Infleqtion, Cisco announce quantum collaboration

LOUISVILLE — Infleqtion Inc. (NYSE: INFQ), a Louisville-based quantum technology company that went public in February, announced a collaboration with San Jose, California-based Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) on Thursday to pursue joint research and development focused on connecting, operating and scaling quantum systems.

Together, the companies will explore architectures to link individual devices into distributed, more capable networks, an important step toward making distributed quantum systems a reality.

“The next major breakthrough in quantum will not come from building bigger isolated machines, but from networking systems together,” Ramana Kompella, vice president and head of Cisco Research, said in a prepared statement. “By combining Cisco’s quantum networking leadership with Infleqtion’s quantum platforms, we are developing the communication architecture needed to scale quantum capabilities from standalone devices into resilient, collaborative networks.”

“Achieving the broadest applications of quantum computing will require many quantum systems working together. The path forward is connecting these systems together the same way the internet emerged from connecting many classical computers,” Pranav Gokhale, chief technology officer at Infleqtion, said in a news release. “That’s why this collaboration matters. Together, Infleqtion and Cisco are exploring how to connect quantum computers and sensors together into larger, more powerful quantum networks, which is a critical step toward unlocking distributed quantum.” 

Neutral atoms interface naturally with photons, the particles of light used to carry information across networks, making them well suited to link quantum computing and quantum sensing with the photonic channels needed for quantum networking. Infleqtion’s systems combine native quantum memory with multi-modal computing and sensing, providing the device-level hardware and optical interfaces needed to connect into broader networks. Realizing that vision at scale, however, will require the modality-agnostic quantum network architecture Cisco is developing through Cisco Quantum Labs to connect heterogeneous quantum computers, sensors and other quantum technologies into scalable, distributed systems.

To support this distributed architecture, Cisco is advancing research and developing solutions for an end-to-end quantum networking stack designed to dynamically distribute quantum entanglement across connected devices on demand. This includes purpose-built quantum hardware and software designed to manage connections between quantum processors, memory, and sensors, enabling information to move reliably across systems. Most recently, Cisco debuted the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch, a working research prototype, to route quantum information between systems while preserving it with a conversion engine that makes a truly interoperable quantum network now possible.

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