Will there be regional winner in the global quantum economy sweepstakes?

With visions of Silicon Valley’s iconic success in electronics and Boston/Cambridge’s repeat of that model in pharma/biotech, there are at least a dozen city-regional hubs around the world pushing to become the next Silicon Valley of quantum technology.

It’s way too early to pick winners among the early contenders, but the Chicago Quantum Exchange stands out. The size and scope of CQE’s activities and ambitions are impressive to say the least, and, perhaps, daunting to others. From its official beginning in 2017, the broad idea has been to build an ecosystem that blurs the distinction between academic, commercial, and government efforts with a clear goal of creating an engine to drive the quantum information sciences (QIS and technology (QIT) revolution.

David Awschalom, founding director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, recalled pitching the idea first to president (Bob Zimmer) of the University of Chicago and later to Illinois governor J.B Pritzker:

“Bob Zimmer, a past president of UChicago, was remarkably visionary. When we initially discussed these ideas with him in 2012, so about a decade ago, he was enthusiastic about going forward. I was stunned, because it was a big financial risk. It wasn’t clear how well this would work at the time. In the best case scenario, Illinois can be the place for quantum, but it’s a big risk. He said, “You know what? We’re going to do it. We’re going to invest in this, build a new building, we’re going to hire 15 people outside of the normal academic departments, and I’m going to start talking to the state of Illinois.”

“A few years later, he introduced me to the governor, which was a very humbling experience. We were very fortunate. Illinois had a governor who’s sat on both sides of the table. When I first, admittedly nervously, was explaining quantum engineering, and a very naive view of the world and what Illinois could do, he started throwing out ideas. He actually said what you really want is a quantum campus for companies. But for quantum we [Chicago] should be the place.

“He came up this idea of how to reclaim land, what the business model would be, for tax breaks and so on. We’re very lucky to have a governor who was just really keen on doing this. And I have to tell you, he has gone to more meetings. He’s been on more flights to help do this than anybody.”

Chicago is hardly alone with these aspirations. In the U.S., quantum hubs are sprouting in Boulder, CO; New York; Chattanooga, TN; Maryland; and New Mexico, just to name a few. The same is happening globally. Germany’s Munich Quantum Valley (MQV) is an especially ambitious effort that looks a lot like the Chicago effort blending academic-government-commercial resources. Australia, Singapore, the U.K., Japan, and Korea all have vigorous quantum initiatives, many being localized into a hub. (China too, though less is known about its massive effort.)

The attraction, of course, is that the QIS/T stakes are thought to be huge.

One analyst estimates a $1trillion quantum market by 2040. That seems a stretch given the worldwide QIS/T market (funding aside) last year was under $1billion and will likely be ~ $1B-1.5B this year. Still, the Boston Consulting Group issued a forecast in July “reaffirming its projection that quantum computing will create $450 billion to $850 billion of economic value globally, sustaining a $90 billion to $170 billion market for hardware and software providers by 2040.”

Today, most observers think it’s a matter of when — and not if — the quantum marketplace will be huge. Awschalom makes clear, it’s not just quantum computing but QIS/T writ large that will transform the technology landscape. Quantum sensors for example could serve as the basis for alternatives to today’s satellite-based GPS systems. Indeed the U.S. Air force and Boeing are already prototyping such devices. NASA is testing one on the International Space Station. Quantum sensors use the earth’s magnetic field to deliver geolocation more precisely and quickly than satellite-based GPS systems.

The Chicago Quantum Exchange wants to be part of it all — computing, sensing, communications, materials science, everything.

Here’s what CQE says about itself: “The Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) was established in 2017 through a collaborative effort among several key institutions and stakeholders in the Chicago area, each bringing its own strengths to the table. The formation of the CQE was a strategic move to consolidate resources, expertise, and infrastructure in quantum science and technology. In particular, it was designed to blur the traditional distinctions between academic, industrial, and national laboratory research to accelerate progress in the field.

