Future of Quantum technologies

An interview with Grégoire Ribordy, co-founder of ID Quantique, a global leader in quantum cryptography solutions.

I had a talk with Gregoire Ribordy, the co-founder of ID Quantique — worldwide leader in quantum cryptography solutions, about the future of quantum technologies and his road success.

ID Quantique is the current global leader in quantum cryptography solutions, and one of the pioneers in the industry. Between 2013 and 2016, IDQ raised several investments rounds from venture capital firms, and finally, in 2018, was acquired by Korean public telecommunications company, SK Telecom. Today, IDQ’s success story remains a benchmark for the whole quantum technology industry, and Phystech Ventures is proud to be a part of it.

I decided to publish the full text of the interview for the convenience of my readers. Enjoy!

Daniel Shaposhnikov (DS): Our analysis of the quantum industry showed that about half of all quantum startups are created in Europe. At the same time, they have only raised 20% of the total capital invested in the sector over the last 3 years — $600m out of a total $3b. In your opinion, what is the reason for this imbalance?

Gregoire Ribordy (GR): I think this is a very important point. In Europe we have a challenge with capital availability. There is excellent science, when people do get great results. They can start companies, so it’s easy to find “seed funding” and “series A funding”. But when they grow a capital, it is very difficult to raise in Europe because there are not too big investors that you can find, typically, in the US. That’s a big challenge for European taxing.

DS: Until 2019, investment growth in the sector has been slow. However, by 2021, we expect a record investment in quantum technologies, of about $2.7b. With that forecast in mind, from 2019 to 2021, total investment in the sector will have tripled, two years in a row. In your view, what does this pattern of growth represent?

GR: I think it really means that the market is happening. Essentially in the 90th the science was done. 2000–2010 — the first prototypes were developed and demonstrated in the market. Around 2015 — the first application started to come. Now we see the effect of companies that have been created and raising funds. This is the way we see things in IDQ and we think that the 20th is going to be the quantum decade. Quantum technologies will start to have a completely massive impact on society in general.

DS: Major computing companies like Google and IBM are investing in superconducting qubit physical platforms, but these have problems with scalability and cryogenic issues. Alternatively, some consider photon-based quantum computers promising, but they suffer from problems with photon losses and large system sizes. Other platforms have their own distinct issues, too, and all platforms today are non-deterministic. In consideration of this, what is your overall view on the current level of development of quantum computers?

GR: We are still in a phase, where we have elementary qubits. But these qubits are not clean enough. They are too noisy, so we need to be able to implement the error correction. To put several qubits together, several physical qubits together, to have a state stable logical qubit. Often people talk about the number of qubits as one of the important metrics for progress. We are not there yet. We need to talk more about the stability of the qubits, how clean they are because they are still not good enough that we can do error correction. We should have elementary building blocks, put them together and then once we have this logical qubit, we will be able to talk about scaling. So, we are still in the phase where we demonstrate these qubits, so people talk about the nisk phase. You know, noisy intermediate scale points of computing and try to find some applications, typically, in areas where you can simulate quantum physics. And words useful, such as material sciences, drug discovery and things like this.

DS: Can we expect quantum advantage in a wide range of computational tasks during the coming years?

GR: It’s a difficult question. It’s hard to say because there may be some good ideas about new qubits. One, you haven’t mentioned, is the approach that IBM follows with majorana fermions, topological qubits, which seems to hold good promises. I would say that we are still in the phase when we need to explore many platforms and we are still not able to pick the winning candidate for the qubits.

DS: What industries will change or be disrupted after the quantum computer is developed? How much of our data will be stolen, Gregoire?

GR: Well, that’s a good question. If you consider hacking as an industry it will clearly be disrupted by quantum computing. Because, in principle, the challenge is that we could be already vulnerable to some attacks because data, which we encrypt and consider protected today, could be intercepted and stored in an encrypted form today by some hackers. And then when a quantum computer becomes available, they can then break the encryption that we use and then make the data available. That could be hackers, that could be nation states also, that would go after some very important state secrets or commercial secrets. So, that’s clearly something very important that we need to take into account and start preparing.

I think it’s been one of the messages that IDQ, as an organization, has tried to pass this. That we must prepare early enough because it’s hard to predict when quantum computing will come. But also, because migrating to a secure solution will take time. You know, it’s not going to be overnight, just an upgrade of windows or something like this.

And so that’s clearly one area. Then, go back to your question — the bright side of quantum computing again — I think simulation of quantum mechanics which is hugely important for material sciences, biotech and things like this is going to be the first area where will be an impact because we will understand that instead of doing trial and errors to optimize molecules and things like this, we will be able to simulate molecules and then just design them in the way that they’re supposed to work instead of just going by chance and experience.

DS: Is post-quantum cryptography sufficient, or should protection also be built at the physical level, for example, through quantum key distribution technology (QKD)?

GR: Yeah, that’s a very important question because some people say: “Oh, let’s just use post quantum cryptography”. New encryption schemes which are based on mathematics but which are designed or, you know, to be resistant to quantum computing. I think, for me the biggest question is that probably we’ll never really know how resistant these crypto systems are. Traditionally, in cryptography what you do is that you design a new system, you make it public, you wait until many people have tried to break it. If they haven’t succeeded to break it, then you consider that it offers some security. In general, this is the way it worked. It’s not ideal in a way because there can always be a new approach sometime later that finds a vulnerability in the encryption systems. If you want long-term security, you’re always vulnerable to new and more powerful computers that could come.

