With a goal of continuous disruption of quantum computing with a high-tech, scalable, future-proof, plug-and-play integrated photonic solution, QuiX Quantum offers the most powerful Quantum Photonic Processors in the world and is building a universal quantum computer based on that technology.

That there is an emerging market for quantum technologies, especially quantum information processing, is visible in the successful selling of QuiX Quantum’s award-winning products. The company is playing a significant, leading European role and leverages the existing Dutch expertise in integrated photonics.

QuiX Quantum, Stefan Hengesbach, CEO, says, “QuiX Quantum believes that Photonic Qubits are the most scalable and mature platform. The insensitivity to electromagnetic interference sources and the operation of the processors at room temperature are major advantages over quantum computers based on superconductors.”

With a unique go-to-market strategy, QuiX Quantum’s product portfolio comprises:   

• Quantum Photonic Processor: the OEM photonic processors (since 2020), won the Prism Award in 2023

• Special Purpose Quantum Computer: complete quantum computer based on QuiX Quantum’s processors (since 2022)

• Cloud Computing / Quantum Computing as a Service: access to QuiX Quantum’s Special Purpose Quantum Computer via the Cloud (2023)

• Universal Quantum Computer: an error-corrected universal photonic quantum computer with several hundred Qubits which is under development (start of production planned in 2027)

QuiX Quantum’s Quantum Photonic Processors are currently the core element of many current European research programs.  On the way to a universal and error-corrected photonic quantum computer with thousands of Qubits, QuiX Quantum gains crucial knowledge by producing and selling components like the photonic processors. Especially the collaboration with customers who offer direct feedback on performance and on applications are helpful. The approach is more open and customer-centric as compared to competitors and allows QuiX Quantum to constantly improve.

European investments

Investment in quantum technologies will remain at a high level. Deep-tech investors are signaling their willingness to participate in upcoming financing rounds. The basic conditions for the growth of QuiX Quantum are excellent.

“Photonic Quantum Computing has gained more visibility, and more people see the advantages and have dealt with the different approaches to quantum computing. The prospect of scalability with robust telecom technology and predominant room temperature operation is convincing more and more experts. Photonic quantum computing has evolved from an outsider to an approach of significant interest,” says Hengesbach.

While the strongly regulated markets and export restrictions could cool down the interest of investors in computing technology, the European and national investment programs do a lot to compensate for these market restrictions. Additionally, many federal tenders also allow startups to grow significantly and access a balance of venture capital and funding. Hengesbach says that technological sovereignty is a critical issue for their company. Through the years, QuiX Quantum worked on a growing ecosystem of investors and partners and has set a technology with the European value chain and sees itself confirmed in this approach.

“We convince by early product tests and measurements of renowned research institutes, which already test our components. And recently, QuiX Quantum won the renowned Prism Award for its Quantum Photonic Processor in the Quantum Tech category, which is the core technology for the universal quantum computer. It convinced the German Aerospace Institute (DLR) to already order a universal QC from QuiX Quantum for €14 M,” says Hengesbach.

Cloud Computing: Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS)
Speaking about computers and online services, Hengesbach says that customers can use QuiX Quantum's Special Purpose Quantum Computers via Cloud Computing in 2023. You can perform calculations online, without having the full hardware set up.

“Due to customer requests, QuiX Quantum will set up cloud access for users who want to use our Special Purpose Quantum Computers to solve graph problems, for example. We expect many scientific studies to classify the potential of such special-purpose quantum computers. The demand for access to photonic quantum computers is there and we look forward to supporting this through our Cloud Computing (QCaaS).”

QuiX Quantum sees numerous opportunities for cooperation in the quantum cloud. It emphasizes that many software companies have already useful software packages ready to run and are waiting to connect with the best Quantum Cloud Computing offering. Early applications for the special-purpose quantum computers of QuiX Quantum e.g. solving graph problems including optimizing energy grids or supply chains will be demonstrated.

In further developing the Special Purpose Quantum Computer, QuiX Quantum will increase the number of input modes of its processor to 50. The size would enable calculations that cannot be emulated by high-performance computers, enabling researchers and industrial customers to demonstrate quantum advantage.

Lowest transmission loss

Hybrid quantum computing is a useful trend to split computations into algorithms for CPUs, GPUs, and QPUs. And QuiX Quantum plans to launch services in this area.

Competition among different approaches (superconducting-based, Ion-based, and neutral-atoms) to quantum computing is fierce, and convincing customers and investors of the merits of one's technology is time-consuming. Also, different measures like Qubits, Qumodes, or quantum volume do not help compare the maturity of the current quantum computers. QuiX Quantum meets this challenge by achieving comprehensible interim results that are easy to classify through rapid iterations of new products.

The best course of action is to be open and transparent about technological progress and provide early access to the technology for public institutions. This creates trust in the concepts and enables an objective assessment of technology maturity. “We expect to have a fully error-corrected quantum computer with several 100 Qubits in four years. This concept is based on mature processor technology and therefore convinces customers,” says Hengesbach.

Elaborating on the statement – Market leader in photonic quantum computing hardware – Hengesbach says that when it comes to being a market leader, QuiX Quantum is the only commercial supplier of quantum photonic processors in the world. The most relevant disturbance in photonic quantum computing is transmission loss. This happens due to the absorption or scattering of photons out of the waveguides inside the chip. QuiX Quantum’s processors offer the lowest losses due to the unique material platform used. This and the wafer-based manufacturing process enable QuiX Quantum to scale their QC architecture to relevant numbers of Qubits. Also, the fidelity of the complete processor with hundreds of interferometers and tunable elements is greater than 99 percent.

