Five super-large central state-owned enterprises jointly organize the competition, releasing more than 50 real business scenarios at one go: the "last mile" of quantum technology transformation will be opened up through the event.
The first national quantum industry professional competition jointly organized by multiple super-large central state-owned enterprises, the First Central SOEs Quantum Talent Innovation Space Industrial Application Innovation Competition, recently held its launch event in Hefei, marking the official opening of registration and project solicitation for the competition. Hosted by the Central SOEs Quantum Talent Innovation Space and co-organized by five central SOEs including Aviation Industry Corporation of China, State Grid, China Telecom, China Minmetals, and China Merchants Group, the competition targets the "last mile" pain points in the commercialization of quantum scientific and technological achievements, builds a full-chain service platform of "competition - incubation - industrial implementation", and promotes quantum technology to move from laboratories to frontline industrial applications.
At present, the R&D of domestic quantum technology has entered a critical breakthrough period, and a large number of cutting-edge technological achievements are accumulated in scientific research institutes. However, common problems such as lack of verification in real industrial scenarios, poor docking of core demands, and insufficient resources for industrial implementation still exist. Most technologies remain at the demonstration and pilot stage, making large-scale commercialization difficult. Meanwhile, key sectors related to national economy and people's livelihood including energy, communication, manufacturing, finance, and resource exploration have clear and urgent real demands for quantum technology to solve pain points in existing scenarios. How to unblock the transformation channel of industry-university-research-application has become the core bottleneck restricting the large-scale development of the quantum industry. The Central SOEs Quantum Talent Innovation Space launched this competition precisely to target this industry pain point. By integrating scenario resources, scientific research resources and capital resources of central SOEs, it builds an implementation platform for innovation entities in the quantum sector to connect with real industrial demands, and has attracted the attention and docking of nearly a hundred quantum innovation teams across the country so far.
From conception to implementation, this project has always focused on the integration of central SOEs' industrial resources. Relying on the basic advantages of Hefei's quantum industrial cluster, it has gradually clarified the development path of "attracting talents through competitions and prospering the industry through competitions". The launch of this competition is the first key milestone of the project's implementation. The core challenge in the promotion process lies in how to coordinate central SOEs from different industries to open up core scenarios and scientific research resources. In the end, the five co-organizing central SOEs reached a consensus, opened resources with the goal of promoting the independent and controllable development of the quantum industry, and successfully completed the competition preparation and scenario solicitation work.
Different from ordinary industry competitions, the biggest innovative highlight of this project is that it directly addresses real industrial demands. The five central SOEs have jointly released more than 50 real business scenario demands from the frontline of production and operation, setting up five tracks covering communication, dual-use technology, energy, finance and exploration, covering multiple technical directions such as quantum communication, quantum precision measurement, post-quantum security, and quantum computing, so that innovation and research are directly targeted at industry pain points. What is of greater industrial value is that the five central SOEs have opened a number of core scientific research and experimental resources for participating teams, including the world's leading electromagnetic protection pilot platform, the world's largest field test platform for quantum mineral exploration, the "Tianyan" quantum computing cloud platform, and quantum communication laboratories. On the premise of ensuring data security, desensitized business data support is also provided, and industrial and technical experts are arranged to participate in guidance throughout the whole process, so that the innovation direction is synchronized with industrial demands from the registration stage. At the same time, the project insists that technological breakthroughs are based on independence and controllability, requiring participating teams to carry out research relying on domestically produced quantum programming frameworks, promote the independent controllability of the quantum software tool chain, and accelerate the localization process of key core quantum technologies.
According to forecasts from industry institutions, the global quantum technology market size will exceed 100 billion US dollars by 2030, and the domestic quantum industry market will also enter a period of rapid growth, in which industrial applications in key sectors such as energy, communications, and manufacturing are the core driving force for current market growth. As the first quantum industry implementation platform led by central SOEs in China, this project is expected to fill the gap in the transformation of quantum technology from laboratories to the market, drive the construction of the domestic quantum industry innovation ecosystem, and bring significant potential market driving effects in the future.
After the registration of this competition starts, the winning projects will be included in the Quantum Innovation Camp for 6 months of in-depth incubation and cultivation, to carry out real on-site verification relying on the scientific research conditions opened by central SOEs, and continuously obtain support for capital docking, industrial implementation and ecological cooperation. In the follow-up, the Central SOEs Quantum Talent Innovation Space will continue to integrate more central SOE scenario resources and social resources, carry out project incubation and industrial docking on a regular basis, gradually build China's top quantum industry innovation and implementation ecosystem, and continuously promote the industrialized and large-scale development of quantum scientific and technological achievements.
The project has already built a full-category investment matrix composed of national-level funds, central SOE capital, local state-owned assets and social capital. Dozens of practitioners from investment institutions participate in the project observation throughout the whole process, adhering to the principle of investing in early-stage projects, small projects, long-term projects and hard technology projects. High-quality projects will enter the sight of capital from the very beginning of their participation. Hard technology start-up teams that meet the requirements will have the opportunity to obtain direct investment and mergers and acquisitions from central SOE capital, and enjoy free office environment and government policy support after settling in. At present, a number of quantum projects from university research teams and start-up enterprises have submitted pre-registration. A person in charge of a pre-registration team majoring in quantum computing from China's top university said that the team had long been troubled by the lack of real scenarios and large-scale computing power platforms for technical verification. This time, central SOEs open core resources to connect with real demands, which is a very rare opportunity for early-stage quantum entrepreneurial teams.
The relevant person in charge of the project said that quantum technology is a strategic frontier field related to the core competitiveness of the country. Promoting the industrialization of quantum technology is not something that a single institution can accomplish alone. This time, the competition is jointly organized by five central SOEs, which aims to integrate resources from different links of the industrial chain, build a good platform for quantum innovation teams that have real technologies and are committed to industrial implementation, so that more excellent quantum technologies can come out of laboratories, solve industrial problems practically, gradually develop into core capabilities that support industrial development, and contribute to the high-quality development of China's quantum industry.