A PhD team from Tsinghua University has ventured into ion trap quantum computing, betting on the glass-based QCCD technical route and securing financing of over 100 million yuan | 36Kr Exclusive

Source / Enterprise

This article contains approximately 2900 words, with a recommended reading time of 7 minutes

Author丨Ou Xue

Editor丨Yuan Silai

36Kr Hard Krypton learned that ion trap quantum computing company WeKe Quantum Light has recently completed a Pre-A round of financing of over 100 million RMB, led by Jiuzhi Capital, with Zhengxuan Capital and Hanhui Capital as follow-on investors. The company previously completed an angel round of financing, finishing two consecutive rounds within half a year. The funds from this round will be mainly used for production line expansion and complete machine construction. At present, the company is launching a new round of financing, and Duowei Capital acts as the long-term exclusive financial advisor.

Founded in February this year, WeKe Quantum Light is positioned as a full-system quantum computing company focusing on the ion trap technical route. Its core businesses include chips and complete machines, real-machine computing power services for scientific research, and application solutions for scenarios such as AI.

Ou Lingfeng, the founder of the company, is a PhD candidate in the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University, studying under Kihwan Kim, an internationally top ion trap expert, and has long been engaged in research related to ion trap quantum computing. The core team of the company comes from Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and top domestic and foreign universities, with rich industry experience. It is the earliest team in China to work on the glass-based QCCD technical route, has full-chain capabilities from quantum chip design, manufacturing to testing, and covers complete machine hardware control, system integration and application implementation.

Ou Lingfeng told Hard Krypton that the company's chip and complete machine business is relatively mature at present, which has passed laboratory verification and started small-batch delivery. The application capability is still under construction, and the company is also considering cooperation with software companies.

Compared with other domestic ion trap teams, the differentiation of WeKe Quantum Light lies in its choice of the glass-based QCCD technical route. Ou Lingfeng mentioned that compared with silicon-based QCCD, glass-based QCCD has stronger versatility and a shorter chip iteration cycle, and one round of iteration can be completed in about two weeks; while the silicon-based tapeout cycle is relatively longer, and the chip manufacturing takes more time. The performance of the chip determines the upper limit of the computing performance of the complete machine, and the iteration efficiency of the chip directly affects the evolution of the complete machine performance and the speed of product iteration.

In terms of core technical indicators, the core team has previously realized a stable ion lattice composed of 531 ions and a coherence time of more than 10 hours in the laboratory of Tsinghua University. These long-term scientific research accumulations are further transformed into the technical capabilities of WeKe Quantum Light in large-scale ion trapping, precise quantum manipulation and QCCD complete machine engineering.

Ou Lingfeng explained that traditional chips need to work at low temperatures to achieve good performance. Through process improvement and chip design, WeKe Quantum Light enables its chips to have very good performance at room temperature, thus broadening the applicable scope of ion trap quantum computers and reducing costs.

Ou Lingfeng believes that ion trap chips have now entered the engineering stage. In the past, ion trap chips relied on manual assembly, and whether it was a quadrupole or a blade trap, they were large devices that depended on the feel of manual assembly. Now WeKe Quantum Light can ensure that chips produced with the same design, the same program and the same process are very similar, with the capability of "what you design is what you get".

Specifically, the technical roadmap of WeKe Quantum Light is: to produce electrically integrated chips now, then optoelectronic integrated chips, and later realize quantum interconnection between chips to expand to ultra-large-scale quantum computing clusters.

Ou Lingfeng made an analogy with classic computing power: classic computers used to be very large, IBM and Intel made them smaller, and NVIDIA expanded the computing power of graphics cards through interconnection between boards, which is equivalent to becoming smaller first and then larger. Quantum chips also follow the path of becoming smaller first and then larger: optoelectronic integration reduces the computing power of large volume to a smaller size, which can be replicated after shrinking, and then expanded through quantum interconnection. The company proposes a path from electrical interconnection to optical interconnection and then to quantum interconnection.

It is worth noting that AI plays a full-chain enabling role in WeKe Quantum Light's technical system. Ou Lingfeng said that AI empowers quantum computers across the entire chain from chips to system drivers and then to upper-layer coding.

In terms of application scenarios, WeKe Quantum Light focuses on quantum chemistry and material computing, biomedicine, complex optimization, and the integration of quantum and artificial intelligence, specifically covering scenarios such as prediction of new materials and high-temperature superconducting materials, simulation of molecular structures and reaction processes, calculation of proteins and small molecules, and combinatorial optimization.

In terms of commercialization, WeKe Quantum Light has received orders from top domestic universities, and is cooperating with a number of computing power centers to promote the access of quantum computing power and the construction of a joint computing power service framework, exploring the access of QPU as a new heterogeneous computing power unit to existing computing power infrastructure.

Ou Lingfeng judges that the rise of large models is reshaping the market's perception of the value of computing power. In the future, quantum computers are expected to become an important part of the computing power infrastructure, working in synergy with CPUs and GPUs. The integration of quantum computing, artificial intelligence and existing computing workflows will also further expand new computing power demands and application scenarios.