“The University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (then the “Institute of Molecular Engineering”) founded the CQE in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The goal was to launch an intellectual hub for advancing academic, industrial and governmental efforts in the science and engineering of quantum information. It has since grown to include the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University, Purdue University as well as partners across the globe.”

Currently, the CQE community spans Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Asked to list key achievements to date, the CQE staff forwarded the following list:

• Received more than a billion dollars in corporate and government investment.
• Worked together to develop the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, a multibillion-dollar quantum campus on Chicago’s Southeast Side. The first-of-its-kind development, announced in July 2024, will include the multimillion-dollar Illinois-DARPA Quantum Proving Ground and be anchored by PsiQuantum.
• Been named as a US Tech Hub for quantum technologies by the US Economic Development Administration. The CQE-led Bloch Quantum Tech Hub is the nation’s only quantum innovation team rallying entire sectors around society’s most urgent challenges — to combat financial fraud, secure the energy grid, and accelerate the development of life-saving drugs.
• Built four of the 10 National Quantum Initiative Act research centers — more than any other region.
• Developed one of the nation’s longest quantum networks — 124 miles and growing.
• Launched Duality, the nation’s first quantum startup accelerator, contributing to the region’s vibrant entrepreneurial culture. Since 2017, Illinois quantum startups (note: not just Duality startups) have raised $33.2 million through 27 deals — the second-highest number of deals by quantum startups in the nation.
• Created one of the nation’s largest quantum-ready talent pipelines. Our universities and colleges award more than 60,000 degrees and certificates annually in quantum-relevant skills such as computer and information sciences, engineering, mathematics and statistics, physical sciences, and more.

No doubt there’s a little brochureware here, but you get the picture. The Chicago Quantum Exchange is big and diverse. Leveraging the educational and experimental resources of its formidable membership, which includes Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory, make it a tough competitor.

According to CQE, “Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) is governed by a structured framework designed to facilitate collaboration and strategic oversight. The Steering Committee, comprising senior leaders from partner institutions, provides high-level direction and decision-making.”

Awschalom says, “We have two people from each major organization on the steering committee, everybody has an equal vote, including me. The full steering group meets every quarter, because people are busy. The Quantum Exchange core group meets every week, and the talk is about emerging opportunities for partners, emerging opportunities for funding students, global opportunities that come up.”

HPCwire had a chance to talk with Awschalom recently about CQE’s plans and the evolution of the QIS/T market generally. Capturing the full scope CQE is beyond a short article. We’ll try to knit together emailed responses to questions from HPCwire with portions of a recent lengthy interview with Awschalom, who is also is the Liew Family Professor and Vice Dean for Research of the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and a senior scientist at Argonne. (Brief Awschalom bio at end of article)

HPCwire: Let’s start with the emphasis on industry the desire to blur distinctions between research and development. What got you thinking in that direction?

David Awschalom:  Think about it. Where did barcodes come from? Where did something called two-dimensional electron gases, a new state of matter come from — they came from the Bell Labs. It’s a transition interface. Lots of fundamental science happened in industry as a way to blur these distinctions. We said we can do this in Illinois. We can use these models. Those days are gone because the monopolies have disappeared, right? The massive profits have been in Bell Labs? On one hand, my phone bill is cheaper, which is nice. On the other hand, these [kinds of labs] are gone, but the model was so successful, why don’t we build and improve on it here, building something from scratch. That was the idea of the Chicago Quantum Exchange. The key to success will be the students, and I think we’ve attracted not only some of the best students in the region, but some of the best students in the world to come here and work.

HPCwire:  It’s a little early in the quantum revolution, but can you connect the dots between research and development with CQE example. Show us an effort that began largely in research in a local university or a quantum exchange related partner, and made its way through the various links to to getting close to commercialization, if not commercialization?

