New legislation before Congress embraces all quantum technologies and pushes for near-term usage
Recent legislation before Congress is calling for the U.S. government to develop and adopt near-term quantum computing applications that could provide solutions to complex public sector optimization problems, including electrical grid resilience, optimization of ports, global supply chain issues, emergency management and response, infrastructure, and telecommunication networks. D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS), a leader in quantum computing systems, software and services, has the technology that is necessary to develop these applications today.
Last week, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the FY24 Energy and Water Appropriations bill in the House of Representatives both advanced policies that include development of near-term quantum applications. This represents an important shift in the U.S. government’s mindset about quantum, which until this point has been focused on longer-term gate-model quantum. The NDAA and Appropriations bills explicitly call for U.S. policies that include all viable quantum computing systems, including quantum annealing, gate-model, and quantum-hybrid technologies (quantum plus classical computing applications). The legislation also includes an aggressive timeframe of 24-months or less for developing and deploying demos, proofs of concepts, and pilots.
“The country is at a unique inflection point for U.S. quantum policy,” said Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. “To date, the U.S. National Quantum Strategy has not prioritized application development, but legislation before Congress has shifted that mindset. D-Wave stands ready to collaborate with the U.S. government to build near-term quantum applications to help meet current and future public sector needs.”
Quantum annealing technology is uniquely suited for solving optimization problems and is the technology that is available now to help build these applications. D-Wave is already providing solutions to its broad portfolio of commercial and government customers in areas such as logistics, artificial intelligence, materials sciences, drug discovery, scheduling, fault detection, and financial modeling. For example, D-Wave and its customers have built applications and demos for last-mile resupply during emergency response for the Australian Army and optimizing tsunami evacuation routes in Japan.
Additional legislation recently introduced in the Senate calls for quantum and quantum-hybrid development via the Quantum Sandbox bill. In the House of Representatives, the Wildfire Tech DEMO Act calls for applying quantum technology to wildfire response, while the Quantum Practice Act seeks to use quantum technology for modeling and simulations.
If these bills are enacted, the U.S. will move closer to other global leaders like the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Japan, and Canada, who have already heavily invested in quantum and have in place robust government quantum strategies. Furthermore, some of these countries are actively supporting the commercialization of quantum as well as workforce development efforts calling for inclusion of quantum annealing and quantum-hybrid applications within their programs.
This U.S. legislative effort comes at a time when global government investment in quantum application development is increasing and is expected to reach $36 billion during 2023. The National Quantum Initiative Act (NQI), enacted in December 2018 to accelerate American leadership in quantum information technology, is scheduled to be reauthorized this year.
About D-Wave Quantum Inc.
D-Wave is a leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software, and services, and is the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers—and the only company building both annealing quantum computers and gate-model quantum computers. Our mission is to unlock the power of quantum computing today to benefit business and society. We do this by delivering customer value with practical quantum applications for problems as diverse as logistics, artificial intelligence, materials sciences, drug discovery, scheduling, cybersecurity, fault detection, and financial modeling. D-Wave’s technology is being used by some of the world’s most advanced organizations, including Volkswagen, Mastercard, Deloitte, Davidson Technologies, ArcelorMittal, Siemens Healthineers, Unisys, NEC Corporation, Pattison Food Group Ltd., DENSO, Lockheed Martin, Forschungszentrum Jülich, University of Southern California, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
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