Quantum computing lab at TU Delft wins Microsoft backing

Microsoft is teaming up with TU Delft's quantum computing lab QuTech and is setting up a Dutch department for research on quantum computers. Professor Leo Kouwenhoven, founder and leader of QuTech, will work for Microsoft as the director of the new lab, while remaning attached to the university, NU.nl reports.

It is not clear exactly how much money Microsoft is investing in its new Dutch activities, but it is known that Microsoft and QuTech are now connected for 10 years.

The Dutch government previousy designated QuTech as a "national icon" and pushed 135 million euros into the quantum lab last year. Chipmaker Intel also invested 50 million dollars.

Microsoft believes that a working quantum computers is close to being a reality and that it is therefore time to invest more into this technology. Where a typical computer has bits that can have a value of either 0 or 1, quantum computers have so-called "qubits" which can have a value of 0 or 1, but also a "super position" of 0 and 1 at the same time. That makes all kinds of new algorithms possible and makes quantum computers able to perform exponentially faster than ordinary computers.

“It’s very exciting,” Kouwenhoven said in a Microsoft blog post. “I started working on this as a student way back, and at that time we had not a clue that this could ever be used for anything practical.”

"When QuTech was established we always intended to build a quantum ecosystem. We want everyone to come and drop labs here. It is the first time that is happening now", Professor Ronald Hanso of TU Delft said to NU.nl. He is taking over from Kouwenhoven as interim scientific director of QuTech.