Data can exist in different states. It can be in storage, under operations, or in transit, and each state requires various methods of protection. Qunnect, led by CEO Dr. Noel Goddard and co-founded by Dr. Mehdi Namazi and Mael Flament, aims to protect data in transit by developing a suite of hardware tools that enables secure and reliable communications built on quantum entanglement communication protocols. Government agencies and university research groups will be among the first customers, followed by telecommunication providers, financial institutions, and companies working on distributed quantum computing.
While quantum communication is not a new field, previous approaches have fallen short of expectations. Some of the main challenges are that existing technologies require massive cooling devices, are not compatible with telecommunications infrastructure, and must convert the information from the quantum realm to the classical realm and back during transit, which introduces major vulnerabilities. Qunnect’s product suite will address these issues and enable a scalable, quantum-secure method of communication. Three of Qunnect’s core products are a high-fidelity entangled photon source, an entanglement swapping module, and a room-temperature quantum memory. The entangled photon source produces entangled photon pairs that are compatible with existing telecommunication frequencies. The device(s) performing entanglement swapping sits at intermediary nodes and performs a protocol to distribute entanglement between distant nodes. Finally, the room-temperature quantum memory allows for single photon storage and release at greater than 95% fidelity in a form factor that greatly reduces size, weight, and power requirements of the system. With these results, Qunnect made history in November 2021 with the first ever commercial sale of a quantum memory device. In order to test and further develop their products, Qunnect, with the support of other groups, is building one of the most versatile quantum communication testbeds. This New York City-based facility will allow for more complex geometries of quantum networking that include entanglement swapping between multiple sources, quantum repeating, and (on a longer time horizon) distributed computing and sensing. Additional devices will be added to upgrade the telecom infrastructure to support a wide range of quantum hardware tools. The promise of quantum communication and the foundational technologies this team is working on are critically important elements of this investment. We have made several quantum investments to date, and we know that building these types of technologies is a challenge requiring a world-class team. Dr. Noel Goddard (CEO), Dr. Mehdi Namazi (co-founder and CSO), and Mael Flament (co-founder and CTO) bring a combination of startup experience, leadership, and deep technical expertise - something that is exceedingly rare in the quantum information startup space. There are a limited number of quantum experts globally, and strong leadership is needed to attract technical talent. Qunnect is powered by exactly this– a brilliant team of field experts, impressively accelerating their earliest milestones. We’re thrilled to be leading Qunnect’s Series A round, and look forward to supporting the team as they continue to create industry-defining breakthroughs in secure quantum communications. Photo Source: Qunnect By Nicole Conner and Taylor Sargent