KPMG and Microsoft join Quantinuum in simplifying quantum algorithm development via the cloud
The QIR Alliance, an international effort to enhance platform interoperability and enhance the work of quantum computing developers, has announced a milestone in the industry-wide effort to accelerate adoption
In 1952, facing opposition from scientists who disbelieved her thesis that computer programming could be made more useful by using English words, the mathematician and computer scientist Grace Hopper published her first paper on compilers and wrote a precursor to the modern compiler, the A-0, while working at Remington Rand.
Over subsequent decades, the principles of compilers, whose task it is to translate between high level programming languages and machine code, took shape and new methods were introduced to support their optimization. One such innovation was the intermediate representation (IR), which was introduced to manage the complexity of the compilation process, enabling compilers to represent the program without loss of information, and to be broken up into modular phases and components.
This developmental path spawned the modern computer industry, with languages that work across hardware systems, middleware, firmware, operating systems, and software applications. It has also supported the emergence of the huge numbers of small businesses and professionals who make a living collaborating to solve problems using code that depends on compilers to control the underlying computing hardware.
Now, a similar story is unfolding in quantum computing. There are efforts around the world to make it simpler for engineers and developers across many sectors to take advantage of quantum computers by translating between high level coding languages and tools, and quantum circuits — the combinations of gates that run on quantum computers to generate solutions. Many of these efforts focus on hybrid quantum-classical workflows, which allow a problem to be solved by taking advantage of the strengths of different modes of computation, accessing central processing units (CPUs), graphical processing units (GPUs) and quantum processing units (QPUs) as needed.
Microsoft is a significant contributor to this burgeoning quantum ecosystem, providing access to multiple quantum computing systems through Azure Quantum, and a founding member of the QIR Alliance, a cross-industry effort to make quantum computing source code portable across different hardware systems and modalities and to make quantum computing more useful to engineers and developers. QIR offers an interoperable specification for quantum programs, including a hardware profile designed for Quantinuum’s H-Series quantum computers, and has the capacity to support cross-compiling quantum and classical workflows, encouraging hybrid use-cases.
As one of the largest integrated quantum computing companies in the world, Quantinuum was excited to become a QIR steering member alongside partners including Nvidia, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Quantum Circuits Inc., and Rigetti Computing. Quantinuum supports multiple open-source eco-system tools including its own family of open-source software development kits and compilers, such as TKET for general purpose quantum computation and lambeq for quantum natural language processing.
Rapid progress with KPMG and Microsoft
As founding members of QIR, Quantinuum recently worked with Microsoft Azure Quantum alongside KPMG on a project that involved Microsoft’s Q#, a stand-alone language offering a high level of abstraction and Quantinuum’s System Model H1, Powered by Honeywell. The Q# language has been designed for the specific needs of quantum computing and provides a high-level of abstraction enabling developers to seamlessly blend classical and quantum operations, significantly simplifying the design of hybrid algorithms.
KPMG’s quantum team wanted to translate an existing algorithm into Q#, and to take advantage of the unique and differentiating capabilities of Quantinuum’s H-Series, particularly qubit reuse, mid-circuit measurement and all-to-all connectivity. System Model H1 is the first generation trapped-ion based quantum computer built using the quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) architecture. KPMG accessed the H1-1 QPU with 20 fully connected qubits. H1-1 recently achieved a Quantum Volume of 32,768, demonstrating a new high-water mark for the industry in terms of computation power as measured by quantum volume.
Q# and QIR offered an abstraction from hardware specific instructions, allowing the KPMG team, led by Michael Egan, to make best use of the H-Series and take advantage of runtime support for measurement-conditioned program flow control, and classical calculations within runtime.
Nathan Rhodes of the KPMG team wrote a tutorial about the project to demonstrate how an algorithm writer would use the KPMG code step-by-step as well as the particular features of QIR, Q# and the H-Series. It is the first time that code from a third party will be available for end users on Microsoft’s Azure portal.
Microsoft recently announced the roll-out of integrated quantum computing on Azure Quantum, an important milestone in Microsoft’s Hybrid Quantum Computing Architecture, which provides tighter integration between quantum and classical processing.
Fabrice Frachon, Principal PM Lead, Azure Quantum, described this new Azure Quantum capability as a key milestone to unlock a new generation of hybrid algorithms on the path to scaled quantum computing.
