The founder of Pasqal, Georges-Olivier Reymond, in Paris, May 21, 2024. (POOL / YOAN VALAT)
The American group IBM and the French start-up Pasqal, leaders in the development of quantum computers, announced Thursday a partnership for the development of “a new generation of supercomputers”, usable in particular in the field of chemistry and science. materials.
With “the involvement of the technical” and scientific community and an approach “based on open source software”, the two companies “wish to combine classical and quantum computing to create new standards and a new generation of supercomputers capable of being directly operational and marketable to companies”, they indicated in a press release.
Concretely, this partnership sets up a working group and collaboration at the level of the software architecture of the two companies.
However, it does not involve any capital participation or transfer of intellectual property, they clarified.
“Pasqal will maintain its total independence in matters of research and development,” according to the press release.
Quantum technology, still in its infancy, could revolutionize computing by exponentially increasing the computing speed of machines.
The potential applications are immense in industry, in artificial intelligence (improvement of machine learning), in finance, or even in the optimization of energy or transport networks.
In chemistry, “an area where a quantum supercomputer has immediate potential” according to the press release, these computers could be capable of carrying out extremely fine digital simulations of new molecules. Researchers would no longer necessarily have to synthesize these to observe them and test interactions, for example to develop new drugs.
Pasqal also announced in May the signing of an agreement with the Saudi oil giant Aramco for the delivery of a quantum computer in 2025.
Last year, the young French company, which counts 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics Alain Aspect among its co-founders, raised 100 million euros to accelerate its development.
However, no quantum computer has yet succeeded in indisputably proving its superiority over a classical computer.