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Leaders of the Pacific Northwest’s computing community gathered in downtown Seattle today to mark World Quantum Day — and Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson gave them one more reason to celebrate. Or rather, 500,000 reasons.
Ferguson took the occasion to announce that $500,000 would be directed from the Governor’s Economic Development Strategic Reserve Fund to support the expansion of IonQ’s quantum computer manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash. The 100,000-square-foot factory opened in 2024 and is ramping up production.
Over the next 18 months, Maryland-based IonQ plans to add about 100 engineering positions in Bothell, paying an average salary of $177,000. Over the next five years, the expansion is projected to generate between 1,200 and 2,000 regional jobs.
The Strategic Reserve Fund makes use of unclaimed lottery prize money for investments that deliver significant job creation and capital investment in Washington state. The newly announced award will go to the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County for building upgrades, workforce expenses and other expansion costs.
The state’s funding is coming on top of more than $14 million in private investment. “Quantum is the future, and it’s being built here,” Ferguson said in a news release.
The news was greeted with applause at Northwest Quantum Day, an all-day conference presented by Northwest Quantum Nexus and co-hosted by K&L Gates.
April 14 is marked worldwide as World Quantum Day for a thoroughly geeky reason: The date (4/14) commemorates one of the foundational numbers of quantum mechanics, Planck’s constant (4.14 X 10-15 eV ⋅ s).
Quantum computing systems don’t follow the binary rules of classical computing. Instead, they leverage the properties of subatomic particles to process multiple values simultaneously. Quantum-based algorithms hold the promise of solving some types of problems that would be impractical or impossible to solve using classical computers.
The promise hasn’t yet come to full fruition — but Washington’s lieutenant governor, Denny Heck, set a bullish tone as today’s keynote speaker. “Quantum computing is inarguably going to be one of the most impactful scientific and technical breakthroughs in all recorded history, and frankly, in the parlance of contemporary discussion, it will dwarf AI,” he said.
Heck predicted that quantum computing would give rise to “fulsome commercial applications” in the next five or 10 years. “You know we’re not there yet,” he told the audience, “but you also should know that it is no longer a question of if. It is indeed a question of when.”
How AI is fostering a quantum leap
Several speakers said the rapidly advancing revolution in artificial intelligence is accelerating the quantum revolution as well.
“Quantum plays a very interesting synergistic role with AI,” said Nathan Baker, who leads an engineering team focused on quantum application development at Microsoft. “For a while, quantum is going to be a scarce and relatively low-throughput computational resource. It’ll be solving problems we can’t solve today, so it’ll be a whole new resource. But the best way to get mileage out of this … is to scale quantum up by partnering with AI.”
Krysta Svore, Nvidia’s vice president of applied research for quantum computing, said AI could help developers address challenges that have slowed progress in the field.
“AI will help with quantum error correction in particular, providing a way to perform the inference that’s needed to keep the quantum computer stable and essentially alive for longer periods of time,” Svore said.
She noted that earlier in the day, Nvidia released the world’s first family of open-source quantum AI models. The models feature a significant advance in quantum error correction.
Svore also noted that the general public shouldn’t expect to buy a quantum computer for their desktop. “When you look at what’s required to operate a quantum computer, most of us don’t necessarily have a cryogenic environment in our house,” she said. “Realistically, you’re going to access this type of compute just like you’re accessing AI supercomputers, through the cloud. Most of us don’t have an AI supercomputer in our backyard either, yet all of us are using LLMs, whether you’re using ChatGPT or Copilot or Gemini.”
If quantum computing lives up to its potential, the technology could lead to faster drug discovery, better batteries and more secure communications. It could also crack existing crypto codes, which is driving researchers to develop quantum-proof cryptography.
Those potential perils and payoffs have captured the attention of policymakers. Back in 2018, the National Quantum Initiative Act authorized $1.2 billion over a five-year period to boost investment in quantum information science. More recently, the White House paired quantum technologies with AI in an initiative called the Genesis Mission.
What’s next for the quantum realm?
In honor of World Quantum Day, legislation known as the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act was approved unanimously today by the Senate Commerce Committee.
“From scientific breakthroughs in health care to clean energy solutions, quantum technology is a game-changer, and federal investment is vital to accelerating the transition from basic science to quantum innovation and practical applications,” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., one of the bill’s lead sponsors, said in a news release. “The state of Washington, with its vibrant tech industry, national lab partnerships and a growing pipeline of quantum engineers, is poised to become ‘Quantum Valley.’ “
On that point, Heck was less bullish than Cantwell. “Here’s the question: Are we really moving as fast as we could in our region?” he asked. “Are our investments, and is our coordination, coming anywhere near matching the sheer magnitude of the opportunity that exists? And if we’re being honest with one another — no, it’s not.”
Heck and the other speakers at Northwest Quantum Day said more needed to be done to support education and workforce development, foster innovative computing ventures and strengthen the Pacific Northwest’s tech ecosystem.
“Having that local environment, a rich environment with talent, is important,” Baker said. “And it’s not just physicists, right? The quantum pipeline, especially if you’re aiming for quantum computing to be a commercial product … needs expertise across all areas, from ‘go to market’ down to the people engineering the hardware.”
Michael Brett, who leads go-to-market strategy for quantum technologies at Amazon Web Services, even had an idea for the marketing campaign. “I think our license plate should say, ‘The Quantum State,’ ” he said. Was the suggestion serious? Was it a joke? In the spirit of World Quantum Day, maybe it was both.
