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The proposed technique is expected to enable quantum sampling algorithms to scale to high precision, paving the way for quantum advantage on practical problems

COLLEGE PARK, Md., May 04, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), an industry leader in quantum computing, in collaboration with the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT), today announced an efficient and reliable design as a critical first step in the application of quantum computing to Monte Carlo methods. The first-of-its-kind state preparation technique is scalable and has been demonstrated on IonQ hardware for up to 20 qubits. The achievement may not only benefit financial institutions in tasks like portfolio management, but also other industries including science and engineering, where Monte Carlo algorithms are used. A research paper outlining the new technique is available here for viewing.

State preparation is a necessary component of many quantum algorithms and is fundamental in expediting Monte Carlo methods, which use randomness to simulate outcomes of complex problems. Financial institutions use Monte Carlo algorithms to understand the relationship between an outcome and multiple variables in complex systems, but their precision is frequently limited by the length of time needed to run the same algorithm repeatedly with different values of the variables. IonQ and FCAT believe that when run on large and accurate quantum computers, this state preparation technique will help these institutions achieve faster results.

"The Fidelity Center for Applied Technology team were early believers in the power of quantum to reshape the field of finance, and we are pleased to announce the development of a first-of-its-kind state preparation technique with them," said Peter Chapman, CEO, IonQ. "In finance, accuracy and speed can mean the difference between profit or loss. We believe this technique can provide financial institutions a tool they need to integrate quantum into their workflow and explore novel ways to inform portfolio engineering, retirement planning, and risk management in even the most complex of scenarios."

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Todays announcement is an extension of IonQs project with the FCAT team, during which the two groups issued a paper describing how certain generative quantum machine learning algorithms may provide an advantage over their classical counterparts. Additional information about IonQs work with FCAT will be presented at the American Physical Society (APS) Annual Meeting 2023, taking place March 5-10, 2023, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"The Monte Carlo protocol is an integral component of financial planning, as it helps us understand how several correlated variables interact with each other when one element is changed," said Adam Schouela, Head of Emerging Technology, Fidelity Center for Applied Technology. "However, current state preparation techniques are either theoretical or have some type of deficiency when scaling. Today, were proud to announce alongside IonQ a state preparation algorithm that we believe is scalable and executable on NISQ hardware."

Todays announcement follows recent news that IonQ has acquired quantum software compiler Entangled Networks, with the goal of building large-scale quantum computers by enabling computation across multiple distributed quantum processors. Additionally, in 2022 IonQ entered into a multi-million-dollar contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Lab, as well as partnerships with companies like Dell Technologies, Hyundai Motors, Airbus, and GE Research, among others. For more information, visit investors.ionq.com/news.

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. is a leader in quantum computing, with a proven track record of innovation and deployment. IonQ Aria is the latest in a line of cutting-edge commercial quantum systems, boasting industry-leading 25 algorithmic qubits. Along with record performance, IonQ has defined what it believes is the best path forward to scale.

IonQ is the only company with its quantum systems available through the cloud on Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as through direct API access. IonQ was founded in 2015 by Dr. Christopher Monroe and Dr. Jungsang Kim based on 25 years of pioneering research. To learn more, visit http://www.ionq.com.

About the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology

Since 1999, the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology has served as an innovative technology resource for Fidelity Investments. FCAT research and development teams evaluate and track important trends in technology, identifying those that will matter most to Fidelity over the next five years. FCAT is a catalyst for breakthrough achievements, developing and bringing new capabilities and products to scale and building effective tools and systems that support millions of individual and institutional customers. Every day, FCAT teams lay the foundation for Fidelitys future, one experiment at a time.IONQ and Fidelity Investments are not affiliated.

