Recently, the first optical quantum computing company in China, Turing Quantum, completed the third round of financing, and the funds will be mainly used to create an optical quantum computing and intelligent industrialization application ecology. In this frontier field, Turing Quantum, which has been founded for only one year, has completed three rounds of large financing, with a cumulative financing amount of more than 500 million yuan.
Why Start a Business? Why does Turing Quantum frequently gain capital favor in a short period of time? In this regard, the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) reporter interviewed Jin Xianmin, founder of Turing Quantum, Yangtze River scholar and tenured professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Kim Hyun-min said that since 2003 to do related research, in the past 20 years, he gradually feels that the field of light quantum is getting closer and closer to industrialization, so he hopes to promote optical quantum computing from the laboratory to industrialization, and established Turing Quantum in February 2021.
Turing Quantum founder Kim Hyun-min, picture from Turing Quantum
Why did Turing Quantum choose the track of optical quantum computing? This requires an understanding of the development and advantages of the field of optical quantum computing in the mainland. However, to understand optical quantum computing, you must first understand quantum computing.
According to the definition of Jin Xianmin's mentor and academician Pan Jianwei of the University of Science and Technology of China, quantum computing is a new computing model based on quantum mechanics, with a strong parallel computing capability far beyond classical computing in principle, providing solutions for large-scale computing problems required for artificial intelligence, cryptanalysis, meteorological forecasting, resource exploration, drug design, etc., and revealing complex physical mechanisms such as quantum phase transition, high-temperature superconductivity, and quantum Hall effect.
Unlike traditional computers, which use bits of 0 or 1 to store information, quantum computing uses qubits as the basic unit for encoding and storing information. Based on the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, a qubit can be superimposed in two states of 0 and 1 at the same time, that is, it can represent both 0 and 1 information at the same time. Therefore, quantum computing offers an idea that fundamentally implements parallel computing, with the potential to greatly surpass the computing power of classical computers.
On this basis, optical quantum computing mainly uses photons to encode qubits, and optical quantum computers achieve computation through quantum manipulation and measurement of photons, and it is expected to solve computational tasks that are difficult for traditional computers to solve in the future, such as code breaking, molecular simulation, and big data processing.
"I think China's optical quantum computing should belong to the international first square, but we still have some difficulties in the underlying technology of photonic chips." Jin Xianmin once told the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) reporter that the manufacture of photonic chips and electronic chips is different, China and foreign countries are racing on the zero starting line, foreign countries no longer have a first-mover advantage, and the development of photonic chips will not be "stuck neck". Therefore, for many years, Kim Hyun-min has always led the team to explore the field of "a bright" optical quantum chip.
Jin Xianmin is the director of the Integrated Quantum Information Technology Research Center (IQIT) of Shanghai Jiaotong University and won the Shanghai Young Science and Technology Excellence Award. Since 2003, he has studied under Professor Pan Jianwei and received his Ph.D. from the University of Science and Technology of China, and in 2012 he was awarded the "Marie Curie Fellow" by the European Union and the "Wolferson College Scholar" at oxford university. As the first author, he completed the 16 km free space quantum teleportation work, published in the journal Nature Photonics as a cover article, and was selected as one of the top ten scientific and technological advances in China in 2010, and his doctoral dissertation was also selected for the National 100 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award.
Turing Quantum developed a three-dimensional light quantum chip, picture from Turing Quantum
Jin Xianmin has long focused on photonic chips, chipping and integrating quantum information and photon information, and has won a number of international achievements. In 2018, he led a team that produced the world's largest three-dimensional integrated photonic chip, which is China's first optical quantum computing chip.
Jin Hyun-min once told the surging news that photonic chips are to photons as electronic chips are to electronics. "Before, we used almost all electronic chips, and electronic or electrical signals were processed on the chips. With the development of photonic integration technology, people can finally achieve the possibility of manipulating photons using photonic chips. Photons can have interference effects, and this effect and some other properties of light can be exploited to manipulate and process information. He said, "Three-dimensional photonic chips are a type of photonic chips, in this category we spent 4 years to penetrate it deeply, in the scale and accuracy of three-dimensional photonic chips have basically done the best, so far has not been caught up." ”
In 2020, Jin Hyun-min's team developed a photonic computer based on the concept of integrated chips and photons under the non-von Neumann computing architecture. The team took a different approach, not relying on fragile quantum properties, but more with the advantages of the photon itself, showing the "photon advantage" of the photonic computer surpassing the classical computer in solving specific computing problems, indicating that the photonic computer can be expected in the future.
Turing Quantum develops the world's first commercial research-grade optical quantum computer, picture from Turing Quantum
The successful financing and rapid development of Turing Quantum is due to the research results of Kim Hyun-min and his team over the years. Jin Xianmin said that the investment institutions led by the three rounds are very good investment institutions, "for example, the first round is Lenovo Star (leading the investment), the second round is Legend Capital, and the third round is the origin of Yuanhe", including the follow-up investors, production investors, financial investors, etc., are very recognized Turing quantum. Investment institutions will compete, and Turing Quantum is "hoping to be evaluated, recognized, and finally complete this investment." We also want companies that understand [Turing Quantum] to vote for us, not blindly. ”
It is reported that the third round of financing funds of Turing Quantum will be mainly used to create an ecology of optical quantum computing and intelligent industrialization applications. When talking about the future development of Turing quantum, Jin Xianmin also mentioned the word "industrialization" many times, he said: "This (quantum computing) industrialization state, foreign countries actually started earlier, may say that 5 to 8 years ago has begun to lay out industrialization." We were relatively late, but I think it's okay and it's still the right time. Especially in the Chinese environment, especially at the right time. ”
Since its inception, Turing Quantum has always taken photonic chips as the core, committed to the research and development of special optical quantum computers, and will gradually transition to large-scale general-purpose optical quantum computers in the future, and strive to promote the industrialization process of quantum computing "empowering hundreds of industries". Jin Xianmin told the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) reporter that Turing Quantum's industrial layout of quantum computing and photonic computing will be the first to be reflected in the application of artificial intelligence, biomedicine, medical data analysis and financial technology.
Quantum computing empowers the biomedical field
"In fact, 'empowering hundreds of industries' cannot be said to be defined in terms of quantity, but means that many fields can find points that can be applied," Jin Xianmin said, "industrial empowerment, that is, quantum computing can be combined with the industry, can run into new capabilities." ”
"We have launched optical quantum chip design software and quantum computing simulation software years ago, as well as our commercial research-grade optical quantum computer. In the next year, it will successively launch algorithm solutions and systems in financial technology, biomedicine and other sectors. Jin Xianmin believes that Turing Quantum will form a full-stack layout company with software, hardware and algorithm applications in the future, "We must do a good job in the launch of this full-stack product, and at the same time, we can cooperate more with companies or institutions in the future." For example, how do we cooperate with financial technology companies, how to cooperate with biomedical companies, and how to promote the application of quantum computing in medical data analysis. ”
With the future development of the field of quantum computing in the mainland, Jin Xianmin said that Turing Quantum will firmly explore how to make various industries intersect with quantum computing, how to cooperate and run in, so that the ability of quantum computing will burst out in the future, and eventually form a large-scale industrialization of quantum computing.