The Quantum Laboratory of Alibaba Damo Academy has really been abolished! The laboratory and its instruments and equipment have all been donated to Zhejiang University; the whereabouts of the laboratory staff have not yet been disclosed. This is the official response of DAMO Academy to the rumors of "abolition of the quantum laboratory". Official confirmation came quickly. It all stems from recent rumors in the market: Due to budget and profitability reasons, Alibaba’s Damo Academy Quantum Laboratory may have been disbanded and many employees have been laid off. A total of more than 30 people have been laid off, and many members of the laboratory have successfully joined other companies.
The predecessor of the Quantum Laboratory can be traced back to 2013. It is one of the important layouts of DAMO Academy in cutting-edge technology. This summer, it even posted a recruitment website. Therefore, as soon as the rumor came out, it attracted great attention.
And just now, the official response officially confirmed the end of the Quantum Laboratory at Bodhidharma Academy.
Official confirmation of abolition
Regarding market rumors, Damo Academy specifically responded as follows:
In order to further promote the coordinated development of quantum technology, DAMO Academy collaborates with Zhejiang University to develop quantum technology. DAMO Academy donates its quantum laboratory and transferable quantum experimental equipment to Zhejiang University and opens it to other universities and scientific research institutions.
That is to say,The Quantum Laboratory, together with the transferable instruments and equipment in the laboratory, were all donated to Zhejiang University by DAMO Academy.
In the future, whether it is laboratories or equipment, other universities and scientific research institutions can use it (the specific opening form is not yet known) - all in order to "further promote the coordinated development of quantum technology."
However, Damo Academy did not respond to the issue of personnel disposal.
But in earlier rumors, many members of the laboratory had already left Damo Academy due to layoffs and joined other companies.
Just last night (November 26), the official website of DAMO Academy still posted recruitment information for "quantum computing scientists".
And when Qubit searched on its official website this morning,The relevant recruitment page is no longer available.
The old laboratory homepage has also been cleared.
After the news of the confirmed axing came out, many netizens were filled with emotion and left endless sighs in the online comment area:
Many people also speculate that this move may be because quantum computing research is too expensive:
Alibaba’s ten-year results of quantum computing
Alibaba’s research in the field of quantum computing can be traced back to 2013.
Later, in 2015, the "Quantum Computing Laboratory", the predecessor of the DAMO Academy Quantum Laboratory, was officially established, jointly built by Alibaba Cloud and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The laboratory set up a series of research plans at that time:
- It is expected that by 2025, quantum simulation will reach the level of the fastest supercomputer in the world today and be initially applied to some major scientific and technological problems that are currently unsolvable;
-By 2030, develop a universal quantum computing prototype with 50-100 qubits, break through the chip technology of large-scale quantum computers, realize independent research and development from physical layer design and manufacturing to algorithm operation, fully realize universal quantum computing functions, and apply it to major practical problems such as big data processing.
Not long after its establishment, in September 2017, the laboratory hired a top expert in the industry, Shi Yaoyun, the world's top quantum computing scientist and a tenured professor at the University of Michigan.
Shi Yaoyun graduated from Peking University in 1997 and later obtained a PhD in computer science from Princeton University. He is a disciple of Turing Award winner Yao Qizhi.
After completing his Ph.D., he went to teach at the University of Michigan.
As for the reason why he returned to China to join Alibaba, Shi Yaoyun’s answer at the time was, “What this company wants to do is exactly what I want to do: put quantum computing into practice.”
After joining the company, Shi Yaoyun served as the chief scientist of Alibaba Cloud Quantum Technology, and his main job was to establish and be responsible for this quantum computing laboratory.
And this is also the period when Alibaba’s investment in cutting-edge technology research and development is most prosperous.
Shi Yaoyun joined the company in September 2017. In October, Alibaba established the Damo Academy and announced a three-year investment of 100 billion yuan in basic scientific research such as quantum computing, machine learning, and basic algorithms.
As a result, the Quantum Computing Laboratory was placed under Damo Academy and became one of its key cutting-edge technology directions.
Then, one after another, cutting-edge people in this field joined the quantum laboratory.
After joining the company, Shi Yaoyun set up a second office location for the laboratory in Seattle, and he acted vigorously and quickly hired Deng Chunqing in Seattle to serve as quantum scientist and hardware team leader of the quantum laboratory.
Deng once served as a senior scientist at quantum computing company D-WaveSystems, leading the research and development of a new generation of quantum processors.
Then, in a matter of seconds, Hungarian-American computer scientist Mario Szegedy, winner of the Gödel Prize, the highest award for theoretical computing twice, was also recruited.
By the beginning of 2018, the research team of DAMO Academy’s Quantum Laboratory was basically completed.
At that time, Shi Yaoyun set a goal. Within five years, the laboratory would establish a quantum computing architecture, tap the potential of quantum computers, and solve some problems that classical computing cannot solve.
Since then, the Quantum Laboratory has indeed produced some impressive results:
In May 2018, Shi Yaoyun's team announced the development of the world's most powerful quantum circuit simulator "Taizhang" at the time, and was the first in the world to successfully simulate an 81 (9x9) bit 40-layer Google random quantum circuit as a benchmark (previous simulators that reached this number of layers could only handle 49 bits).