David Awschalom: Absolutely and again, you know this better than anybody, but one of the best vehicles for driving innovation into companies is startup companies. It was often difficult for a very large corporation to innovate in fast and nimble ways because they’re so successful in other things they’re doing. For startups, this is their DNA. I can give you one very nice example. For a while there’s been some very strong basic science projects [around] how can you build a single atom of quantum memory, and how can you do it in a way that’s scalable. Some of my colleagues were very interested in how do you store quantum information in the core of an atom. So the principle [is] in a quantum memory component, the size of a cubic micron, you could store more information than atoms in the observable universe.

These are astronomical numbers. A cubic micron [could contain] all the memories that even conceive of ever needed. It’s a very interesting physics project, and it turned out that a group of people discovered that there were particular elements called rare earth elements the periodic table that were exceptionally good memories. In fact, you could put them in semiconductors and we know how to process semiconductors. So this launched into a startup company. This fundamental physics idea was shown to work. A group formed a startup company. A startup company spun out of Argonne National Labs because they have an accelerated program for startups in the federal laboratories, that’s now become a very successful company called memQ, and they’re piloting some scalable semiconductor, silicon compatible quantum memories, which will be used for quantum communication and sensing.

HPCwire: So quantum memories for use in a repeaters for communications, for example?

David Awschalom: Exactly. It’s hard to imagine a repeater without a memory. And when you look at the other way we’re talking today, and you think about the millions of miles of fibers, they only work because there are repeaters. You know, light goes through glass. It scatters off impurities, it still just gets smaller, and after about 100 miles, you need to amplify it. And repeaters are about the size of your thumb in classical technologies, and they’re everywhere. Without them, we wouldn’t be talking like this.

One of the biggest challenges now that we have in society for technology in the quantum space is this atomic technology; we have to build things at the level of atoms, and that often means you need new tools — new “microscopes” — to look at what you’re making. We’re very lucky here in Illinois to have things like the one of the brightest synchrotrons in the world at Argonne, its X-ray laser, so you can look at the angstrom level. So spinning up a company that can harness these facilities right and then start to make progress is very important.

HPCwire: The quantum information science and technology market is wide-ranging.

David Awschalom:  You hear a lot about quantum computing because companies like Google and IBM are heavily invested. But the truth is, the field has three big components, computing, communication, and sensing. And the ones that are almost certainly hitting the market first are sensing and communication, not computing. Part of it is because it’s still easier just practically to do, and they’re already happening.

I mean, NASA just employed a Cold Atom sensor in space, just announced yesterday. Boeing announced a quantum navigation system with quantum sensors. The Air Force announced in May, they have a system running using quantum sensors, using the Earth’s magnetic field as a way to navigate instead of satellites. It’s actually very cool. You know, there are lots of areas where I drive here in Chicago, where you can’t get a GPS signal. But you can imagine a lot of environments where you just use the native magnetic field of the Earth, which is relatively weak, but in a quantum sensor, they can see that very, very easily.

HPCwire: The sensor applications are fascinating. I read recently that a quantum sensor was also being used in the LIGO project someplace as a sensor. To me, what an astounding project to take a kilometer long piece of steel, you know, and isolate it from from the world around you, so that nothing else is connecting it and and then measure a change in dimension that’s roughly that the width of proton.

David Awschalom: It is astounding. When the Air Force says they can measure the earth’s magnetic field in a C17 transport plane, it’s this gigantic magnetic mess with engines, right? It’s vibrating. It’s flying at some incredible speed, and to remove the background of the airplane and see this very tiny earth magnetic field. And being able to do that with a laptop, by the way, this isn’t a super computer running. This is a laptop with a quantum sensor. It’s fantastic. So these things are happening. You know, quantum encrypted networks at metropolitan scales for communication are already prototyped and running, and doing 100 mega quantum bits a second. So these things are approaching, they’re basically practical. They’re useful. But quantum encrypted, using things like quantum key distribution. They’re happening now in cities around the world, including here. So this is happening.

