Last week researchers at Google conquered a major milestone in the field of quantum computing. What has been theoretical for a number of decades, may be more imminent than we once thought. Google’s quantum computer, Sycamore, was able to complete a task that a classic supercomputer would take over 10,000 years to complete, in just over three minutes.

In a classical computer, a bit (a unit of information) is represented in two states (either 1 or 0), while, in Quantum Computing, quantum mechanics can be leveraged such that a bit can represent many states and therefore can compute much quicker. Although this could have many positive applications like in medical and material research, it also threatens the cybersecurity industry. Currently computers encrypt messages and sensitive information through algorithms, that rely on classical computers taking thousands of years to decode, but these would be susceptible in a qunatum computing world. 

It's this industry landscape that led us to invest in ArQit. ArQit is currently developing a constellation of satellites equipped with quantum key distribution (QKD) technology that will ensure safe encryption in a post-quantum world. Also leveraging quantum mechanics, it is able to encode individual photons to represent bits of information which collect to form a unique encryption key.

We believe that Sycamore's showcase is an indicator of what is to come in quantum computing and the industry is developing faster than expected. We believe, as do many Governments, banks and telecom providers that it's essential there is infrastructure in place as a safeguard for a post-quantum computing world sooner rather than later.