

Cisco Systems Inc. is backing a startup that has successfully deployed a next-generation network that makes use of quantum entanglement, paving the way for the creation of a “quantum internet.”
The startup in question is Qunnect Inc., which has just raised $10 million. The round was announced today, led by Airbus Ventures with participation from Cisco Investments and Quantonation.
Qunnect is aiming to support the deployment of real-world data networks that leverage the unique properties of quantum physics, enabling quantum computers to scale and achieve the long sought-after “quantum advantage,” which is when they become more useful than classical computers.
“The company is a spin-out of Stony Brook University in Long Island where the graduate students and professor were working on the topic of a quantum memory at room temperature,” Qunnect Chief Executive Noel Goddard told SiliconANGLE in an interview. “We sat back and said, ‘What would we need to be able to build a drop-in solution for quantum networking on telecom fiber?’”
Though quantum computers are extremely promising, they’re incredibly difficult to scale due to the fragile nature of the “qubits” that power them. Qubits are the quantum version of traditional bits, and they can represent a one, zero or both at the same time, whereas the latter can only ever be a one or a zero, but not both. It’s this capability that enables quantum computers to perform vastly more complex computations than any classical computer can hope to do.
The problem has always been stabilizing these qubits. At present, even the most ambitious quantum computer roadmaps are only targeting computers with a couple of thousand qubits – yet these machines will require millions of qubits to achieve quantum advantage.
Qunnect thinks it can get around this. Rather than building bigger quantum computers, it wants to connect hundreds of smaller machines into a distributed system that can achieve the same advantage, similar to how companies use huge clusters of graphics processing units to power artificial intelligence workloads today.
These quantum networks provide a reliable way to link all of these qubits. Existing networking technologies based on fiber optics aren’t suitable because they suffer from exponential transmission loss over long distances. The startup solves this with its quantum networking hardware, which leverages quantum mechanics so remote qubits can be entangled by daisy chaining many local entanglement sources. By doing this, multiple qubits can instantly connect with one another regardless of distance.
The startup’s Carina product suite creates, buffers, and preserves high-quality entangled photons, which are the basis for quantum communications, at unprecedented rates. It has also developed the hardware needed to enable temporal control of each qubit, so their computations can be synchronized with one another.
This technology is not only useful for quantum computers, but also for existing telecom networks, supporting applications such as ultra-precise time synchronization for global trading, quantum-secured communications to prevent eavesdropping and secure and tamper-proof location verification.
“Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon where two particles become linked so that the information about one instantly reveals information about the other,” Goddard explained. “Since you always have that perfect relationship, you can start building security protocols around it.”
Since entangled photons are extremely fragile, any disturbances can cause the qubits to lose coherence. An eavesdropper trying to watch the transmission will cause that link to be lost along the way, making the spying easily detectable through greatly increased errors.
Qunnect’s work can complement Cisco’s own efforts to build quantum networks. Last month, Cisco’s Quantum Research unit announced the development of a prototype quantum network entanglement chip and opened a new research lab for building and testing quantum network infrastructure.
Qunnect says it has already delivered its proprietary Carina quantum network hardware to customers in the financial services, energy infrastructure and telecommunications industries, and has created two quantum testbed networks — in New York City and Berlin — to demonstrate the capabilities of its technology.
“Our first deployment was around 34 kilometers through Brooklyn and Queens … and then Deutsche Telekom did an 82-kilometer test on their Berlin network, showing that we can push entanglement even farther,” Goddard said.
Cisco General Manager and Senior Vice President Vijoy Pandey said his company invested in Qunnect because of its progress in making quantum networks that can be deployed in the real-world, on existing telecoms infrastructure, rather than just lab environments.
“Qunnect’s approach fits right into our broader quantum networking strategy,” Pandey added. “We’re not just building one-off research prototypes. We’re creating the infrastructure for a real quantum internet.”
Support our open free content by sharing and engaging with our content and community.
Where Technology Leaders Connect, Share Intelligence & Create Opportunities
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation serving innovative audiences and brands, bringing together cutting-edge technology, influential content, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — such as those established in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology, and AI. .
Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a powerful ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands, with a reach of 15+ million elite tech professionals. The company’s new, proprietary theCUBE AI Video cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.