FEATURE: QUANTUM TECHNOLOGIES
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What is Q-Alliance?
Founded: 2025 Launch Event: ComoLake2025 Digital Innovation Forum Location: Lombardy, Italy Founding Members: IonQ, D-Wave Quantum, Italian scientific institutions and governmental bodies Mission: Build a world-leading quantum hub for research, innovation and industry collaboration Focus Areas: Quantum computing, networking, sensing and education. applications – from drug discovery and materials science to logistics, finance and climate modelling.
“ Through this landmark quantum collaboration,” de Masi said,“ we intend to create quantum applications that can accelerate every segment of Italy’ s major industries – from defence to agriculture, automotive to healthcare. Every area of the Italian economy will benefit by leveraging IonQ’ s technology.”
D-Wave’ s role: Engineering the quantum era
While IonQ brings strength in gate-based systems, D-Wave Quantum adds the power of annealing quantum technology – a complementary approach designed for solving optimisation problems at scale.
IonQ’ s vision: A‘ quantum renaissance’ for Italy
For Niccolò de Masi, Chairman and CEO of IonQ, Q-Alliance represents far more than a technological collaboration – it’ s a cultural and industrial rebirth.
As the world’ s first commercial supplier of quantum computers, D-Wave has customers already using its systems to optimise logistics, financial portfolios, energy grids and drug design.
“ This is a historic moment for Italy and for the quantum industry,” said Dr Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave.
“ IonQ enables a fantastic opportunity for Italy to lead a‘ Quantum Renaissance’ – one with the potential to transform not only the country but the EU,” he said.
IonQ, the US-based leader in gate-based, universal quantum computing, will bring its expertise in quantum networking, security and sensing to Italy’ s growing quantum ecosystem.
The company already partners with governments and enterprises across the UK, Europe, Asia and North America and sees Italy as the next frontier for largescale quantum deployment.
IonQ’ s participation ensures that Q-Alliance can leverage industry-leading quantum architectures for real-world
“ Q-Alliance supports Italy’ s mission to become a global epicentre of quantum leadership, accelerating breakthrough research, industrial innovation and the development of a quantum-ready workforce.”
D-Wave is globally developing both annealing and gate-model quantum systems. Its inclusion ensures that Q-Alliance can harness production-grade, commercial-ready quantum computing to deliver immediate value for Italy’ s Digital Transformation.
“ We believe D-Wave’ s production-grade annealing quantum computing technology will serve as a critical component of Q-Alliance, fuelling quantum application development and adoption now,” said Dr Baratz.
EVERY AREA OF THE ITALIAN ECONOMY WILL BENEFIT BY LEVERAGING IONQ’ S INDUSTRY-LEADING QUANTUM COMPUTING, NETWORKING AND SENSING SOLUTIONS.
Gate-Based Quantum Computing
• Processes qubits using logical operations – more general and flexible
• Suited for algorithms like Shor’ s( cryptography) and Grover’ s( search)
• IonQ’ s area of leadership
Annealing Quantum Computing
• Optimised for solving complex optimisation and sampling problems
• Suited for logistics, materials and AI optimisation
• D-Wave’ s area of leadership
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