IonQ Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words. Statements that are not historical in nature, including the words "anticipate," "expect," "suggests," "plan," "believe," "intend," "estimates," "targets," "projects," "should," "could," "would," "may," "will," "forecast" and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements include those related to the application of quantum computing to Monte Carlo methods and its benefit to financial institutions and other industries where the Monte Carlo method is used; the ability of the state preparation technique to help institutions achieve faster results with Monte Carlo algorithms; the power of quantum computing to reshape the field of finance; the ability of financial institutions to integrate quantum computing into their workflow; and IonQs ability to build large-scale quantum computers by enabling computation across multiple distributed quantum processors. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, including but not limited to: market adoption of quantum computing solutions and IonQs products, services and solutions; the ability of IonQ to protect its intellectual property; changes in the competitive industries in which IonQ operates; changes in laws and regulations affecting IonQs business; IonQs ability to implement its business plans, forecasts and other expectations, and identify and realize additional partnerships and opportunities; and the risk of downturns in the market and the technology industry. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in the "Risk Factors" section of IonQs Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2022 and other documents filed by IonQ from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and IonQ assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. IonQ does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230504005416/en/

Contacts

IonQ Media contact:Tyler Ogoshipress@ionq.com

IonQ Investor Contact:investors@ionq.com

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IonQ and Fidelity Center for Applied Technology Announce Development of Scalable Quantum State Preparation for Monte Carlo Algorithms - Yahoo Finance

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory/Information Directorate (AFRL) is expected to have $500 million in anticipate funding over a five year period to support quantum research in five focus areas including:

This new solicitation is described in a recently issued government Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). They will be making multiple awards with individual awards expected to normally range from $500 thousand to $27 million in funding with a potential to make awards as high as $99.9 million. The timeframe for an individual project should not exceed 36 months.

The first step to receive funding is to submit a 2-4 white paper including a title, contact information, estimated cost, task objectives and technical summary and proposed deliverables. There are yearly recommended deadlines for submitting a white paper based upon the fiscal year. The next upcoming recommended deadline is September 30, 2023 for FY24. Upon receipt of a white paper, the AFRL will review it for:

White papers found to be consistent with the research areas of interest and expected results will be invited to submit a full technical and cost proposal for funding consideration..

For those interested in submitting a white paper you can download BAA FA8750-23-S-7001 with all the associated terms and conditions from the SAM.gov website here.

May 5, 2023

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AFRL Issues Broad BAA to Solicit Quantum Research Proposals with $500 Million in Potential Funding - Quantum Computing Report

NASHVILLE Gilbert Herrera was accustomed to never seeing the fruits of his labor.

After spending almost 40 years at Sandia National Laboratories, Herrera was appointed in 2021 as the head of the National Security Agencys Research Directorate, the largest research and development organization in the U.S. clandestine community.

One of the reasons why I decided to come to NSA is because I spent a career engaged in research and technology deployment in a field that you hope your research would never be tested, Herrera told The Record on Thursday during the Vanderbilt University Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats. Sandia, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is one of the federal governments most important nuclear science laboratories.

But at NSA, research eventually makes its way into mission, helping anyone ranging from lower-level agency analysts all the way to policymakers who seek better information.

The Record sat down with Herrera before his appearance at the summit to discuss the directorate, how it works to be relevant and the outlook for some of todays top emerging technologies. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

The Record: What is the job of the Research Directorate?

Gilbert Herrera: The role of the Research Directorate is really twofold.

One is, it needs to be the eyes and ears of the agency in terms of what's happening in research, in academia and in industry; to kind of have this outward-facing look. That's why we have a number of facilities that are unclassified, like universities and whatnot.

The other is to help prevent technology surprise on the inside. We help advise the agency, make sure we're prepared for that. And part of that is developing tools and techniques that help in a mission.

TR: How does the directorate stay operationally relevant? Do you keep an ear out for whats happening in the private sector or academia? Are you tinkering in a lab? Are you receiving orders from leadership to explore certain technologies?

GH: We have a lot of people who are outward-facing, but we also have people who are inward-facing and people that do both.

