Quantinuum together with Mitsui advance unforgeable quantum tokens over fibre network in first commercial trial

• First successful delivery of quantum tokens using commercial QKD hardware, demonstrating fast transaction verification at the point of exchange - a crucial step toward quantum-enhanced financial security and a major advance for QKD.
• Quantum tokens are designed to provide unforgeability, privacy, and fast settlement, in a single financial instrument. No previous technology can deliver these three combined benefits.
• In the world’s first implementation using off-the-shelf hardware, quantum tokens were transmitted across 10km of fibre in Tokyo, using commercial quantum key distribution (QKD) devices provided by NEC*.
• This is a pivotal step towards the deployment of ultra-high-security quantum tokens in use cases such as tokenized asset security and high-speed trading.

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Tokyo, Japan and Broomfield, Colorado - November 18, 2024 – In a long anticipated trial, Quantinuum ("Quantinuum", Head Office: Broomfield, Colorado, U.S.A., CEO: Rajeeb Hazra), together with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. ("Mitsui", Head Office: Tokyo, President and CEO: Kenichi Hori) and NEC ("NEC", Head Office: Tokyo, President and CEO: Takayuki Morita) today announced the successful delivery of quantum tokens across a 10km fibre-optic network in Japan. This is the first time such a delivery has been accomplished.

Quantum tokens are a new financial instrument that take advantage of the properties of quantum physics to meet the robust demands of asset trading without the communication overheads required by traditional financial systems. Quantum tokens are transmitted across fibre-optic quantum key distribution (QKD) networks, which are rapidly expanding around the globe. Today's announcement with Mitsui demonstrates growing industry recognition of quantum tokens' potential in financial services.

Ilyas Khan, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Quantinuum, said: “Quantum money is one of the seminal ideas that lead to the development of quantum cryptography and QKD. Today, we have demonstrated real-world security enhancements for financial systems using off-the-shelf quantum communications hardware. This opens the door to a new era in quantum-enhanced security with wide applicability, providing commercial organisations with something concrete to utilise.”

Koji Naniwada, Deputy General Manager, Quantum Innovation Dept. at Mitsui, said: “Quantum tokens will increase the security of digital assets, while improving transaction performance and maintaining privacy. These topics are critical for our customers and partners in the financial sector and this demonstration is a valuable outcome of our partnership with Quantinuum.”

Naoki Ishida, Director with the Trading and Service Solution Department at NEC, said: “We are the first to provide a platform for realizing a quantum token system using NEC’s quantum key distribution (QKD) devices. Based on the results of this trial between Mitsui & Co. and Quantinuum, we will continue to work towards the social implementation of quantum cryptography technology.”

Quantum tokens are designed to use quantum physics to prevent forgery, while ensuring transactions can be settled near-instantly, whereas traditional payments systems rely on double-entry bookkeeping to prevent double-spending of funds. This adds time, overhead and risk to every transaction, as digital systems are consulted to confirm funds are available and to settle transactions. 

Quantum tokens instead rely on the no-cloning theorem of quantum physics to prevent forgeries and double-spending. Only the intended recipient will receive the correct token data, which can only be spent at one location in the future. This enables near-instant transaction settlement by removing the need to check multiple systems or wait for network confirmations.

As demonstrated in Quantinuum’s recent work with HSBC, securing digital assets in the quantum-age is growing in urgency. The financial sector is increasingly looking to quantum technology to solve these complex problems with the power of nature.

Learn more about this new frontier of financial security, powered by quantum, in our whitepaper.

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Note:

(*) The equipment provided by NEC was partially supported by results from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ (MIC)  “Research and development for construction of a global quantum cryptography network”(JPJ008957) under “R&D of ICT Priority Technology Project” (JPMI00316) and Japan’s Cabinet Office’s "Photonics and Quantum Technology for Society 5.0" project under the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP).

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About Mitsui

Mitsui & Co. is a global trading and investment company with a presence in more than 60 countries and a diverse business portfolio covering a wide range of industries.

The company identifies, develops, and grows its businesses in partnership with a global network of trusted partners including world leading companies, combining its geographic and cross-industry strengths to create long-term sustainable value for its stakeholders. 

Mitsui has set three key strategic initiatives for its current Medium-term Management Plan: supporting industries to grow and evolve with stable supplies of resources and materials, and providing infrastructure; promoting a global transition to low-carbon and renewable energy; and empowering people to lead healthy lives through the delivery of quality healthcare and access to good nutrition. 

Visit https://www.mitsui.com/jp/en/index.html for more information.

About Quantinuum

Quantinuum, the world’s largest integrated quantum company, pioneers powerful quantum computers and advanced software solutions. Quantinuum’s technology drives breakthroughs in materials discovery, cybersecurity, and next-gen quantum AI. With over 500 employees, including 370+ scientists and engineers, Quantinuum leads the quantum computing revolution across continents.

