‘Uniquely placed’: Why Quantinuum chose New Mexico for its latest expansion

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang disrupted stock markets earlier this month when he suggested useful quantum computers were at least two decades away.

Rajeeb Hazra, the head of what is likely the leading full-stack quantum computing company, Quantinuum, suggests otherwise.

“It’s in the next three to five years that you will see tremendous gains,” Hazra told the Journal in an interview last month.

Hazra’s company is making a big bet on rapidly deploying quantum computing into everyday use, and it’s looking to draw on New Mexico’s quantum ecosystem. Having already established partnerships with entities like Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of New Mexico, Quantinuum is bringing a research and development facility to the state by the end of this year — positioning New Mexico firmly at the front of the current quantum revolution.

While Hazra declined to comment on where that facility would be located, saying the company is in the “land and capital planning” and “workforce planning” stages, Quantinuum plans to support ongoing efforts to advance its integrated photonics and optics capabilities.

That’s a critical component for quantum computing, Hazra said, because “quantum computing is all about things and manipulating those things.”

“Those things are called qubits (quantum bits), and manipulating them, which means moving them, reading them, setting values to them so that you can compute,” Hazra said. “Optics is a fundamental capability of the computation to manipulate, touch, read these qubits. … Integrated means you’re getting more scale. You’re miniaturizing them so you can have larger, more powerful quantum computers in the future.”

In choosing New Mexico for its next facility — Quantinuum has a presence in Colorado, Minnesota, Washington, D.C., the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan — the company sees a partner and a workforce capable of bringing online the next generation of quantum computing.

Hazra and state officials have been discussing economic development incentives though nothing has been finalized as of yet. The company plans to make a “sizable investment” in its expansion into New Mexico, Hazra said.

Michael Coleman, a spokesperson for the governor, wrote to the Journal in an email this month that the New Mexico Economic Development Department is working with the company on an incentive package “that will be announced in the coming months.” Coleman didn’t specify which types of funding Quantinuum could receive.

But the state has valuable funding, like the Local Economic Development Act and the new Quantum Technologies Award Pilot Program launched in December — specifically aimed at supporting the growth and relocation of quantum computing companies.

“No doubt, this is a big win for our state. Quantinuum is the world’s largest quantum company with the most advanced quantum software and top developers and engineers,” Coleman added. “The fact the company chose New Mexico for expansion is testament to the governor’s vision for this industry, and our continued support for technology and innovation at our universities and research centers.”

Quantum computing can have many applications, from aiding in the discovery of new medicines and creating targeted prescriptions to logistics for manufacturing.

“Quantum computing is going to be embedded in the fiber of almost every use case, as you work, play and communicate with people,” Hazra said.

The Quantinuum expansion is the latest addition to a bustling quantum ecosystem in New Mexico.

Because of the labs’ and UNM’s long history in quantum research, the state was at the forefront of the “second quantum revolution,” which began sometime in the 1990s, according to Ivan Deutsch, a UNM professor who also leads the Quantum New Mexico Institute.

“That basic R&D (done here) has kind of helped create the foundation of this new technological revolution,” Deutsch said.

Last year, the federal Economic Development Association identified New Mexico and Colorado as one of a dozen tech hubs in the U.S. — a designation that awarded the two states $41 million to focus on quantum information technology. UNM and New Mexico State University researchers in August were awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to research the development of a photonic quantum computer operating at room temperature. The New Mexico Quantum Moonshot — a partnership between the labs, universities and the private sector — was selected as a finalist in the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines program, which could bring hundreds of millions of dollars to the state.

Officials have said the hub designation funding, for instance, could create 10,000 jobs, allowing the training of up to 30,000 workers.

“Quantum computing is an end-to-end capability. You have to have the technological capability, but then you have to have the partners who use that capability, and most importantly, the generations of workforce that’s going to continue to build out that capability,” Hazra said. “And New Mexico is uniquely placed with a combination of what it already has in the ecosystem and its workforce development.”

Deutsch said a group of large tech companies is developing quantum computers, like IBM and Google. But Quantinuum, which not only develops the hardware but also the software for quantum computing, has “the highest quality quantum computer on the market today,” Deutsch said.

“This expansion is going to turn a lot of heads,” Deutsch said. “I think that this is going to be a snowball effect. It’ll be the first (company to come here), but it’s not going to be the last. … It’s a huge deal.”