The demonstration
The team ran an algorithm designed to solve an estimation problem, a promising use case for quantum computing, with potential application in fields including traffic flow, network optimization, energy generation, storage, and distribution, and to solve other infrastructure challenges. The iterative phase estimation algorithm1 was compiled into quantum circuits from code written in a Q# environment with the QIR toolset, producing a circuit with approximately 500 gates, including 111 2-Qubit gates, running across three qubits with one reused three times, and achieving a fidelity of 0.92. This is possible because of the high gate fidelity and the low SPAM error which enables qubit reuse.
The results compare favorably with the more standard Quantum Phase Estimation version described in “Quantum computation and quantum information,” by Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac Chuang.
Quantinuum’s H1 had five capabilities that were crucial to this project:
- Qubit reuse
- Mid-circuit measurement
- Bound loop (a restriction on how many times the system will do the iterative circuit)
- Classical computation
- Nested functions
The project emphasized the importance of companies experimenting with quantum computing, so they can identify any possible IT issues early on, understanding the development environment and how quantum computing integrates with current workflows and processes.
As the global quantum ecosystem continues to advance, collaborative efforts like QIR will play a crucial role in bringing together industrial partners seeking novel solutions to challenging problems, talented developers, engineers, and researchers, and quantum hardware and software companies, which will continue to add deep scientific and engineering knowledge and expertise.
About Quantinuum
Quantinuum, the world’s largest integrated quantum company, pioneers powerful quantum computers and advanced software solutions. Quantinuum’s technology drives breakthroughs in materials discovery, cybersecurity, and next-gen quantum AI. With over 500 employees, including 370+ scientists and engineers, Quantinuum leads the quantum computing revolution across continents.
If we are to create ‘next-gen’ AI that takes full advantage of the power of quantum computers, we need to start with quantum native transformers. Today we announce yet again that Quantinuum continues to lead by demonstrating concrete progress — advancing from theoretical models to real quantum deployment.
The future of AI won't be built on yesterday’s tech. If we're serious about creating next-generation AI that unlocks the full promise of quantum computing, then we must build quantum-native models—designed for quantum, from the ground up.
Around this time last year, we introduced Quixer, a state-of-the-art quantum-native transformer. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a major milestone: one year on, Quixer is now running natively on quantum hardware.
Why this matters: Quantum AI, born native
This marks a turning point for the industry: realizing quantum-native AI opens a world of possibilities.
Classical transformers revolutionized AI. They power everything from ChatGPT to real-time translation, computer vision, drug discovery, and algorithmic trading. Now, Quixer sets the stage for a similar leap — but for quantum-native computation. Because quantum computers differ fundamentally from classical computers, we expect a whole new host of valuable applications to emerge.
Achieving that future requires models that are efficient, scalable, and actually run on today’s quantum hardware.
That’s what we’ve built.
What makes Quixer different?
Until Quixer, quantum transformers were the result of a brute force “copy-paste” approach: taking the math from a classical model and putting it onto a quantum circuit. However, this approach does not account for the considerable differences between quantum and classical architectures, leading to substantial resource requirements.
Quixer is different: it’s not a translation – it's an innovation.
With Quixer, our team introduced an explicitly quantum transformer, built from the ground up using quantum algorithmic primitives. Because Quixer is tailored for quantum circuits, it's more resource efficient than most competing approaches.
As quantum computing advances toward fault tolerance, Quixer is built to scale with it.
What’s next for Quixer?
We’ve already deployed Quixer on real-world data: genomic sequence analysis, a high-impact classification task in biotech. We're happy to report that its performance is already approaching that of classical models, even in this first implementation.
This is just the beginning.
Looking ahead, we’ll explore using Quixer anywhere classical transformers have proven to be useful; such as language modeling, image classification, quantum chemistry, and beyond. More excitingly, we expect use cases to emerge that are quantum-specific, impossible on classical hardware.
This milestone isn’t just about one model. It’s a signal that the quantum AI era has begun, and that Quantinuum is leading the charge with real results, not empty hype.
Stay tuned. The revolution is only getting started.
Our team is participating in ISC High Performance 2025 (ISC 2025) from June 10-13 in Hamburg, Germany!