This achievement exceeded what Google's quantum hardware could achieve at the time.
△ Comparison of the scale of random quantum circuits simulated by "Taizhang" (black line) and the scale that can be achieved by Google's quantum hardware (red line)
In September 2019, the Quantum Laboratory announced the completion of the research and development of the first controllable qubit.
The design, preparation and measurement of this bit were all done independently.
At the beginning of 2020, Taizhang 2.0 simulated the quantum circuit that Google claimed to achieve "quantum superiority".
At the end of the year, Alibaba released the Alibaba Cloud Quantum Development Platform (ACQDP), and opened up a self-developed quantum computing simulator "Taizhang 2.0" and a series of quantum application cases.
By 2021, the laboratory will further develop the construction of superconducting quantum hardware projects.
In March 2022, the laboratory successfully designed and manufactured a two-bit fluxoniu quantum chip, achieving a single-bit control accuracy of 99.97%, and a two-bit iSWAP gate control accuracy of up to 99.72%.
The control accuracy has reached the highest level of similar bits in the world.
This chip reaches the world's best level in this category and is an important step in bringing the advantages of fluxonium from theory to practice.
And as of this time, the Quantum Laboratory has also built two hardware laboratories, Lab-1 and Lab-2.
Industry as a whole is slowing down, but still moving forward
Looking back on 2019-2022, it can be regarded as an explosive period in the field of quantum computing.
Since Google announced the realization of "quantum superiority", not only have research results frequently appeared on the covers of N/S top issues, but the number of controllable qubits has continued to increase. Even the 2022 Nobel Prize was awarded to quantum entanglement.
Progress has slowed down since entering 2023.
Even Pan Jianwei’s team at the University of Science and Technology of China emphasized cautious optimism when they released the Jiu Zhang No. 3 results last month:
The current Jiu Zhang No. 3 is only a "single champion" with potential application value.
But it’s not all “bad news”;More progress in quantum computing this year appears in infrastructure, tool chains, practicality, etc.
Quantum error correction is the most prominent direction among them.
For example, NVIDIA released the world's first GPU-accelerated quantum computing system DGXQuantum, which links NVIDIA GPUs to quantum computers to implement calibration, control, quantum error correction, and hybrid algorithms.
IBM also announced a new "quantum noise elimination" method to achieve performance beyond classical computers on the 127-qubit Eagle processor.
According to data from TheQuantumInsider, quantum computing financing also shows signs of slowing down compared to last year. In the first half of 2023, compared with the same period in 2022, the scale dropped from US$120 billion to about 50 billion.
As of now, financing events of more than 10 million US dollars in 2023 are mainly divided into two waves in time:
From January to March, France’s PASQAL completed a US$108 million Series B financing, and the UK’s Oxfordlonics completed a US$36 million Series A financing.
From June to August, Australia's Silicon Quantum Computing completed a US$50 million Series A financing, and Germany's NVision Imaging Technologies completed a US$30 million Series A financing.
Looking specifically at the domestic quantum computing industry, in addition to Alibaba, major manufacturers such as Huawei, Baidu, and Tencent also have plans.
Among them, Huawei's Quantum Technology Basic Research Laboratory has been relatively mysterious and low-key in recent years, rarely making an appearance until relevant patents are announced.
Tencent Quantum Laboratory, led by Professor Zhang Shengyu of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (also a disciple of Academician Yao Qizhi), this year’s main progress is focused on quantum chemical simulation, material design and new drug research and development.
This year the high-performance quantum computational chemistry software package TenCirChem was released, and progress has been made in controlled quantum state preparation and the optimization of general quantum circuits.
Baidu Institute of Quantum Computing, led by Professor Duan Runyao of the University of Technology Sydney, this year’s main progress is concentrated in the fields of financial technology, optical quantum and quantum chips.
This year, QFinance, a quantum financial toolset, was launched, integrating numerous quantum algorithms to provide efficient quantum option pricing tools. It has also launched the optical quantum computing simulator PQS, and has completed the "strip verification" of a 2D quantum chip containing a coupler.
In addition, according to inquiries on various recruitment platforms, Baidu and Tencent are still recruiting for quantum computing-related positions.
Therefore, judging from various signs, Alibaba’s “strategic retreat” from Damo Academy’s quantum computing is mainly due to the company’s own strategic choices.
Since the adjustment of Alibaba's organizational structure and the return of Tsai Chongxin and Wu Yongming to the helm of the company, Alibaba has made a number of adjustments. Among them, in terms of basic computing, it has withdrawn the decision to "split Alibaba Cloud independently" and believes that in the new computing innovation cycle, it is necessary to increase investment to ensure that Cloud Intelligence continues to lead.
But on the other hand, quantum computing has also been decided to "put on hold" and wait for a better time to get on board.
The final big winner of this decision was naturally Zhejiang University, which stood on the shoulders of giants and received their legacy.
Reference links:
[1]https://thequantuminsider.com/2023/06/28/signs-of-a-private-quantum-investment-slowdown-in-first-half-of-2023/
[2]https://growthlist.co/quantum-computing-startups/