Unitary Fund, a non-profit organization supporting the quantum technology ecosystem, will open its first European office in Tours, France. Da Vinci Labs, a deeptech accelerator for quantum, AI, and synthetic biology, acted as an incubator for Unitary Fund’s European operations, providing incorporation and fundraising advisory services.
There is rapid growth across quantum technology, and the vision for a robust quantum industry increasingly resonates with scientists, engineers, investors, and corporations. Still, there are challenges to overcome as researchers need to develop error correction, scalable hardware technologies, useful algorithms with provable advantages, ways to benchmark and project the performance of heuristic algorithms, and more.
Some of these challenges are well addressed by academic and industry players. However, others are public goods that help everyone but that don't stand alone as businesses. These are the open development tools, standards, benchmarks, interfaces, educational and training materials, skill sharing networks, open source communities, mentorship networks and more that form the soil from which a rich industry and ecosystem can grow.
Unitary Fund’s mission is to foster the quantum ecosystem with a microgrant program funding explorers worldwide to work on quantum projects like open-source quantum software, educational materials and workshops, a new quantum sensor prototype, and much more. Unitary Fund has supported open-source projects like Pulser (a framework for composing, simulating and executing pulse sequences for neutral-atom quantum devices), mitiq (a compiler for error-mitigated quantum programming) and metriq (a platform for sharing quantum technology benchmarks).
Xavier Aubry, Da Vinci Labs' Founder and Managing Director, commented:
“Unitary Fund has the ambition to be the equivalent of the Linux Foundation for the quantum industry. As the ecosystem matures, open-source software platforms will be key to supporting use cases and applications of quantum technology. That’s why we decided to collaborate with Unitary Fund and help set up their European office in France.”
Nathan Shammah, CTO of Unitary Fund, comments: “The French quantum ecosystem has risen to global prominence, thanks to the excellence of its research and its network supporting deeptech transfer, with players like Quantonation. A first generation of quantum hardware spin-offs like Pasqal and Quandela, are committed to developing open source infrastructure. We’re looking forward to further collaboration with the Da Vinci Labs through a shared long-term vision of a sustainable and open quantum ecosystem in Europe.”
Will Zeng, Unitary Fund Founder and President, remarks: “We have supported innovative teams through our microgrants and hackathons for years now. With the help of Da Vinci Labs, we are excited to expand our commitment to developing the quantum ecosystem in France and in Europe.”
About Unitary Fund
Unitary Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to create a quantum technology ecosystem that benefits people around the world. We believe that expanding the pool of people working on quantum technologies is a way to ensure that the benefits of these tools are widely, swiftly, and equitably distributed. We primarily use two major programs to pursue this mission. Through Unitary Labs, we work on in-house projects that help the ecosystem as a whole. Through our microgrant program, we fund an inclusive community of explorers across the world to work on quantum technologies.
About Da Vinci Labs
Da Vinci Labs is a research and incubation structure inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. Its interdisciplinary and humanistic approach aims to respond competitively to the ecological challenges of tomorrow and to bring out the future champions of deeptech, in particular in the field of quantum technologies, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. To do this, Da Vinci Labs participates in European collaborative research projects and builds a technological infrastructure in Touraine, which will be made available to researchers and entrepreneurs ready to tackle our major societal challenges.
https://www.davincilabs.eu/en/