The clean room where QuiX Quantum's chips are manufactured and the companies that do the packaging are all within 500 meters of the headquarters and have experience of more than two decades in manufacturing low-loss structures and doing low-loss coupling.

Briefly, here are some of the prominent advantages of photonic Quantum Computers:

• The processor itself works at room temperature and is, therefore, energy efficient and comparatively low cost.

• Scales due to the use of telecommunication wavelengths, use of high-quality telecom components like high-transmission fibers

• High integration density

• Physically no decoherence of the Qubits/photons

• High fidelity

In detail, some of the advantages of photonic Quantum Computers include:

• Patented technology: The photonic quantum computer uses patented photonic chip technology. QuiX Quantum uses photons (light) to encode and process quantum information. QuiX Quantum’s photonic chips, also called photonic integrated circuits (PICs), integrate photonic functions into microchips to create smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient devices. PICs can create, process and transmit qubits much more effectively than their electronic counterparts. As a result, PICs have emerged as the ideal technology for quantum computing.

• Mature technology: The PIC technology of QuiX Quantum is derived from 20 years of development. Offering a technological maturity guaranteeing both deliveries of processors as easy-to-use plug-and-play systems and the best performance in the market. The best quantum processors must meet the high demands of quantum computing with photons, where every lost photon is lost information.

• Sustainability: The quantum photonic processor of QuiX Quantum is also the most sustainable technology in the market for quantum computing. Both fabrication and operation are sustainable due to using commonly available materials (like silicon and nitrogen) and running at room temperature without power-hungry cryogenics.

• Compatibility: The photon sources, photonic processors, and detectors, as well as drive electronics and lasers, fit in standard server racks since cooling is required for the detectors only. Therefore, no bulky and power-hungry cryogenic cooling at millikelvin temperatures is needed. Due to the interface with off-the-shelf fiber optic cables, the quantum computer is modular and scalable. QuiX Quantum’s entire photonic computers are already compatible with the future quantum internet that connects quantum computers.

• Leading in Europe: Quantum photonic processors of QuiX Quantum are a validated technology and the de facto standard in leading European research programs in Germany and France, allowing researchers to test in merely seconds instead of days. Thereby enabling a whole new level of experiments. The full programmability of the processor supports scientific research as a lab-on-a-chip for quantum technologies. For R&D, this unique product is only manufactured and sold by QuiX Quantum.

• Processors: Among all the companies that want to offer photonic quantum computing, QuiX Quantum is the only one that already commercially sells the core component of quantum computing, the quantum processor (QPU). During a webinar in March 2022, QuiX Quantum officially introduced its latest processor with 20x20 input and output modes. This makes QuiX the world leader in QPU development.

• The QPUs include an integrated interferometer with individually controllable phase shifters that bring all input and output modes into defined interaction with each other. The QP can be ordered for different wavelengths, providing compatibility with various single photon sources. The Plug & Play system can also be ordered from QuiX Quantum equipped with single photon sources and detectors, thus forming a special-purpose photonic QC.

• Material platform: Especially the propagation and coupling losses limit the scalability of photonic QC. In addition, the platform is compatible with fast integrated piezoelectric and electro-optic switches and nonlinear materials such as LiNbO3, enabling switching in the GHz range with the materials platform. The know-how is protected in over 30 patents and 15 years of development work at QuiX Quantum and the manufacturing partner for photonic circuits LioniX International BV.

Citing the case studies, Hengesbach says that in Hardware, QuiX Quantum’s quantum photonic processor is the de-facto standard in all relevant European research projects to build photonic quantum computers.

Paderborn University, the French company Quandela, the British company Qontrol and the Hungarian Quantum Information National Laboratory are some examples of reference customers. In short, QuiX Quantum hardware enables the exploration of new quantum computing architectures, hardware, and software.

Use cases
Optimizing energy grids, optimizing supply chains, optimizing traffic routing, solving vibrational states of molecules, and improving chemical reactions are some of the applications that are currently under review. Industrial customers are interested in testing applications in the Finance, logistics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning, and Quantum Chemistry industries.

As mentioned earlier, photonic quantum computing has many advantages over competing technologies, especially regarding scalability to thousands of qubits. This idea is also in their mission statement: Photonics leads Quantum. QuiX leads Photonics.

In addition, QuiX Quantum has the appropriate IP protecting the silicon nitride/silicon oxide waveguides. QuiX Quantum can count on the excellent ecosystem in Europe – especially the Netherlands. A significant part of the success is also due to the deep understanding of driving and controlling optical circuits. This is where QuiX Quantum sees itself as an advantage over its competitors.

Talking about the future, Hengesbach says, “In 2022, QuiX Quantum established new offices in Amsterdam and their first foreign subsidiary in Germany, based in Stuttgart and Ulm. We welcome the agreement on cooperation between the Netherlands, Germany, and France in the field of quantum technologies – also reflecting our philosophy of strong European cooperation.”

And in 2023, the company expects:

• a growing number of cooperation partners.

• a significant increase in turnover to > EUR 5 million.

• a further expansion of their processor and components business.

• the market launch of a new processor with over 2500 controllable elements.

• the launch of their cloud service.

• significant technological advances in components for the universal quantum computer.

QuiX Quantum's focus is on further developing the universal quantum computer. In particular, the subsidiary in Germany is being massively expanded for this purpose. Even more, expertise is gained in different architectures, and a strong focus is on investigating the requirements for error correction.