Venture with Grace
00:08:38 · Juha Vartiainen
[00:08:38] S1: Right. Are are many ways engineers So are using AI nowadays, many ways, but this may be the most interesting ways to use it for calibration. So actually quantum computer has like a lot of knobs to tune. So And the performance of quantum computer requires that it's properly calibrated. And there are many ways how it can go out of like a perfect operation point. And traditionally, it used to be like PhDs adjusting some knobs and putting it back to the perfect sweet spot. But now when the quantum computers get more complex, there are too many parameters to calibrate for a human. So there are automatic calibration routines, which are computer programs which are having certain rules and they take certain steps. But then when the complexity of quantum computer grows, there are always some failure modes. It's very difficult to anticipate all the possible ways what can go wrong. So sometimes even in a perfect algorithm, it fails and we need to call a human to assist. But the problem is that it's not scalable way. So we can, of course, have one quantum computer. We can have some dedicated experts night and day keeping it working, but that's not scalable when we are selling more and more quantum computers that are sort of have an equal number of PhDs with education there to keep them calibrated. So fortunately, we have now the AI. So actually, NVIDIA has developed a very nice set of open source models. And particularly for this purpose, there is NVIDIA icing model where this calibration data has been fed to the visual language model. And actually, the AI model can watch the data. So we show the AI the data. This is what we measure from the quantum computer. Is it okay? It's okay. Just keep on going. Or it can say that, okay, actually, it seems that not everything okay. Please, let's adjust this and that parameter. And then we do the adjustments according to the AI's instructions. And actually, it's surprising that that way we managed to keep the quantum computer calibrated. So our latest result we were discussing in some scientific workshop lately is that our 20 qubit quantum computer was fully calibrated using the agentic models.
00:11:33 · Juha Vartiainen, Grace Gong
So So if we have some dedicated NVIDIA chips there to run these visual language models and then connect that to the quantum computer and keep on running the calibration routine every now and then and feeding the data to the AI. That's actually the way to replace the expert in the loop. So that's quite significant development I wouldn't have expected still some time ago before I see it. It's like quite an actually exceptional decision. [00:12:09] S0: I think that's so interesting to think about. And you lead the IQM's government and policy engagement, including the NATO's Transatlantic Quantum Computers. And so I guess why do countries want to own their own quantum computers? So obviously, recently, there's a few deals that's happening, which is Spain's first quantum computer with Telefonica in Madrid. And then the first US system in Oak Ridge National Lab and Brazil's El Dorado Institute. So there's quite a few things going on. So why do countries want to own their own quantum computers?
00:12:09 · Grace Gong, Juha Vartiainen
[00:12:09] S0: I think that's so interesting to think about. And you lead the IQM's government and policy engagement, including the NATO's Transatlantic Quantum Computers. And so I guess why do countries want to own their own quantum computers? So obviously, recently, there's a few deals that's happening, which is Spain's first quantum computer with Telefonica in Madrid. And then the first US system in Oak Ridge National Lab and Brazil's El Dorado Institute. So there's quite a few things going on. So why do countries want to own their own quantum computers? [00:13:00] S1: A lot has changed in international politics in past years. Let's say now many countries are evaluating very high idea of sovereignty. They want to have less dependencies on other countries, other companies. So therefore, they want to own the data. They want to own the processing like the servers. They want to have a full control. Let's say they want to be on the driver's seat when it comes to data processing. There are security concerns. There are concerns about the dependencies. So there are different models of deploying computing, especially quantum computing. The cloud model has been the very popular one. But let's say this on premise model where you own, you build and accumulate your know how to your organization in your own country, that has become increasingly popular. And that's more the question, who is owning, who is operating the data centers where your data is processed?
00:13:00 · Juha Vartiainen, Grace Gong
[00:13:00] S1: A lot has changed in international politics in past years. Let's say now many countries are evaluating very high idea of sovereignty. They want to have less dependencies on other countries, other companies. So therefore, they want to own the data. They want to own the processing like the servers. They want to have a full control. Let's say they want to be on the driver's seat when it comes to data processing. There are security concerns. There are concerns about the dependencies. So there are different models of deploying computing, especially quantum computing. The cloud model has been the very popular one. But let's say this on premise model where you own, you build and accumulate your know how to your organization in your own country, that has become increasingly popular. And that's more the question, who is owning, who is operating the data centers where your data is processed? [00:14:24] S0: For sure. So I guess I want to talk about the buyers of quantum computers because obviously recently you guys have raised Series C, which is, I believe, over 600,000,000. Correct me if... I think 300,000,000 in Series C, but together, it's a lot more. [00:14:44] S1: So that was actually our Series B. Now this summer, we got actually publicly listed. So that's our latest one. Yeah, [00:14:55] S0: sorry. I was just looking at the data. So I guess when you guys are selling the Quantum Computers, who is the official buyer? And would it be the government? Or would it be obviously you guys have a [00:15:11] S1: lot of
00:15:11 · Juha Vartiainen, Grace Gong
[00:15:11] S1: lot of [00:15:11] S0: strategic investors. How much does these things actually cost to build? And for each machine, how much can it power compared to regular machines?
00:15:27 · Juha Vartiainen
[00:15:27] S1: Yeah, this is actually a very complex field in that sense. So quantum computing is mostly interesting for, let's say, public side customers in this point of time. We have actually the last three sales were for the private customers, enterprises to Japan, to Poland. But actually, most of our sales are for the public side and there are like three layers of customers. So actual demand comes very often from, let's say, scientists, engineers, innovators type of people. Those are the end customers. But usually they don't need to buy the quantum computing themselves, but they are usually associated to some, let's say, end user networks or some institutions. So we have usually some institutional, let's say, counterpart for signing the contract. So that could be HPC centers, high performance computing centers. That could be some research institutes, sometimes universities. So those are our actual customers for on premise quantum computers. But then for them, the business is more or less like hosting computers or servers. They're sometimes running a data center. But then, as I said, it's actually that they get their funding of the decisions from the government. So we to work also with the government. So that's very like a strategic decision to so we have to talk to the government, we have to talk to the data center, we have to talk to the end customers and convince all of them that it's like our offering is the winning one. But yeah, then there are public tenders often and so on. But that's more or less the structure of our customers. And we will see this is a relatively new field, and it's moving quickly. We have started to see this so called quantum advantage to come closer and more and more interest from private sector. Let's say companies are starting to put their own money on the table. They start to see ROI in some point, also quantum computing. So we hope to see more, let's say, private side customers, and it might be different there when that time comes.