So having people go forward to work with the mission customers, so they could better understand what their needs are, so they could feel the pain. That helps inform the research. It's this virtuous cycle of gaining an understanding of the mission needs; understanding in part through practice and in part through observation of what the best opportunities are in the research regime. Then conducting tailored and focused research so you can create tools that will make the life of the analyst easier is really what an effective research organization and a mission organization does.

It's that virtuous cycle of understanding, awareness, creation and deployment.

TR: What's changed at the directorate under your tenure and where do you want to put emphasis?

GH: It's easy to get caught up in the moment of wanting to solve today's problem, but what I'm trying to do is make sure we have an adequate balance of today, tomorrow, and then the future transformational problems.

Because we need to do all three. An example of the today is, we actually have an email distribution list where if an analyst has a scientific question that they need answered, then it goes to this [distribution list] of a bunch of scientists called Scientist on Call and then they can answer it. That's an important thing for us to do. That's probably not research.

When the [Ukraine] war broke out, there were a number of things we did where we deployed researchers in order to help in the prompt.

The other is that as I came in, it was right around the time of changing focus away from looking at the war on terror. We also had China and Russia and Iran and others as priorities and more focusing on the realities of today. Our mission pivoted at the time that I came in, and so I'm working with my leadership team to make sure that we're following that pivot.

TR: Lets talk about some emerging technologies. Artificial intelligence. What excites you about it? What concerns you?

GH: What excites me is that it's developing at a level much faster than I ever expected. I've been involved in AI for a while and I never thought it could actually help research, per se.

But I'm beginning to change my mind on that.

I'm beginning to believe now that AI might be able to actually support science. What it's done relative to writing is beyond belief. These models are so big. I see that there's a lot more near-term opportunity.

Now from a threat perspective the most immediate one is that AI can now help the infamous Nigerian prince and other phishers to make more credible English-sounding attacks.

But it's much more than that in terms of potential for reverse engineering.

Right now, the big companies have said that they have put protections on it. You can't tell DALL-E to make child pornography or write stuff like that, but innovative people can find loops around that. The LLaMA model that Facebook had done has gotten into the outside world and people are already modifying that.

Bad actors will pursue ways to get around it and do bad things like child porn, like finding zero-day vulnerabilities and all these other terrible things.

The challenge we have with AI is similar to the challenge we had in 1968 when the protocols were developed for TCP IP. If you develop these technologies without envisioning how you integrate security into them, then that's a problem. I don't know how well we've done with AI. I don't have an opinion at this point.

TR: Lightning round time. Your take on quantum computing, encryption and a non-obvious threat we should be talking about today?

GH: Let me do the reverse order.

What are the energy ramifications of AI? These models take massive amounts of energy to train and to update [and utilize]. AI is going to help revolutionize things but at what energy cost? I don't think weve fully thought through the ramifications. It could be that in the final analysis, we save energy through AI, but I'm not sure that's obvious.

Now, relative to quantum, you really said two questions in one. The first one relative to the encryption part. NSM-10 came out. People need to take it seriously. There's guidance in moving to quantum-resistant encryption. NIST has published a bunch of standards. Something the government rarely does in my reading, they published some standards a year early, and more will come out this summer.

Now, back to computing. I've been involved in quantum computing since 2006. I am on the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, and, over time, my optimism has diminished. I still am a believer in quantum computing. We'll get there someday, but it's a really tough problem.

We need the best minds working on it. The Laboratory for Physical Sciences, which is the physical science research arm of my organization, is funding academics all over the world in pursuit of dealing with the underlying problems for quantum computing because there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

What I hope we can do in quantum computing space is get through the quantum winter, because a winter is coming.

Remember, AI was coined in 1956. Then it ran into the reality of the compute they had. Then there was another revolution in the early 80s when the microprocessor came out and they realized you had neither enough information or compute power. The next one came towards the end of the 90s with the dawn of the internet, but the infrastructure wasn't there. We're finally successful now where we have sufficient compute power and information and new technologies like the GPU, so we can train models. There were, in my counting, three winters before we got to the final goal.