I think we’re entering a time now where we’re seeing quantum technology translate and with one of your later questions, I personally believe within a decade, we’ll see computing and only because it’s harder. You know having to control entanglement at the level of bits that you need to do something meaningful is actually a hard science problem. Even if you built a million quantum bits today, which companies like IBM can do, no one knows how to control them, because it’s so complicated. How do you deal with error correction with a quantum technology? It’s actually really hard.

HPCwire: One of the things that seems to me to be a little different than the electronics revolution is we sort of had a sense of the basics.  When you look at quantum computing for example, we don’t know what the ‘transistor’ will be.  The number of competing qubit types is large and the modalities (superconducting, trapped ion, neutral atom, photonics, etc.) are very different. Do you have favorites? Are you expecting something to win out in the end and be the dominant one, the way CMOS did?

David Awschalom: I think it’s like asking, what’s your favorite horse in the race to win. I think that the truth is it’s too early to for anybody to make that assessment. But part of the richness of this field is that everything you just said is exactly right, and there’s no reason to believe that there will only be one winner, in the same way that today we use different technologies for different things. I mean, we use photons to communicate and silicon to compute. We used to use magnetic materials for storage. They always fit together. In the semiconductor world, people always had gallium arsenide (GaAs) as the material of the future, right? It’s still the material of the future, right? So it turned out maybe in computing, not so great, but for things like detectors, for amplifiers, it’s fantastic. Gallium nitride (GaN) people thought would never work for anything, the quality of the material was just crappy, and yet, it’s the basis of pretty much all modern cell phone technology.

The reason I’m saying these things is that what’s exciting about the quantum field is, I’m very sure the biggest impacts are things we haven’t thought about yet. So yes, communication and sensing have clear applications, but I personally am very confident, like any new technology, the biggest things are in front of us, and what’s going to let the United States be a leader is that we’re ready to jump on it when it becomes when the fog starts to dissipate. And, you say, “My God, this never occurred to me. We could do MRI at the level of a single molecule. Now it’s going to revolutionize medicine. Screw computing. This is going to change the world as you can see, the structure, function relationship with any protein in the human body. Today, we barely understand 1% of them.

So I mean, it would change everything, if you could do that honestly. And quantum sensors, in principle, they see single nuclei today at room temperature. I think that will also happen. And I’m just saying that will change like everything. So what technology would that be? And then, how would you transmit that quantum data to another machine data network? How would you store it, relative memory? Things might come together in ways we don’t quite see today, but if we don’t have the people to do it, it won’t happen. If we don’t have the technology infrastructure. What would happen here? And then you can say, “John, you’re right. Now, we have to train a million quantum engineers, and you’re saying, Yeah, but that’s gonna take 10 years. That won’t be good.

HPCwire:  What’s your take on the U.S. position? I think the U.S. had sort of an early lead in the race. Now other countries are saying, we don’t want to be left behind the way we were in the semiconductor/chip world and so let’s do these things. The UK is perhaps not creating as many as many startups building quantum computers, but it’s doing lots of other things such as building a quantum test bed project  to bring in variety of quantum computers made by others including other in countries, so they can test them, work on them, and decide what they’re useful for. I don’t know that we have anything like that in the U.S.

David Awschalom: I think we do. In Illinois, what’s been nice is that the new DARPA proving ground, for example, that’s been announced. There was $140 million of DARPA money that will be matched. It is a way for companies to come in and start literally proving different technologies, and is agnostic to the technology.

HPCwire: I like your use of the word proving ground. I don’t think that’s what they called it. It’s part of their expanding benchmarking project, but I love the opening statement which was, on effect, “We’re going to say your stuff doesn’t work. Come in and show us It does, and we’ll be your greatest champion.”

David Awschalom: That is how I certainly view it (proving ground), and I honestly believe that’s how DARPA views it. You know, the Department of Defense in the United States has been driving research and quantum technologies for well over 30 years. I mean, this is not new for them. I mean, they’ve been building quantum clocks forever and satellites to distribute timing.

