All right, it's time for a spotlight on quantum computing and to help us understand more about the company and their latest deal with the U.S. Air Force. That's worth talking about.
Peter Chapman's with us, president and CEO at IonQ. Thank you so much for being with us. Almost two years, right? Basically, two year anniversary, Peter.
Indeed, yes, to the day. You were showing me the quantum. Specialty, tell us more about that. So this is a quantum processing unit. Similar to a central processing unit.
Here, I'll hold it so people can actually see what it is that you're showing. Go ahead. Okay, so this is the processor at the center of a quantum computer.
And so we just announced two new systems where one of these chips will have 64 qubits. And that allows you to look at a computational space of 2 to the 64, or about 18 quintillion different possibilities in a single instruction. So this is your proprietary piece.
What do you hope to accomplish with this? I mean, what can be done with this? Because you said it's more powerful than supercomputers.
Yes. There's really a lot of potential here. So Richard Feynman is a theoretical physicist. Back in the 1980s, who worked on the Oppenheimer Manhattan Project, the blockbuster movie that came out this year, he said Mother Nature is not classical, it's quantum.
And we needed a quantum system to be able to model Mother Nature. And that's really the promise of quantum computing, is this massive amount of parallelism that allow us to tackle some of these significant problems, like chemistry. Maybe find a cure for cancer, global climate change.
These are the kinds of things we can't model today, really down to the level we need to with the classical system. And some of the huge deals I would love to hear about, who you work most closely with at this point. I know you just recently got a $25 million deal with the U.S. Air Force and saying that they want to advance quantum technology and that's all about our national security and you're happy to see it.
Yes, very much so. So with Air4L, we are working on quantum networking. And so some believe that the future of the Internet will be a quantum network.
Because the great thing about a quantum network is there's no way to hack into the network to be able to intercept the messages. It's very, very secure. Right. And so the investments that you've been making, the U.S. Air Force is making, what other firms or companies or government?
What departments are you working with right now or hope to work with? Well, there's, you know, who doesn't want to have more quantum, more computing power? Right.
So everyone that is in government that has an interest in an HPC system has also an interest in quantum. So this is everyone from the military to NIH, which is working on solving diseases. Mm-hmm. And do you run into some of the problems that when we talk about Supply chain and things like that. What kind of headwinds are you facing these days?
We did. We've now kind of started to anticipate those delays. And so we're now holding inventory so that we're not impacted in that way, the way we were like 18 months ago. Right. And do you find that there's a line for folks who want to meet you and try and have that have eye on you?
this be a part of their business? Increasingly so. We originally thought we would sell one system. We've now sold four this year and it doesn't seem to be slowing down.
So at this point now what is your near-term hope on the agenda? I mean you mentioned cancer and climate change. I mean it's good to have big dreams and I'm with you on that.
What do you think are some of the near-term things on the agenda here? Yeah so We published a roadmap both technically and financially prior to the merger, and we've been executing extremely well on that. So our goal next is the 2024 milestone of AQ35 and producing a new system called Forte Enterprise. The year after that is an AQ64 system, and that is when we think that Quantum's kind of promise will really come to the market.
And when you work closely, it's my understanding, you work closely with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google. What are some of those relationships like? What they're doing is providing easy access to quantum. So we don't have to, I don't have the usual problem of having to start and open an account because everyone already has an account with any of those three. And now for a dollar or two you can get access to an IonQ quantum computer and you can give it a try.
Yeah, and sometimes, you know, having to explain this to folks is difficult and could be tedious at times, but it's so important that you do because then they understand the magnitude about what could happen here. with quantum technology overall. What do you really love to do when it comes to all of this? I mean, this must be your like geek fest time, right? I mean, what do you really love when it comes to this?
I love actually being out back working with the engineers and on a whiteboard. To be honest, this part of my job is not something that I actually wake up looking to do. Yeah, no, the engineers on the whiteboard designing and... Absolutely.
And what's your background for that? I'm a software engineer. I've been in the computer business since 1976. So I started working at the MIT AI Laboratory back with Marvin Minsky at the birth of kind of machine learning and AI.
Yeah, so I started there when I was 16. Can you just give us your quick thought on AI? Well, since I've been in there since the very beginning, I think it's going to take off, and I think it's going to take off even more so with quantum. Okay, good to see you. Peter Chapman, thank you so much. President and CEO of IonQ.
Thank you for being with us.