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation has established itself as a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies while promoting the brand statement of “Orchestrating a brighter world.” NEC enables businesses and communities to adapt to rapid changes taking place in both society and the market as it provides for the social values of safety, security, fairness and efficiency to promote a more sustainable world where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com. 

With thousands of physical qubits, hundreds of logical qubits, low error rates, and a fully integrated software stack, Quantinuum’s roadmap outlines its path to achieve scientific advantage and a tipping point for commercial advantage

In collaboration with Microsoft, Quantinuum also demonstrates two industry firsts: 12 logical qubits and an end-to-end scientific workflow using AI, High-Performance Computing (HPC), and logical qubits on what Microsoft has previously described as “the path to a Quantum Supercomputer”

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Broomfield, Colorado and London, UK, September 10^th, 2024 – Today, Quantinuum, the world’s largest and leading integrated quantum computing company, unveiled its roadmap to universal, fully fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2030. The roadmap materially accelerates the path to commercial quantum computing systems with the potential to unlock a trillion-dollar market^[1] and enable AI to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. In parallel, Quantinuum in partnership with Microsoft announced a series of milestones and integrations.

Quantinuum’s roadmap unveils its fifth-generation quantum computer, Apollo, which will be a fully fault-tolerant and universal quantum computer, capable of executing circuits with millions of gates, delivering scientific advantage and enabling a commercial tipping point.

“We are the only company with a clear and demonstrable path that leverages quantum computing to tackle large-scale scientific and commercial applications,” said Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, CEO of Quantinuum. “With our proven record of driving technological advancement and the unwavering trust of our global customers and partners, we are confident that we possess the industry’s most credible roadmap toward achieving universal fully fault-tolerant quantum computing.”

The roadmap is built on the foundations of Quantinuum’s fully scalable quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) architecture, including a universal gate set and high-fidelity physical qubits uniquely capable of supporting reliable logical qubits. For four years now, Quantinuum has remained steadfast in providing data along with peer-reviewed papers to show the science and engineering work behind these methodical advances.

“Our next system, Quantinuum Helios, will support enough logical qubits to unlock scientific and mathematics advances that will clearly surpass classical computing,” Hazra said. “Our roadmap then draws a direct line to hundreds of logical qubits, at which point quantum computing will outperform classical computing to address a broad range of scientific problems in areas like finance, chemistry, and computational biology. We also know, from experience, that utility in the form of applications that are suitable for global enterprises and governments will likely bubble to the surface and increase rapidly over the next 18 months. Our quantum computers are already impossible to simulate classically.”

Quantinuum also announced another milestone today in collaboration with Microsoft: achieving 12 logical qubits on the newly updated 56-qubit System Model H2 quantum computer, a 3x advance over the four logical qubits the companies announced in April. Microsoft also used the System Model H1 quantum computer to run the first ever chemistry simulation using reliable logical qubits combined with AI and HPC to produce results within chemical accuracy. Finally, Quantinuum and Microsoft have completed the integration of Quantinuum’s InQuanto™ computational quantum chemistry software package with Azure Quantum Elements, making it available to customers through private preview.

“The collaboration between Quantinuum and Microsoft has established a crucial step forward for the industry and demonstrated a critical milestone on the path to hybrid classical-quantum supercomputing capable of transforming scientific discovery,” said Dr. Krysta Svore – Technical Fellow and VP of Advanced Quantum Development for Microsoft Azure Quantum.

“It is now clear that enterprises need to be ready to take advantage of the progress we can see coming in the next business cycle,” Hazra said. “Our customers are placing quantum in their strategic plans and finding new ways to align our quantum system with classical computing and generative AI.”

In 2019, Quantinuum’s H-Series devices were among the first to be offered commercially via Microsoft Azure. Today, Quantinuum’s H1 and H2 quantum computers, Powered by Honeywell, remain available on Azure and directly to Quantinuum customers and partners.

In the past few years, Quantinuum has achieved many significant milestones, including:

• Winning the race to “three 9s” hardware fidelity
• Demonstrating the scalability of our architecture
• High-fidelity teleportation of logical qubits 
• Fault-tolerant entangling gates
• Beyond-break even with logical qubits
• Lattice surgery
• Real-time fault-tolerant error correction
• The performance of complex algorithms like the quantum Fourier transform at the logical level
• The computing primitives required to demonstrate a magic state distillation protocol

A blog post with more details on the Quantinuum quantum hardware roadmap can be viewed here. The Microsoft announcement regarding the 12 logical qubits can viewed here.

About Quantinuum

Quantinuum, the world’s largest integrated quantum computing company, pioneers powerful quantum computers and advanced software solutions. Quantinuum’s technology drives breakthroughs in materials discovery, cybersecurity, and next-gen quantum AI. With over 500 employees, including 370+ scientists and engineers, Quantinuum leads the quantum computing revolution across continents.