Qunnect’s ABQ-Net launch marks latest step in New Mexico’s bid to be a quantum tech hub

Devices people use daily — think phones, computers and printers — are all intertwined in today’s internet.

But as quantum technologies gain momentum, they need their own network. That’s where companies like Qunnect come to, well, connect.

The New York-based company announced Wednesday the launch of ABQ-Net, New Mexico’s first quantum network, a prominent step as the technology continues to be rapidly developed across the state.

“You can think of us as an enabler for other quantum technologies,” Qunnect CEO Noel Goddard said. “It’s basically like a futuristic vision, because it’s just being built the same way the digital internet was being built in the ‘70s.”

Goddard described three types of quantum technologies: computing, sensing and networking. Where classic computers require an internet connection, she said, quantum computers and sensors need their own network to operate.

In partnership with Roadrunner Venture Studios, Qunnect’s selection marks the first phase of the Roadrunner Quantum Lab, which comes on the heels of the studio earning a $25 million quantum innovation and commercialization award from the New Mexico Economic Development Department in August.

The award, part of a broader state plan to become a national tech hub, also paved the way for the Albuquerque-based venture studio to create a coalition of nearly a dozen partners in the quantum industry. Members include Elevate Quantum, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of New Mexico, startups and venture capital firms.

While Qunnect built its own quantum network in New York for internal demonstrations, Goddard said ABQ-Net will take a different approach.

ABQ-Net will operate as an “open access” quantum network, Goddard said, where coalition members and others in the industry can utilize specialized equipment like Qunnect’s Carina, the core entanglement system used to connect devices to the network, and cryogenic dilution refrigerators, which create the chilling conditions needed to run quantum technologies.

“You’re inviting the best-of-the-best to come in and develop new protocols and new technologies, which become the foundation for the next generation of the internet,” Goddard said. “There’s not, to date, a similar facility within the U.S.”

Qunnect’s full technology stack approach, used in ABQ-Net, is a first of its kind, Goddard said, capable of supporting the distribution of quantum information across its network while maintaining its fidelity and identity — a practice especially important in mitigating corruption in sharing.

“While it sounds very simple in practice, it’s hard to do,” Goddard said. “We build infrastructure that’s capable of creating high-quality entanglement, distributing it and preserving it so that you can do something at the endpoints.”

Because New Mexico’s current fiber optic network was not created to support quantum, Goddard said her team’s job is to take that existing infrastructure and retrofit it to establish ABQ-Net.

She said the network’s first foundational node, a communicative endpoint between connected devices, will be at the Bigbyte data center in Downtown Albuquerque — also the location of Qunnect’s office — and the second node can be found at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, managed by Sandia and Los Alamos labs.

When news broke about the EDD’s $25 million commitment to the industry, along with a September announcement highlighting a state partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop the Quantum Frontier Project, Goddard said “every quantum company in the U.S.” became aware of New Mexico.

The same was true for Qunnect, which sent Roadrunner a proposal in hopes of bringing the company to New Mexico.

“It was immediately clear that (Qunnect) had a lot of technical prowess,” Roadrunner CEO and co-founder Adam Hammer said of the proposal. “They have a real vision and a real commitment to the state of New Mexico, which is important to us, and it’s in such a critical area of technology that we absolutely have to win.”

Hammer said places such as China and Europe have made large strides in developing their own quantum networks, an area where the U.S. is lagging behind. But Hammer is confident that Qunnect is “leading the charge” in ensuring the nation has a domestic alternative to keep its data secure.

As the global quantum networking market continues to grow, projected to be worth over $5 billion by 2030 according to Roadrunner’s news release, Hammer hopes to show the world that New Mexico can “do more, envision more and imagine more.”

“We take a lot of pride at Roadrunner in doing really hard things — and this is a really hard thing,” Hammer said. “To build a quantum lab, to move companies here, to build new companies here, to situate New Mexico at the center of a growing industry.”