The newly elected government of the state of Queensland, Australia, has announced it will review the previous government’s decision to provide A$940 million (US$620m) in joint funding for a PsiQuantum quantum computer.
The decision for the state and federal governments to provide funding in the form of share purchases, grants, and loans was announced in April, a move that was criticized as it appeared a US-based quantum computing company was being favored over organizations already located in Australia.
When the announcement was originally made, an anonymous industry source also questioned why there wasn’t an open tender process that would have allowed Australian companies to apply and the potential perception impact on the country’s quantum sector on the international stage.
Although PsiQuantum co-founders Jeremy O’Brien and Terry Rudolph were born and studied in Australia, the company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
According to a report from The Australian, newly appointed Queensland Treasurer David Janetzki has asked officials to look into the funding agreement, stating: “We know that PsiQuantum had the inside running with the current federal and former state government. Throughout the year we have raised our concerns about the complete secrecy of the tender process and the way it sidelined expert advisers.”
He said his department would examine the details of the deal in full. The Australian National Audit Office has also said it was considering an examination of the agreement after opposition science spokesman Paul Fletcher voiced his concerns and asked the watchdog to conduct a review.
However, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended the deal, saying the government “went through an extraordinary amount of diligence” before making the announcement, according to a report from the Sydney Morning Herald.
DCD has reached out to PsiQuantum for comment.
Founded in 2016, PsiQuantum says its mission is to “build and deploy the world’s first useful quantum computer.” The company, which counts Australia's Jeremy O’Brien and Terry Rudolph amongst its co-founders, claims to have a “fast and feasible path to large-scale fault-tolerant systems” by using existing technologies, such as high-power cryogenic systems.
According to Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), the domestic quantum computing market has an estimated annual revenue of AU$2.5 billion ($1.6bn), with the potential to create 10,000 new jobs in Australia by 2040.
In February 2024, Australia’s Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth announced it would deploy Nvidia’s CUDA Quantum simulation computing platform at its National Supercomputing and Quantum Computing Innovation Hub.
In early 2022, Pawsey installed a room-temperature diamond-based quantum computer developed by Australian firm Quantum Brilliance.