So we’re very fortunate in United States that we’ve got government agencies that are very knowledgeable, and they’re thinking ahead, like the proving ground. It’s one thing for someone like me to do in the laboratory, where it works one out of four times, and I’m pretty happy because it’s a proof of concept, but [it’s] completely useless than any other vehicle. And you’re right. Countries around the world are moving quickly. They’re comping some of this. We’ve had a lot of international visitors to the quantum exchange to understand how it works. We share things with them. The U.S. government, I believe, has orchestrated very nice memorandums of understandings countries around the world that have cooperative research globally, which is incredibly important. The best people are everywhere.

You know, when I think about the quantum exchange being centered at the University of Chicago [I also think about] that they have global centers stationed around the world. I mean investments, not just a little office with a plaque in Paris and London, in Delhi. We spend a lot of time globally to also engage people, and to learn what’s going on. There are fantastic startups in Japan now that are forming. And in France, we encourage them to come here, by the way, and help develop their companies here. Many of them in the CQE, have been brought from Europe. So I think the sort of melting pot of ideas is very important, because it’s you need to be prepared.

HPCwire:  Is the U.S. focused enough on commercialization versus basic research? We leave commercialization to free enterprise. I think of Europe, which is trying hard to integrate quantum computing into its government and academic data centers. The mission there seems to be “Let’s build a stack and an interface and then provide access to academia and industry to multiple systems to develop uses cases.” Is that something we should do?

David Awschalom: Well, I personally like the free for all technique because it’s still so new. I think it would be dangerous to impose a plan, where you might impose a plan and then one year later realize, Oh, I didn’t realize this was an enormous obstacle. We better revisit this plan. I think things are actually going very well. I think when you look at companies like Quantinuum,  they’re thinking about ways of scaling. I look at companies like Pasqal, they came out of the government laboratories in Paris, as a company doing incredibly well, but it spun out of their version of Argonne National Lab, right? And I would argue, 10 years ago you wouldn’t have seen this. You wouldn’t see the startups going out of a government laboratory. So they’re learning. I think they’ll be competitive. I think collaboration is a key and what I find that’s exciting is they’re very keen to collaborate. You know, I think people view this as, I guess, the pre competitive stage. At some level, there’s so much to learn. And at some point, I’m sure that will change.

HPCwire:  Today, what Pasqal does versus what PsiQuantum or Xanadu does are all very different. I was interested to hear you say you would welcome them. You’ve got PsiQuantum. It has one approach (photonics). Are you looking for other companies with other modalities to bring in to CQE? Is it planned or more opportunistic than that?

David Awschalom: I think it’s a combination. I mean, we want companies to come that they feel will have value being in this region, and we’re committed not to do it for the money, but to do it for the opportunities, because that will bring resources if they’re successful, and if they’re not successful, everybody is hurt by this. So if you’re in for the long game, you want companies that will really have impact. We’re discussions with quite a few companies. PsiQuantum is the first. There will be several others announced in the next few weeks, and it’s very broad. You’re absolutely right. And there are companies that we talk to from Europe, or companies that we talk to from the US, but at the end of the day, one of the reasons they really come here is because of this critical mass of expertise, faculty and students. Honestly, they’re coming here for the environment. Why was Palo Alto (Silicon Valley) so successful? Trust me, it was not the cost of living that brought companies, trust me. Well, I think definitely not the cost of it. It was the workforce.

HPCwire: So instead of the individual, mother company — a la Fairchild Semiconductor or AT&T Bell Laboratories — it’s more like the Chicago Quantum Exchange is seeking to become an ecosystem and engine that links basic research with development organizations and companies specifically to speed commercialization?

