SoftBank’s Vision Fund eyes investment in quantum computing

Bloomberg

SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund is scouting for possible investments in quantum computing, an experimental science being researched by companies such as Google and IBM to succeed current computer processor technology.
Shu Nyatta, who helps invest money for the fund, said the group wanted to find and back the company whose quantum computing hardware or software that runs atop it would become the “de facto industry standard.”
“We are happy to invest enough to create that standard around which the whole industry can coalesce,” Nyatta said, speaking during a panel discussion at a conference on quantum computing in Munich.
The Vision Fund, which has attracted investment from Apple Inc. and other large institutional backers, is investing in cutting edge technologies from virtual reality to the Internet of Things.
It recently invested $500 million for a minority stake in Improbable, a London-based simulation and virtual reality software startup, that has few customers and little revenue.
Once considered purely theoretical, researchers have made strides in building functioning quantum computers based around a number of different designs and approaches. International Business Machines Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Rigetti Computing, a San Francisco-based quantum computing startup, have created working machines around one method, while IonQ, a spin-out from the University of Maryland and Duke University, is working on technologies based on another. Microsoft is backing a third architecture, but has yet to create a working machine.
D-Wave, a Canadian company, is the only firm to sell quantum computers today.
D-Wave’s system is based around yet another architecture, but its machine can only solve
a limited set of problems compared to
those Google, IBM and the others have been working on.