Dr. William McGann on the Value of QCi and QPhoton
QCi and QPhoton on CEORoadshow
Hi, I’m Mike Elliot and you’re watching CEO roadshow today as we chat about the pending QPhoton acquisition. We’re gonna be speaking to, uh, Dr. Bill McGann. He’s the COO and CTO of quantum computing, a leader in making quantum computing affordable and accessible to business users, not just the quantum elite workforce. They trade on the NASDAQ under QUBT.
Just a little back quick background on Dr. McGann. He is chief operating officer CTO for QCi, where he’s responsible for technical and product engineering.
Prior to joining QCi’s executive team, Bill served as a member of the board of directors for the company. Prior to joining QCi, he also served as the chief technology officer for the security detection automation business at Leidos Corporation. Central to his role at Leidos was the creation of innovative customer solutions driven by a strong portfolio of physics, chemistry, and software based products.
Bill has a strong, directed passion for transforming incredible science into practical technology solutions and solving some of the world’s greatest challenges.
Good morning, Bill, and welcome to the show.
Dr. McGann
Thank you very much, Mike. It’s a pleasure to be here.
CEO Roadshow
So how do QPhoton and QCi’s visions align?
Dr. McGann
It’s a very, very unique opportunity in the market space today, as we see it. QCi from its inception has always been focused on taking the current state of the art quantum technology, in particular hardware, and combining it with a very powerful sort of open architecture approach to enterprise software. Think of expanding the current capabilities of quantum computing to make sure that as those capabilities grow, the expansion carries forward easily.
In the space today, everyone is somewhat aware that the current state of hardware capability to solve real world customer problems is still quite limited, in terms of its scale and performance.
Our approach since the beginning as an enterprise software company has been to address that limitation using our own internal capabilities and core technologies in machine learning, optimization, and knowledge of quantum systems. Our goal is to make those quantum hardware systems work more effectively in the current environment.
QPhoton, meanwhile, has this keen focus on pushing the envelope on next generation, quantum hardware technology.
Pulling the two companies together has created this great opportunity to leverage best in class, photonic-based quantum technology with our enterprise quantum software. We can expand the capabilities of the quantum industry today, and drive a really strong vision for the future.
The strategies are really well aligned with regard to the formulation of enterprise software around very powerful new technology hardware.
CEO Roadshow
Okay, great. Bill, what do you see as the key value QPhoton will bring to QCi?
Dr McGann:
One of the elements that we see as a the trend in the market is that vendors are moving toward full-stack quantum systems. You have hardware companies partnering or buying software companies. That’s in some ways understandable in an emerging sort of nascent technology market. In many areas, that’s not actually that unique.
In this case, I think it’s also driven by the recognition that until hardware providers are as powerful as they claim their performance to be, we are not going be able to interface effectively with real world use cases in customers to generate profitable solutions for those commercial ventures.
Until these quantum systems are intimately coupled to software that makes the system as a whole be accessible to the world, we won’t have quantum adoption. We need more than quantum scientists sitting in a lab trying to make a set of hardware work or a set of software gurus building architectures. They have to come together.
QPhoton will have a hardware capability that will plug perfectly into our existing Qatalyst platform, which is an agnostic quantum optimization software today that already interfaces with the state-of-the-art quantum hardware. It will add another tip to the spear, if you will, for us to act as agnostic, consultative thought leaders in the emerging quantum industry.
CEO Roadshow
Okay, great. And what do you see QCi and QPhoton technology bringing to the market?
Dr. McGann
QPhoton and QCi to some degree see the world through a fairly different lens than I would say, the more traditional companies in the quantum space today.
You have the market being segmented into very entrepreneurial, small startups like us, either in the hardware or software space. Then there’s a big gap between those and the really big, large, high end computing engineering companies of the world that are really focused on the hardware.
The hardware is emerging as these really elite platforms that require really low temperatures of operation to maintain stability of the quantum systems that are being generated, as well as the really high vacuums required to maintain those really low temperatures, et cetera.
We see the world together through a very different lens. Photonic systems in principle have the opportunity to operate in the nascent quantum world that we live in today. We can contemplate and envision room temperature, truly room temperature systems that can democratize access to the world of quantum computing for all users.
Our software interface to those very powerful sets of hardware will provide solutions that we can begin to implement today with non quantum experts.
What I would say that different focus gives us is a leg up on actually providing solutions that the world is imagining will be available in a few years. We think we can start there and take a role at the table to lead the industry forward with some of the things we’re doing together.
CEO Roadshow
You mentioned earlier, the trend in quantum computing today is toward full-stack. Do you see that as the same as the QCi and QPhoton approach?
Dr. McGann
It’s the hardware and software combination.
Our current experience as an enterprise software company gives us the opportunity to interact with lots of customers, which is a growing pipeline of opportunities for us. We have a good pulse on what customers in the markets are looking for.
QPhoton brings the capabilities of a scalable high performance quantum computer that can interface seamlessly to our architecture, which is the work that we’re doing together today.
When that comes together, which will be demonstrated after we close the acquisition, we think that we’ll be able to very quickly address some real world problems in a very meaningful way, to accelerate the growth of the quantum computing market.
CEO Roadshow
Last question. How do you expect QPhoton and QCi to disrupt the quantum computing market as it stands now?
Dr. Bill McGann
We’re very passionate and have strong vision. Let’s just start there. I could talk all day long about that.
We also want to take one step at a time to be able to demonstrate, with users and with third party validation, all of the capabilities that we’re talking about here today.
We think that very quickly we’ll be able to demonstrate quantum technology capabilities that are expected to emerge in 2025 and beyond.
We think we’ll be able to demonstrate that much faster, together, as we go forward as one company. We intend to do that in a very transparent and step wise process where we will demonstrate to ourselves and to the community our progress.
We’re very sensitive about making claims and then not being able to support them.
You might say we are going to sort of do it backwards. We want to develop the supported use cases, show the results and then talk about it. But we think that that can happen at an accelerated pace. And we’re very excited about doing just that.
CEORoadshow
It’s exciting space and an exciting time for quantum computing, a lot, a lot going on there. Youu guys are right at the center of it.
Bill, exciting to have you on the show really appreciate you taking the time. We look forward to catching up with you again soon for another update.
Everybody we’ve been talking to Dr. Bill McGann. He is the COO and CTO of Quantum Computing, Inc., a leader in making quantum computing affordable and accessible to business users. They trade on the NASDAQ under QUBT.
You can learn more about them at their website, quantumcomputinginc.com.