In terms of the timeline, he believes that in the next 3 to 5 years, fields such as material prediction, quantum chemistry and protein simulation are expected to usher in landmark breakthroughs similar to the "AlphaGo Moment"; while larger-scale general quantum computing applications, such as cryptanalysis, may take 7 to 10 years. Rather than waiting for the technology to fully mature, he advocates first bringing quantum computing power into real workflows, and continuously iterating hardware, software and algorithm capabilities in applications.

The following is an excerpt of the conversation between Hard Krypton and Ou Lingfeng, the founder of the company (edited):

Hard Krypton: What specific role does AI play in quantum computers?

Ou Lingfeng: AI is running through the complete link of quantum computers from underlying hardware to upper-layer applications. In the chip design stage, the company introduces AI-assisted design and parameter optimization; in the stages of quantum state readout, system calibration and operation control, adaptive algorithms are used to improve system stability and automation level, gradually transforming the debugging process that used to rely heavily on manual experience into an intelligent closed loop; at the upper layer, users can describe computing requirements in natural language, and AI will further complete task parsing, quantum circuit generation, compilation and send it to the quantum computing system for execution. In general, AI is empowering the full stack of quantum computing from chip design, quantum manipulation, system operation to application interaction.

Hard Krypton: What dimensions are investors more concerned about at present? Are there hard requirements for the progress of commercialization?

Ou Lingfeng: Investors mainly focus on two aspects: first, whether the team's technology matches the things to be done, that is, whether the people and the tasks are matched; second, whether the team has commercial awareness and can think from the perspective of customers, which is slightly different from scientific research. There are no such requirements at present, because this field is still in its early stage, the technical route often changes, and sometimes there are deviations from the original assumptions, which investors can well understand at present.

Hard Krypton: What are the main challenges in the next stage?

Ou Lingfeng: The challenges mainly come from two aspects: technology and commercialization. Technically, quantum computing is still in a relatively early stage. How to combine it with AI to truly find economically valuable and implementable scenarios still requires continuous verification.

In terms of commercialization, it is not enough for the product side to make good products unilaterally. We also hope that the demand side is willing to open up some real scenarios, and move forward together. At present, many applications can run on the prototype machine without major problems, but what is truly valuable is to get through the entire link from requirements, algorithms, real-machine computing power to the final application. We are also trying to cooperate with some scenario parties, hoping that they are willing to participate earlier and put the entire workflow into real use, instead of waiting until everything is fully mature before accessing.

Investor Viewpoints:

Jiuzhi Capital: Quantum computing is at a critical stage from basic research to engineering breakthroughs. The ion trap route, with its advantages of high fidelity, long coherence time and fully connected manipulation, shows important potential leading to fault-tolerant quantum computing. WeKe Quantum Light originates from the top international team led by Professor Kihwan Kim, with profound scientific research accumulation and outstanding engineering capabilities. It is a scarce team in China that has made systematic layout on the QCCD architecture, and has achieved internationally competitive results. We are optimistic about the team's ability to continuously overcome underlying core technologies and promote the large-scale development of ion trap quantum computing, and we also look forward to accompanying WeKe Quantum Light to grow into a quantum computing platform enterprise with global competitiveness.

Zhengxuan Investment: Quantum computing is a brand new computing paradigm different from classical computing, which is expected to become a new computing power base in the AI era. Ion trap quantum computing represented by the QCCD route is one of the currently recognized routes with the highest qubit quality and the greatest potential for general fault-tolerant computing. The team of WeKe Quantum Light is derived from the world-famous ion trap quantum computing laboratory, which is young and full of innovation. The company's unique quartz-based QCCD solution opens up a brand new path in ion trap quantum computing, with great application prospects. Zhengxuan Investment continues to be optimistic about the quantum industry, and will cooperate with WeKe Quantum Light for a long time in the future to promote the full industrialization and generalization of quantum computing.

Hanhui Capital: Quantum computing is gradually moving from physical principle verification to competition in system engineering and fault tolerance capabilities. In the future, what really determines the industrial pattern will no longer be just the number of physical qubits, but the comprehensive performance of high-fidelity manipulation, logical qubit efficiency and large-scale system capabilities. With its high gate fidelity, long coherence time and flexible full-connection capability, the ion trap route has outstanding potential in realizing high-quality logical qubits and fault-tolerant quantum computing. Derived from the top international team led by Professor Kihwan Kim, WeKe Quantum Light has long-term technical accumulation in ion trap quantum control, chip architecture and system engineering, and has formed a relatively complete technical layout around the QCCD architecture. We are optimistic that the team will continuously transform its leading scientific research capabilities into engineering and large-scale capabilities, build core barriers at the critical stage when ion trap quantum computing moves from "high-quality physical qubits" to "high-value logical qubits", and grow into a quantum computing platform enterprise with global competitiveness.