Quandela launches new photonic quantum computer
The company says Belenos is 4,000 times more powerful than the previous generation and is now available in the cloud to researchers and partner companies in 30 countries
Quandela has announced the launch of Belenos, which it describes as the world’s most powerful photonic quantum computer and a key milestone in its Roadmap 2030. Accessible to commercial and industrial partners in the cloud, Quandela says Belenos offers 4,000 times more computing power than the previous generation, unveiled two years ago with the launch of the first photonic quantum computer in the cloud. The company plans to deliver the first fully integrated version in a supercomputer at the end of 2025.
Based at Quandela’s headquarters in Massy near Paris, Belenos is now available in the cloud to more than 1,200 researchers and partner companies in 30 countries. Nearly two thirds of them are European (40 percent French), with a significant share of the user base located in North America and Asia.
According to Quandela, this new generation of quantum computer, with its 12 photonic qubits, represents a major technological advance compared with the previous 6-qubit version launched at the end of 2022, far exceeding Moore’s Law.
The company says the next generation, called Canopus, is expected in just one year’s time and will double the number of qubits once more, resulting in a 16 million-fold increase in computing power. Within three years, Quandela aims to develop a quantum computer with more than 40 qubits, with computing power exceeding the simulation capabilities of any conventional computer.
This technological leap means that innovative algorithms can now be tested on physical machines to speed up certain AI calculations, such as image classification and generation, Quandela says, as demonstrated during the BMW-Airbus challenge which the company won in December 2024. As a result, hundreds of international researchers working on the company’s cloud platform can now explore new frontiers, particularly in the field of quantum machine learning (QML), adds Quandela.
While education and research represent a solid basis for the activity of Quandela’s partners, the company says the business community is also showing promising momentum, and already accounts for 25 percent of uses, illustrating the accelerating adoption of quantum technologies in the private sector.
The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) has identified several use cases that could benefit from HPC-Quantics coupling, including electromagnetic simulation, structural mechanics, combustion in engines, materials simulation, meteorology, and earth observation.
Quandela says a first integrated version of Belenos will be delivered to EuroHPC/ Grand équipement national de calcul intensif (GENCI) and operated at the CEA’s Très Grand Centre de Calcul (TGCC) by the end of 2025. The company adds that this commissioning demonstrates its ability to meet its bold agenda, with this step being in line with the technological roadmap to 2030 unveiled last autumn.
“We are extremely proud of this new development,” said Niccolo Somaschi, co-founder and CEO of Quandela. “Cloud access to Belenos now offers to our partners the possibility to explore use cases where the speed of calculation and the number of computational operations per data point are essential; these capabilities, offered by Belenos, are inaccessible to the competition. This paves the way for concrete applications in machine learning and at the interface between AI and quantum, in sectors that are as varied as they are strategic for the future.”
