Quantum Leap: Infleqtion secures DARPA contract to develop Multistaq

Welcome to the latest edition of “Quantum Leap” where The Fly decodes news and activity in the quantum computing space.

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DARPA CONTRACT: Infleqtion (INFQ) secured a $2M contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency through the Heterogeneous Architectures for Quantum program. The award supports the development of Multistaq, a next-generation platform designed for heterogeneous quantum systems composed of multiple qubit modalities. These heterogeneous quantum systems have the potential to accelerate scientific discovery, enhance national security decision-making, and support the development of more efficient energy, materials, and infrastructure solutions. Infleqtion was selected to contribute to Technical Area 1, which focuses on breakthrough quantum circuit compilers that maximize the capabilities of heterogeneous qubit platforms. Multistaq builds on the principles behind the company’s Superstaq multimodal compiler, implementing cross-modality and cross-layer optimization techniques to support next-generation quantum architectures.

SCALEUP PARTNER: Arqit Quantum (ARQQ) has been selected to join the Tomorrow Street portfolio as a scaleup partner. Arqit is the first quantum security company to join the portfolio. This milestone follows Arqit’s participation in Tomorrow Street’s 2025 Scaleup X program, where it engaged with technology stakeholders and demonstrated the relevance of its solutions in addressing emerging cybersecurity challenges across Tomorrow Street’s ecosystem.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PARTNERSHIP EXPANSION: IBM (IBM) and the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign announced an expansion of the IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute. This includes deploying quantum-centric supercomputing to Illinois through the integration of U. of I.’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications, or NCSA, Delta and DeltaAI supercomputers with IBM quantum computers. “I’m pleased to see the IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute building on years of progress and partnership with U. of I. as Illinois innovators pursue critical discoveries in quantum computing and AI,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Illinois’ world-class research institutions, unique industry collaborations, and unmatched research talent position our state at the forefront of global progress, and I look forward to seeing the countless advancements that this expansion will bring.” Quantum-centric supercomputing represents IBM’s vision for the future of computation, where quantum processors work alongside high-performance classical systems powered by CPUs and GPUs to solve complex problems in science and industry. As part of the Institute’s expansion, IBM and U. of I. researchers will collaborate on the development of quantum-centric workflow management tools to integrate the most powerful IBM quantum computers on the cloud with NCSA Delta and DeltaAI supercomputers, creating an environment for ongoing quantum-centric supercomputing-powered research across academia, industry, and government in Illinois. Institute members will explore how quantum-centric supercomputing architectures and novel algorithms can integrate the power of IBM quantum computers and NCSA HPC to solve classically hard problems and pursue near-term quantum advantage, as well as solutions for fundamental problems in chemistry, condensed-matter physics, and materials science. The Institute will also launch Algorithms-to-Silicon-to-Systems, or AS2, a new research area to accelerate the integration and implementation of algorithms into silicon for specialized systems. “IBM is thrilled to help provide quantum-centric supercomputing to Illinois researchers, alongside an expansion of the IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute’s efforts in AI for systems design. As the brilliant minds within the Institute discover and test new algorithms, they will drive groundbreaking research to power the applications made possible by AI and quantum computing,” said Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow.

ANALYST COMMENTARY: Northland told investors in a research note that quantum computing’s market potential could be between $100B and $250B. The analyst believes technology execution risk is “far less on an industry level.” For that reason, the firm argues that investing across all quantum computing companies diversifies away the risk and assures participating in the “asymmetrically positively skewed projected returns.” Among the five quantum names on which the analyst launched coverage, it has Outperform ratings on IonQ (IONQ), Quantum Computing (QUBT) and Xanadu Quantum (XNDU) and assigns Market Perform ratings to D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) and Rigetti Computing (RGTI).