoft, we achieved a milestone years ahead of schedule, demonstrating high-fidelity teleportation of a logical qubit, which was published in Science, one of the world’s most prestigious journals. Later, we beat our own record in this crucial fault tolerance milestone, thanks to continued improvements to our System Model H2’s fidelity.

Then, a series of results demonstrating more error-correcting milestones (and codes):

• Better than physical results in a high-rate non-local code,‍
• First-ever demonstration of a single-shot error correcting code (which significantly reduces resource requirements) in 4 dimensions‍
• Extending qubit lifetimes by 10x with a concatenated code
• Observed fault-tolerance thresholds with concatenated codes
• High fidelity magic states and a fully fault tolerant universal gate set in two different papers

Recently, we topped ourselves yet again by performing one of the first meaningful computations with logical qubits – exploring key questions in materials and magnetism, using logical qubits with better error rates than their physical counterparts. This result also includes a leading “encoding rate” squeezing 48 logical qubits out of just 98 physical qubits, emphasizing how our architecture helps to support large scale fault tolerance without enormous resource costs.

It is worth noting that all these results were achieved on our commercial hardware, not on one-off laboratory test-stands – reflecting the performance that we are able to deliver to our customers.

We also did crucial theoretical work, exploring new options for error correction that can reduce resource requirements, time to solution, and shorten the timeline to large scale fault tolerance.

Commercial Implications and the Road Ahead

We believe the commercial implication is clear: Quantinuum is reducing the uncertainty around the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing. Our architecture, hardware fidelity, full-stack control, and error-correction progress are converging into a practical roadmap for systems that can support valuable scientific and commercial workloads.

For those evaluating when quantum computing will become strategically relevant, we believe the signal is also increasingly clear: the fault-tolerant era is no longer a distant concept. It is becoming an engineering reality, and Quantinuum is leading the way.

• University of Southern Denmark (SDU) to use Quantinuum Helios, supported by the Danish e-Infrastructure Consortium (DeiC)
• Access to Helios enables SDU to test and refine fault-tolerant algorithms and error-correction codes under realistic hardware conditions
• The collaboration supports at a scale of 48 logical qubits, positioning Denmark at the forefront of scalable, practical quantum computing
• Researchers exploring the scientific foundations for future development of applications in fields including pharmaceuticals, finance, and defense

Progress in quantum computing is measured by hardware advances plus the algorithms and quantum error-correction codes that turn quantum systems into useful computational tools.

Thanks to recent hardware advances, researchers are increasingly sharpening their tools to probe the performance of quantum algorithms and understand how they behave in realistic conditions – where stability, system architecture and algorithm design all shape performance.

A new Denmark-based collaboration between the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Quantinuum, and the Danish e-Infrastructure Consortium (DeiC) will utilize Quantinuum Helios. Researchers at the SDU’s Centre for Quantum Mathematics, led by Jørgen Ellegaard Andersen, will use Helios to pursue research into topological quantum computing.

Their work could help explain how and why successful quantum algorithms perform as they do, informing the development of high-performance algorithms suited to emerging quantum systems. They’re exploring the scientific foundations that support future quantum applications across areas including pharmaceuticals, finance, and defense.

“We are thrilled to gain access to Quantinuum’s high-fidelity Helios system. This collaboration gives us a unique opportunity to test the limits of our algorithms and evaluate system performance, while advancing fundamental research and laying the foundation for future applications.”
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— Professor Jørgen Ellegaard Andersen, Director of the Centre for Quantum Mathematics at University of Southern Denmark

Why topological methods matter

Topological quantum computing is an area of research that connects quantum computation with deep mathematical structures. It includes the study of error correcting codes known as surface codes that encode quantum information in the global properties of systems of logical qubits.

The research team will explore how these codes behave, and how they may support the development of fault-tolerant quantum algorithms in practical implementations under realistic conditions.

This distinction between theory and practical implementation matters. In theory, topological approaches offer a rich framework for designing algorithms and error-correcting codes. In practice, researchers need to understand how those ideas perform when implemented on real systems, where questions of noise, stability, overhead, and scaling become central. The collaboration will allow the SDU team to investigate these questions directly.

New ways to benchmark quantum processors

Beyond individual algorithms and codes, the research will also develop tools for benchmarking quantum processors. The goal is to develop new ways to characterize fidelity and stability in regimes that can be difficult to access.

The team will also explore hybrid quantum–classical approaches, including machine-learning techniques assisted by quantum hardware, to study the mathematical structures at the heart of topological quantum computing. This work reflects a broader field of research in which quantum and classical methods are used together, each contributing to parts of a computational problem.

Strengthening Denmark’s quantum ecosystem

The collaboration reflects the growing role of national quantum infrastructure in supporting research and talent development. Denmark has a long tradition of scientific innovation, and this collaboration is intended to support the country’s continued development in quantum technology.

The initiative is supported by DeiC, which played a central role in securing funding and enabling access to Quantinuum’s systems. DeiC has been assigned a particular role in developing and coordinating quantum infrastructure initiatives for the benefit of universities and industry, operating without its own commercial, sectoral, or geographical interests. This includes securing dedicated access to quantum computers, producing advisory services and supporting the development of new talent in the Danish quantum sector.

“DeiC’s special effort to secure funding and access for this research initiative is rooted in our organization’s role in relation to the Danish Government’s strategy for quantum technology.”
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— Henrik Navntoft Sønderskov, Head of Quantum at Danish e-Infrastructure Consortium

This collaboration promises to accelerate the development of practical algorithms. It is grounded in fundamental science – but its focus is practical: discovering and testing mathematical approaches to topological quantum computing that can be implemented, evaluated, and improved on real quantum hardware.

