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Quantum computing company D-Wave has acquired Quantum Circuits, a Connecticut firm known for developing scalable quantum computer systems and superconducting technology.
The $550 million acquisition will initially produce a research and development lab for D-Wave in New Haven, with plans to create a commercially available quantum computer in 2026 from the merger. The quantum system is already being used by a select group of customers for testing, D-Wave said.
“It’s a very important day for the quantum industry,” D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz said in a press call. “We believe that the combination of D-Wave and Quantum Circuits will firmly establish D-Wave as a world leading quantum computing company.”
Quantum Circuits, established 10 years ago as a Yale University project founded by two professors, has developed quantum computing systems based on superconducting technology with a proprietary approach to error correction.
Quantum computing has so much processing potential that its development is broadly seen as a national security issue.
According to a November report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission — established by Congress in 2000 to “monitor, investigate, and report” development in China — quantum computing will “secure disproportionate and likely enduring advantages in intelligence collection and precision targeting.”
The first country to begin using quantum computing at scale could use it to break pre-quantum encryption. Government and industry leaders have noted that China has in the past few years conducted large-scale operations to collect encrypted, currently unusable, data in the apparent hope that it will be able to break the encryption with a quantum-based system in the future.
“Especially when combined with cyber infiltration capabilities, the first country to achieve quantum advantage will be able to put at risk essentially all encrypted data,” the report notes. “Communications, financial information, health information, and sensitive government information.”
Quantum Circuits has developed a system attempting to solve “one of the most important challenges and next steps in bringing commercial quantum computing systems to market,” Mr. Baratz said.
D-Wave has what it claims are “the largest and most powerful quantum computers in the world today,” saying that they are the only quantum computers that have been shown to solve “important, useful problems,” rather than just research-based examples.
D-Wave’s acquisition of Quantum Circuits adds high-efficiency “dual-rail gate-model processor” technology with D-Wave’s current scalable control, readout, and quantum cloud platform, the company said.
“The dual-rail technology is still quite new,” said Rob Schoelkopf, chief scientist and co-founder of Quantum Circuits. “Most of the superconducting platforms out there are using, kind of, 10- or 15-year-old versions of superconducting qubits and the architectures.”
Up to this point, Quantum Circuits has built only prototypes in its New Haven lab. But with the announcement of a commercial product in 2026 in conjunction with the merger with D-Wave, the company’s leadership is hailing a massive step forward in commercialization.
“We’ve been seeing orders of magnitude year-by-year of both with the scale and the performance of these dual-rail qubits,” Mr. Schoelkopf said.
The commercial product offered by D-Wave from the acquisition will initially be focused more on research and education, but the company announced that governments will have access to develop algorithms that can use their technology in the near future.
• John T. Seward can be reached at jseward@washingtontimes.com.
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