Infleqtion has announced a collaboration with Cisco to pursue joint research and development focused on connecting, operating, and scaling quantum systems. Together, the companies will explore architectures to link individual devices into distributed, more capable networks, with an aim toward making distributed quantum systems a reality.
“The next major breakthrough in quantum will not come from building bigger isolated machines, but from networking systems together,” said Ramana Kompella, VP and Head of Cisco Research. “By combining Cisco’s quantum networking leadership with Infleqtion’s quantum platforms, we are developing the communication architecture needed to scale quantum capabilities from standalone devices into resilient, collaborative networks.”
“Achieving the broadest applications of quantum computing will require many quantum systems working together. The path forward is connecting these systems together the same way the internet emerged from connecting many classical computers,” said Pranav Gokhale, Chief Technology Officer at Infleqtion. “That’s why this collaboration matters. Together, Infleqtion and Cisco are exploring how to connect quantum computers and sensors together into larger, more powerful quantum networks, which is a critical step toward unlocking distributed quantum.”
Infleqtion works with quantum technologies based on neutral atoms, which interface naturally with the photons, and the company has developed the device-level hardware and optical interfaces needed to connect into broader networks. However, said Infleqtion, to achieve networks at scale will require the modality-agnostic quantum network architecture Cisco is developing through Cisco Quantum Labs to connect heterogeneous quantum computers, sensors and other quantum technologies into scalable, distributed systems.
To support this distributed architecture, Cisco is advancing research and developing solutions for an end-to-end quantum networking stack designed to dynamically distribute quantum entanglement across connected devices on demand. This includes purpose-built quantum hardware and software designed to manage connections between quantum processors, memory, and sensors, enabling information to move reliably across systems. Most recently, Cisco debuted the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch, a working research prototype, to route quantum information between systems while preserving it with a conversion engine that makes a truly interoperable quantum network now possible.
Infleqtion and Cisco intend to explore key research areas to advance networked quantum systems:
- Convergence of Sensing and Compute: Exploring network architectures that could orchestrate data transfer between distributed quantum sensors and computational nodes.
- Quantum Memory and Optical Transduction: Exploring methods to convert or transduce the quantum states held in neutral-atom quantum memory and QPUs with optical channels for quantum networking.
- Network-Aware Quantum Software: Evaluating opportunities to coordinate multi-modal quantum workloads across connected neutral-atom systems.
