Pasqal, the French champion who aims to achieve “quantum advantage” – L’Express

A visit to the premises of the French start-up Pasqal, in Massy (Essonne), offers a more prosaic image. In a room named after a planet in the universe Star Wars, the firm’s very first computer came in the form of unsightly piles of cables and other connections as irregular as they were incomprehensible to ordinary mortals. No precious metal. Nothing spectacular. Have we been lied to? His gaze masked behind thick black frames, Georges-Olivier Reymond, his boss, simply claims another method called “neutral atoms”, which differs from that popularized until now, with the “superconductors” used by the American IBM and its giant golden structures. Pasqal opted for ultra-sophisticated lasers, designed just a stone’s throw from here, at the CNRS Institute of Optics, in order to cool the atoms and manipulate them. A specificity invisible to the naked eye and which explains in passing the protective glasses on the nose of the great CEO. But also its success.

The young company – four and a half years old – already has a processor with 100 qubits, the reference unit of information in quantum, which succeeds the bits. To roughly explain the differences, a trick is to take two piles of Lego bricks, one red and one blue. In the world of bits, bricks are always red or blue. In that of qubits, red bricks can be blue and blue ones can become red. This permanent navigation between two states increases the assembly possibilities. Assigned to calculation, these qubits make it possible to process a significant amount of information simultaneously.

Named after the author and famous French mathematician Blaise Pascal, the inventor of the first calculating machine, the company is preparing to take a new step by the end of the year with a computer reaching 1,000 qubits. A world record. Correctly ordered, this power could give it the much sought-after “quantum advantage” by the end of the year. This moment when the work carried out using atoms will at least equal that of modern-day supercomputers, like those which enabled the birth of ChatGPT. And more sober. “Using it at full power is equivalent in terms of consumption to that of four hair dryers,” comments Georges-Olivier Reymond. When training the first version of OpenAI’s chatbot required the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption of 120 American homes.

Pasqal has been preparing for this shift for a while. The start-up already offers part of its computing power on the cloud, and for several years has been increasing its experiments in finance (Crédit agricole), transport (BASF and BMW, Germany), health (Johnson & Johnson, States). -United) or more recently in the steel industry (Posco, South Korea). Particular attention is also paid to energy and environmental transition. “We discussed with Pasqal the problems linked to the intelligent charging of electric vehicles. Furthermore, we are refining with them our understanding of the aging of certain of our installations, such as photovoltaic panels or batteries,” cites Joseph as an example. Mikael, expert engineer and head of the IT and quantum technologies project at EDF. The energy question currently occupies a central place in the “hackathon”, a computer programming marathon, organized by Pasqal until November 10. “Our goal is to find issues on which quantum could make a difference today,” says Georges-Olivier Reymond. At the same time, the company is also preparing to deliver its first machines directly to computing centers such as that of Genci, the large national intensive computing facility, also installed in the Paris-Saclay area, as well as to the Institute of research in Jülich, Germany. Four new prototypes, in total, are under construction at Pasqal.

This rapid deployment may come as a surprise. Quantum computing is still riddled with many questions. “We are still in prehistory,” believes physicist Julien Bobroff, professor at Paris-Sud University and author of the work Welcome to the new quantum revolution (Flammarion, 2022). There are many techniques for creating qubits, such as superconductors, trapped ions, topology… Pasqal’s is certainly promising, but no one can predict which one will prevail in the long term.” Nor even if one of them between them will simply prevail. “The more we multiply the qubits, the more we increase the number of errors when we manipulate them,” adds the specialist. So much so that the most pessimistic believe that imperfections will always remain, making the prophecy obsolete .

Pasqal is well aware of this. “Despite everything, we want to capitalize on our scientific advance,” explains Nicolas Proust, director of strategy for the start-up, which counts on two stars for this: Antoine Browaeys, physicist at the CNRS and co-founder of the company, considered to be the one of the greatest experts in the field of laser manipulation of atoms. Himself a student of Alain Aspect, Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 for his research on quantum, who serves as a scientific advisor to Pasqal. The sign with his name used to reserve his parking space is displayed in a café corner of the Massy premises like a trophy.

This connection would explain the start-up’s obsession with profitability, however distant it may be, with costs remaining well above the company’s turnover (1.6 million in 2021). “Alain was always the first to want to get his head out of the laboratory. In addition to his brilliant scientific career, it should be remembered that he belonged to the boards of directors of Essilor and Atos,” recalls Georges-Olivier Reymond, also a physicist by training and a background in aeronautics, at Safran. The future Nobel Prize winner was therefore not difficult to convince when launching an entrepreneurial adventure like Pasqal. Especially when the idea came from his “sons” and “grandsons”, the nicknames they give to his students, and to their students. “The Pasqal case is a very good transfer of very fundamental research to the business world. Which is ultimately quite rare in France,” notes Julien Bobroff.

The young company, which appears in the latest French Tech 2030 promotion, raised the record sum in the sector of 100 million euros in January, after having already collected 25. The next round of funding, in one or two years years, should confirm its unicorn status. Pasqal has established itself in several locations in Europe, as well as in Canada and South Korea, to support its international development. Around ten people join its ranks each month. The company is also benefiting from a growing fascination with quantum. In 2021, France adopted a plan of 1.8 billion euros over five years, one of the most ambitious in the world in this area. Pasqal also belongs to a new generation of French quantum companies such as Quellela, Alice & Bob or C12, born between 2017 and 2020. A market is therefore beginning to take shape, in which IBM, but also Gafam and other players Chinese are positioning themselves. “A firm like BCG estimates that it could reach up to 850 billion dollars by 2030. We know that a good part will go to equipment manufacturers like us. We therefore want our share of the pie,” comments Nicolas Proust, who dreams of a trajectory like Nvidia, which has become essential in classic supercomputers.

At Pasqal, we observe the progress of quantum with confidence. Scientific research is efficient, data and calculation are already everywhere and Moore’s law, which made the transistors of classical computers more and more efficient, seems to be reaching its limits. At the same time, engineering is progressing very quickly. The short trip between the rooms housing the company’s different quantum computers shows the progress made in just four years to optimize the space taken up by the components, facilitate access and handling. “The adventure we are experiencing in quantum is comparable to that of computing in the 1950s,” Georges-Olivier Reymond wants to believe. It is not wrong to see how imposing the old machines of the time were too. Nearly 30 tonnes and 72 m2 of surface area for the Eniac, the world’s first computer presented after the Second World War. Before lowering the volume. Georges-Olivier Reymond likes, by way of comparison, to point to his smartphone, claiming that it has more power than the computers that were used to send men to the Moon. So, isn’t it a little discouraging to be, perhaps, only at the very beginning of history? “We are engaged in a real marathon,” confirms Nicolas Proust. “But to win it, there are a whole bunch of sprints to win in the meantime. That’s what makes the challenge so exciting.”