That work requires both theoretical insight and access to a system such as Helios capable of supporting meaningful scientific work.

This month, Quantinuum welcomed its global user community to the first-ever Q-Net Connect, an annual forum designed to spark collaboration, share insights, and accelerate innovation across our full-stack quantum computing platforms. Over two days, users came together not only to learn from one another, but to build the relationships and momentum that we believe will help define the next chapter of quantum computing.

Q-Net Connect 2026 drew over 170 attendees from around the world to Denver, Colorado, including representatives from commercial enterprises and startups, academia and research institutions, and the public sector and non-profits - all users of Quantinuum systems.  

The program was packed with inspiring keynotes, technical tracks, and customer presentations. Attendees heard from leaders at Quantinuum, as well as our partners at NVIDIA, JPMorganChase and BlueQubit; professors from the University of New Mexico, the University of Nottingham and Harvard University; national labs, including NIST, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory; and other distinguished guests from across the global quantum ecosystem.

Congratulations to Q-Net Connect 2026 Award Recipients! 

The mission of the Quantinuum Q-Net user community is to create a space for shared learning, collaboration and connection for those who adopt Quantinuum’s hardware, software and middleware platform. At this year’s Q-Net Connect, we awarded four organizations who made notable efforts to champion this effort. 

• JPMorganChase received the ‘Guppy Adopter Award’ for their exemplary adoption of our quantum programming language, Guppy, in their research workflows. 
• Phasecraft, a UK and US-based quantum algorithms startup, received the ‘Rising Star’ award for demonstrating exceptional early impact and advancing science using Quantinuum hardware, which they published in a December 2025 paper.
• Qedma, a quantum software startup, received the ‘Startup Partner Engagement’ award for their sustained engagement with Quantinuum platforms dating back to our first commercially deployed quantum computer, H1.
• Anna Dalmasso from the University of Nottingham received our ‘New Student Award’ for her impressive debut project on Quantinuum hardware and for delivering outstanding results as a new Q-Net student user. 

Congratulations, again, and thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of the first Q-Net Connect!

Become a Q-Net Member

Q-Net offers year‑round support through user access, developer tools, documentation, trainings, webinars, and events. Members enjoy many exclusive benefits, including being the first to hear about exclusive content, publications and promotional offers.

By joining the community, you will be invited to exclusive gatherings to hear about the latest breakthroughs and connect with industry experts driving quantum innovation. Members also get access to Q‑Net Connect recordings and stay connected for future community updates.

In a follow-up to our recent work with Hiverge using AI to discover algorithms for quantum chemistry, we’ve teamed up with Hiverge, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and NVIDIA to explore using AI to improve algorithms for combinatorial optimization.

With the rapid rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), people started asking “what if AI agents can serve as on-demand algorithm factories?” We have been working with Hiverge, an algorithm discovery company, AWS, and NVIDIA, to explore how LLMs can accelerate quantum computing research.

Hiverge – named for Hive, an AI that can develop algorithms – aims to make quantum algorithm design more accessible to researchers by translating high-level problem descriptions in mostly natural language into executable quantum circuits. The Hive takes the researcher’s initial sketch of an algorithm, as well as special constraints the researcher enumerates, and evolves it to a new algorithm that better meets the researcher’s needs. The output is expressed in terms of a familiar programming language, like Guppy or NVIDIA CUDA-Q, making it particularly easy to implement.

The AI is called a “Hive” because it is a collective of LLM agents, all of whom are editing the same codebase. In this work, the Hive was made up of LLM powerhouses such as Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Llama, as well as NVIDIA Nemotron, which was accessed through AWS’ Amazon Bedrock service. Many models are included because researchers know that diversity is a strength – just like a team of human researchers working in a group, a variety of perspectives often leads to the strongest result.

Once the LLMs are assembled, the Hive calls on them to do the work writing the desired algorithm; no new training is required. The algorithms are then executed and their ‘fitness’ (how well they solve the problem) is measured. Unfit programs do not survive, while the fittest ones evolve to the next generation. This process repeats, much like the evolutionary process of nature itself.

After evolution, the fittest algorithm is selected by the researchers and tested on other instances of the problem. This is a crucial step as the researchers want to understand how well it can generalize.

In this most recent work, the joint team explored how AI can assist in the discovery of heuristic quantum optimization algorithms, a class of algorithms aimed at improving efficiency across critical workstreams. These span challenges like optimal power grid dispatch and storage placement, arranging fuel inside nuclear reactors, and molecular design and reaction pathway optimization in drug, material, and chemical discovery—where solutions could translate into maximizing operational efficiency, dramatic reduction in costs, and rapid acceleration in innovation.

In other AI approaches, such as reinforcement learning, models are trained to solve a problem, but the resulting "algorithm" is effectively ‘hidden’ within a neural network. Here, the algorithm is written in Guppy or CUDA-Q (or Python), making it human-interpretable and easier to deploy on new problem instances.

This work leveraged the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform, running on powerful NVIDIA GPUs made accessible by AWS. It’s state-of-the art accelerated computing was crucial; the research explored highly complex problems, challenges that lie at the edge of classical computing capacity. Before running anything on Quantinuum’s quantum computer, the researchers first used NVIDIA accelerated computing to simulate the quantum algorithms and assess their fitness. Once a promising algorithm is discovered, it could then be deployed on quantum hardware, creating an exciting new approach for scaling quantum algorithm design.

More broadly, this work points to one of many ways in which classical compute, AI, and quantum computing are most powerful in symbiosis. AI can be used to improve quantum, as demonstrated here, just as quantum can be used to extend AI. Looking ahead, we envision AI evolving programs that express a combination of algorithmic primitives, much like human mathematicians, such as Peter Shor and Lov Grover, have done. After all, both humans and AI can learn from each other.