Our view is that post quantum crypto is very important but it’s not sufficient, it must be combined. Sometimes people say: “Oh, there’s post quantum and there’s QKD”. No, these are two parts of the solution QKD which is based on the laws of physics. To provide very long-term security is very important for the main line, the backbones, the main lines, the systemic part of our communication systems. And then, of course, PQC can be used in areas where there’s less impact and typically endpoint security. That’s a little bit of what we see. And one example of this is what our partner and shareholder SK Telecom is doing in Korea. The vision of SK telecom is that the backbone must be protected by QKD and so really the optical backbone in Korea for 5G networks, for example. But then the the radio part the last mile which goes through the air to the smartphone then PQC is suitable provided that you do it right and also that you have good keys and and that’s an area where quantum random number generator can also play a role to ensure that even if you use PQC at least you have strong keys in your systems.

DS: What should the Quantum Internet look like? What technologies do we need for getting the Quantum Internet in place?

GR: QKD now is about you transmit a qubit from A to B. And one of the challenges is that you have a limitation in distance because you cannot replicate, you cannot amplify the qubit. The signal, after a certain distance in optical fiber, will get absorbed and you don’t have enough signal at the end. The idea of the quantum internet is to be able to distribute entanglement.

This entanglement is this resource from a quantum information point of view — it’s a resource that is a property of quantum objects which offers very strong correlation at a distance. And the idea is to be able to distribute between any points in a network of the quantum internet to distribute entanglement. Once you have entanglement, you can do many things. The first and obvious thing to do is to create encryption keys, symmetric keys. And so that will be the way to do a very secure long distance key distribution. But you can also use it to connect in a quantum way, quantum computers remotely. As you can imagine, probably, initially, we’ll have smaller quantum computers, and for some calculation we’ll need to build a cluster of quantum computers. That’s where the quantum internet will play a role: in connecting some smaller quantum processors into a bigger meta large quantum computer.

DS: What do you think about quantum memory?

GR: Quantum memory is one of the challenges. It’s one of the bricks or build technological building blocks that are missing. And the reason is that if you want to build the quantum internet, you’re going to get resources from two different points. And these are typically going to be photons. And they don’t get exactly at the same time in the routers, you know, they’re going to be routers, they’re known as quantum repeaters in quantum jargon.

But their role will be equivalent to the routers of the classical internet. Photons will not get at exactly the same time. And in order to build this entanglement we’ll need to store one photon for a little while until the second photon arrives. For that we need these memories. That’s one of the hot areas of research right now.

DS: Yeah, it’s a problem not only for repeaters but also for photon-based quantum computers.

Why did you decide to start a company? What was your motivation?

GR: You know, lack of other options could be one answer. I finished my PhD at the university of Geneva in 2000. We had this cool technology. People were interested about QKD but also random number generation. So I was interested in this, and there were no other companies to go to. So that’s why we decided to start the company, I guess.

DS: What was the first product IDQ made, and why?

GR: So, I think the first product was a quantum random number generators which, I believe, we sold to HPlabs at the time HP had labs in Bristol. They were our first customers when we delivered our product. Now we got an order from the university in the US for a product that we had not developed — the single photon detector before the product existed and before the company existed. Kind of put together a spec sheet, sent it to them and a couple of days later I got a fax with the purchase order and I said ok, now we need to start a company, we have no choice.

DS: How have investors been able to help the company?

GR: Not all investors are always completely useful but some of them have a huge impact. First, experience helping with problems when entrepreneurs face critical questions and don’t know how to handle certain situations. Second is opening doors, making contacts, meeting with people that can be customers, partners and save a lot of time. When you are an entrepreneur, you are running, you have to move fast and sometimes opening these doors is what takes you a lot of time.

DS: When you were asked to sell SK Telecom, why did you accept an offer?

GR: I think, because I was the right partner, the right investor. As an entrepreneur you know that companies are a little bit like a child and you are so emotional about the company, so you want to be sure that investors that you picked share the same vision. SK Telecom had an activity in quantum technologies — they had a lab — so they understood the importance and they were very smart and very sophisticated in their understanding of quantum technologies. At the same time they valued what IDQ had done right which was early a revenue generation.

I think one of our skills is to key the technologies very quickly, turn it into a product and revenue validations from the market. They saw that this combination — of financial power, market access, market power — and the agility of two small companies together would make a lot of sense. That’s what convinced me to go ahead with this company. I should also say that I knew people there — had known them for six-seven years, so the trust element already existed.

DS: What targets do you set for your team for the next five years?

GR: We typically have annual targets and a long-term vision. In general, we are on a very aggressive growth path. This year, for example, 40% is our goal and we’ve already achieved it — that’s one of the key targets. Another target is to find a way to make quantum technologies more competitive. I think it is very important because there are some customers we cannot address now with a current approach. That’s one of the targets for the next 5 years. Then, if you look in a longer term the target of IDQ is to be the company that is building the quantum internet.

DS: I wish you all the best in achieving your targets. Thank you for this conversation. See you soon!

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