David Awschalom: Exactly. And we’re trying to be very aggressive about that how that works. We’ve launched duality, the first quantum accelerator in the nation for startups. The idea is that you don’t want to leave students alone starting a company. You want them to be successful with the company. You want them to have a business plan. You want them to look at the technology challenges with experts. You want to give them some money to get them going. You want them to work right? And so to bake that into something like the Chicago Quantum Exchange, where students do not have to spend three years figuring this out right. They can do it fast. Speed is important, and having people around. We have tons of volunteers that help these companies start on these boards. People from IBM, from HRL, from Boeing. They volunteer to help to get because they know in the long term, this is going to be great for them.

HPCwire: Do you think the PR machine and in the in the quantum computing world is a little bit ahead of itself. I think we are creating expectations near term, that we should be seeing stuff, practical quantum devices soon. What’s your thought there?

David Awschalom: I think you’re completely right. It’s important not to set unreasonable expectations that will be difficult to meet. I think to promote the idea of the emerging quantum technology should be heavily embraced because it’s already happening. I think if you just pick one element and say it’s all quantum computing and we’re going to have a powerful quantum computer in five years, you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed. But if you say we’re going to have fundamentally game changing quantum technology in the next five years, it’s absolutely going to happen. And we do imagine, in the next decade, we will have some powerful prototype quantum machines. You know, I think that’s a reasonable expectation, but don’t say that in three years we’re going to have a powerful quantum

HPCwire:  Do you think quantum technology will pervade society as electronics pervades every aspect of life today? Perhaps not as the driver but in combination with traditional electronics?

David Awschalom: I think what is reasonable to expect in 30 years is the general public and particularly students will be completely comfortable with quantum technology in the sense of this won’t be viewed as sci fi or foreign to them when you think about teleporting information over quantum networks securely. I think that will be discussed in high schools. I think that will be in textbooks. I think that classical technologies are not going to disappear. The fact is, a calculator you pick up at CVS is going to add a couple of numbers, probably better than most quantum computers, but quantum computers will do things that they won’t.

David Awschalom: I think something that I’m sure I’ve said over again, so it’s probably overkill at this point that we really do believe the key to success is the workforce. And I think what we’re trying to do, which is quite different, is redefine the workforce. So the microelectronics workforce tended to take people from established colleges and university renovation with bachelor’s, master’s or PhDs engineering. We can completely change this.You could level the playing ground for technology. You could make this completely accessible, broadly advertised from HBCUs to community colleges. By the way, we’ve been advocating to build one of the largest quantum engineering training grounds in the nation through community colleges. Illinois has either, based on how you calculate, the second or third largest community college system in the nation.

This is an enormous machine for training people for highly paid technology relevant jobs. Same in Wisconsin. In fact, their community college system has the largest number of female students in the nation. So you could change the way people enter technology, right, and make it much more accessible.

HPCwire: David, thanks for your time.

Brief Awschalom Bio

David Awschalom is the Liew Family Professor and Vice Dean for Research of the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, a Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and Founding Director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange. He is also the inaugural Director of Q-NEXT, one of the US DOE Quantum Information Science Research Centers. He works in the fields of spintronics and quantum information engineering, exploring and controlling the spins of electrons, nuclei, and photons in semiconductors and molecules. His research includes implementations of information processing with potential applications in quantum computing, communication, and sensing.

Professor Awschalom received his BSc in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his PhD in experimental physics from Cornell University. He was a research staff member and manager of the Nonequilibrium Physics Department at the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. In 1991 he joined the University of California-Santa Barbara as a professor of physics, and in 2001 was additionally appointed as a professor of electrical and computer engineering. Prior to joining PME, he served as the Peter J. Clarke Professor and Director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation.

Professor Awschalom received the American Physical Society Oliver Buckley Prize and Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize, the European Physical Society Europhysics Prize, the Materials Research Society David Turnbull Award and Outstanding Investigator Prize, the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the International Magnetism Prize from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the European Academy of Sciences. Awschalom recently received a U.S. Secretary of Energy Achievement Award.