As quantum computing accelerates, so does the urgency to integrate its capabilities into today’s high-performance computing (HPC) and AI environments. At ISC 2025, meet the Quantinuum team to learn how the highest performing quantum systems on the market, combined with advanced software and powerful collaborations, are helping organizations take the next step in their compute strategy.
Quantinuum is leading the industry across every major vector: performance, hybrid integration, scientific innovation, global collaboration and ease of access.
- Our industry-leading quantum computer holds the record for performance with a Quantum Volume of 2²³ = 8,388,608 and the highest fidelity on a commercially available QPU available to our users every time they access our systems.
- Our systems have been validated by a #1 ranking against competitors in a recent benchmarking study by Jülich Research Centre.
- We’ve laid out a clear roadmap to reach universal, fully fault-tolerant quantum computing by the end of the decade and will launch our next-generation system, Helios, later this year.
- We are advancing real-world hybrid compute with partners such as RIKEN, NVIDIA, SoftBank, STFC Hartree Center and are pioneering applications such as our own GenQAI framework.
Exhibit Hall
From June 10–13, in Hamburg, Germany, visit us at Booth B40 in the Exhibition Hall or attend one of our technical talks to explore how our quantum technologies are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible across HPC.
Presentations & Demos
Throughout ISC, our team will present on the most important topics in HPC and quantum computing integration—from near-term hybrid use cases to hardware innovations and future roadmaps.
Multicore World Networking Event
- Monday, June 9 | 7:00pm – 9:00 PM at Hofbräu Wirtshaus Esplanade
In partnership with Multicore World, join us for a Quantinuum-sponsored Happy Hour to explore the present and future of quantum computing with Quantinuum CCO, Dr. Nash Palaniswamy, and network with our team.
Register here
H1 x CUDA-Q Demonstration
- All Week at Booth B40
We’re showcasing a live demonstration of NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q platform running on Quantinuum’s industry-leading quantum hardware. This new integration paves the way for hybrid compute solutions in optimization, AI, and chemistry.
Register for a demo
HPC Solutions Forum
- Wednesday, June 11 | 2:20 – 2:40 PM
“Enabling Scientific Discovery with Generative Quantum AI” – Presented by Maud Einhorn, Technical Account Executive at Quantinuum, discover how hybrid quantum-classical workflows are powering novel use cases in scientific discovery.
See You There!
Whether you're exploring hybrid solutions today or planning for large-scale quantum deployment tomorrow, ISC 2025 is the place to begin the conversation.
We look forward to seeing you in Hamburg!
Quantinuum has once again raised the bar—setting a record in teleportation, and advancing our leadership in the race toward universal fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Last year, we published a paper in Science demonstrating the first-ever fault-tolerant teleportation of a logical qubit. At the time, we outlined how crucial teleportation is to realize large-scale fault tolerant quantum computers. Given the high degree of system performance and capabilities required to run the protocol (e.g., multiple qubits, high-fidelity state-preparation, entangling operations, mid-circuit measurement, etc.), teleportation is recognized as an excellent measure of system maturity.
Today we’re building on last year’s breakthrough, having recently achieved a record logical teleportation fidelity of 99.82% – up from 97.5% in last year’s result. What’s more, our logical qubit teleportation fidelity now exceeds our physical qubit teleportation fidelity, passing the break-even point that establishes our H2 system as the gold standard for complex quantum operations.
This progress reflects the strength and flexibility of our Quantum Charge Coupled Device (QCCD) architecture. The native high fidelity of our QCCD architecture enables us to perform highly complex demonstrations like this that nobody else has yet to match. Further, our ability to perform conditional logic and real-time decoding was crucial for implementing the Steane error correction code used in this work, and our all-to-all connectivity was essential for performing the high-fidelity transversal gates that drove the protocol.
Teleportation schemes like this allow us to “trade space for time,” meaning that we can do quantum error correction more quickly, reducing our time to solution. Additionally, teleportation enables long-range communication during logical computation, which translates to higher connectivity in logical algorithms, improving computational power.
This demonstration underscores our ongoing commitment to reducing logical error rates, which is critical for realizing the promise of quantum computing. Quantinuum continues to lead in quantum hardware performance, algorithms, and error correction—and we’ll extend our leadership come the launch of our next generation system, Helios, in just a matter of months.