What I tell people is my own personal estimate is somewhere between and I stole this from somebody else 10 years and never.

Martin Matishak is a senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. He spent the last five years at Politico, where he covered Congress, the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community and was a driving force behind the publication's cybersecurity newsletter.

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The NSA's research chief on emerging tech including 'beyond ... - The Record by Recorded Future

- Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com) -

GARCHING, Germany and MUNICH, May 5, 2023 /CNW/ -- planqc has been selected by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to develop a digital neutral-atom-based quantum computing hardware and software platform that is scalable and can demonstrate quantum algorithms for real-world problems. The award is valued at 29 million EUR. planqc teams up with Menlo Systems and ParityQC who will provide critical components for the laser systems, software, and architecture. This is the first sale of a digital quantum computer based on neutral atoms in Europe. The award comes at a time of impressive growth for the company and follows the appointment of Hermann Hauser as board advisor. The start-up planqc was founded in April 2022 in Garching near Munich (Germany). The founding team builds on decades of groundbreaking research and technology development at Munich's Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ).

"We are very proud that DLR relies on planqc as the technology leader in the field of neutral atoms to build a quantum computer. This order is an important milestone in our commercialization and growth strategy, which envisages expanding into other key industries and opening up global markets as a next step." Says Alexander Gltzle, CEO and Co-Founder of planqc.

For more information visit to http://www.planqc.eu

Contact

Melanie de GamaTelephone: +436641837034E-mail: [emailprotected]

SOURCE planqc GmbH

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planqc awarded EUR 29 million contract from the DLR to build and ... - Canada NewsWire

The alliances main focus will be on building a more organised network for quantum professionals and researchers in Ireland.

Several organisations have been working with Trinity College Dublin (TCD) over the past few years to make quantum computing skills education more widely available.

IBM, Microsoft, Moodys Analytics, Algorithmiq and Horizon Quantum Computing have all come on board to form the Trinity Quantum Alliance (TQA).

The alliance was officially launched today (5 May); however, TCD has been working on quantum computing education with partners for some time already.

James OConnor, Microsoft Ireland site lead commented that the company has enjoyed a long partnership with TCD, while Algorithmiq has been working with the college for a year.

Meanwhile, Horizon Quantum Computing aims to use the alliance as leverage to build its own presence in Ireland.

Its CEO Dr Joe Fitzsimons said, We believe that the TQA will provide a significant boost to the quantum ecosystem in Ireland and intend to play an active role in the initiative as we build up our presence here.

The company recently expanded into Ireland with the announcement that it was creating at least 10 jobs.

Overall, the alliances main focus will be on building a more organised network for quantum professionals and researchers in Ireland.

It will attempt to provide a pipeline of skilled quantum graduates to respond to the need for more quantum skills in the tech sector. It will also provide support to those working in research in areas such as quantum networks, high-performance computing integration and quantum science.

The industry partners have been working on the development of TCDs MSc in Quantum Science and Technology, as well as a corresponding PhD programme. The masters degree programme has been developed over the past three years, according to TQAs director Prof John Goold.

Goold also said that the establishment of TQA would enable TCD to integrate research, education and industry in a seamless way.

We are excited to see the fruit this collaboration bears in the years to come. Students from the masters programme will get the opportunity to do virtual internships, Goold added.

Dr Linda Doyle, provost of TCD, highlighted quantum computings potential to deliver amazing new technologies across society and industry.

Our researchers are really pushing the boundaries in this space and the Trinity Quantum Alliance will bring a new focus to their efforts.

Quantum is a great topic for collaboration between academic researchers and industry partners as it is deeply technical and deeply challenging, and it has an eye on the longer term future of these exciting technologies, Doyle concluded.

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Trinity, IBM and more team up to boost quantum tech community in ... - SiliconRepublic.com