Leaders of the Pacific Northwest’s computing community gathered in downtown Seattle today to mark World Quantum Day – and Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson gave them another reason to celebrate. Or rather, 500,000 reasons.
Ferguson took the opportunity to announce that $500,000 will be directed to the Governor’s Economic Development Strategic Reserve Fund to support the expansion of the IonQ computer manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash. The 100,000-square-foot factory opened in 2024 and is ramping up production.
Over the next 18 months, Maryland-based IonQ plans to add about 100 engineering positions in Bothell, paying an average salary of $177,000. Over the next five years, this expansion is expected to generate between 1,200 and 2,000 regional jobs.
The Strategic Reserve Fund uses unclaimed lottery money for investments that bring significant job creation and capital investment to Washington state. The newly announced award will go to the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County for building improvements, labor costs and other expansion costs.
Government funding comes in at over fourteen million dollars for private plants. “Quantum is the future, and it’s being built here,” Ferguson said in a news release.
The news was received with applause at Northwest Quantum Day, a day-long conference presented by Northwest Quantum Nexus and co-hosted by K&L Gates.
April 14 is marked worldwide as World Quantum Day for a clever reason: The day (4/14) commemorates the fundamental number of quantum mechanics, Planck’s constant (4.14 X 10)-15 eV ⋅ s).
A Quantum Computing System does not follow the binary rules of classical computing. Instead, they use the properties of subatomic particles to process multiple values at once. Quantum-based algorithms hold the promise of solving some types of problems that cannot be solved using classical computers.
The promise has yet to be fully realized – but Washington’s governor, Denny Heck, set a bullish tone as the conference’s keynote speaker. “Quantum computing will be one of the most impactful scientific and technological breakthroughs in all of recorded history, and arguably, in today’s parlance, it will be a mini-AI,” he said.
Heck predicted that quantum computing will create “full commercial applications” in the next five or 10 years. “You know that we are not there yet,” he told the audience, “but you should also know that there is no longer any question of what.
How AI inspires quantum leaps
Many speakers said that the rapidly developing revolution in artificial intelligence is also accelerating the quantum revolution.
“Quantum plays a very interesting synergistic role with AI,” said Nathan Baker, who leads the engineering team focused on the development of quantum applications at Microsoft. “For a while, quantum will be a rare and very cheap computing resource. It will be solving problems that we can’t solve today, so it will be a completely new resource. But the best way to get miles out of this … is to scale up quantum with AI.”
Krysta Svore, Nvidia’s vice president of applied quantum computing research, said AI could help developers tackle a challenge that has slowed progress in the field.
“AI will help with the correction of quantum errors in particular, providing a mechanism for the finalization needed to keep a quantum computer stable and long-lived,” Svore said.
He noted that earlier in the day, Nvidia released the world’s first family of open-source quantum AI models. The models include significant improvements in quantum error correction.
Svore also noted that the general public shouldn’t expect to buy a quantum computer for their desktop. “If you look at what it takes to run a quantum computer, most of us don’t really have a cryogenic room in our house,” he said. “Basically, you’ll access this kind of computing just like you access AI supercomputers, through the cloud. Most of us don’t have an AI supercomputer in our backyard, yet we all use LLMs, whether you’re using ChatGPT or Copilot or Gemini.”
If quantum computing reaches its potential, the technology could lead to faster drug discovery, better batteries and more secure communications. It can also crack existing crypto codes, prompting researchers to develop quantum-proof cryptography.
The potential risks and benefits of quantum computing have captured the attention of policymakers. Back in 2018, the National Quantum Initiative Act authorized $1.2 billion over a five-year period to increase investment in quantum information science. Recently, the White House paired quantum technology with AI in a program called the Genesis Mission.
What’s next in the quantum field?
In honor of World Quantum Day, legislation known as the National Quantum Initiative Authorization Act was unanimously approved today by the House Commerce Committee.
“From scientific advances in health care to clean energy solutions, quantum technology is changing the game, and federal investment is essential to accelerate the transition from basic science to quantum innovations and practical applications,” US Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., one of the bill’s lead sponsors, said in a news release. “Washington State, with its vibrant tech industry, national lab partnerships and growing pipeline of quantum engineers, is poised to become ‘Quantum Valley.’ “
On that point, Heck was less bullish than Cantwell. “Here’s the question: Are we moving as fast as possible in our area?” he asked. “Do our finances, and does our cooperation, come any closer to matching the magnitude of the opportunity that exists? And if we are honest with each other – no, not at all.”
Heck and other speakers at Northwest Quantum Day said more needs to be done to support education and workforce development, inspire new computing technologies and strengthen the Pacific Northwest’s tech ecosystem.
“Having that local area, a talent-rich area, is important,” Baker said. “And it’s not just physicists, is it? The quantum pipeline, especially if you intend for a quantum computer to be a commercial product… it requires expertise in all areas, from the ‘market’ to the people who engineer the hardware.”
Michael Brett, who leads the go-to-market strategy for quantum technology at Amazon Web Services, even had the idea for the marketing campaign. “I think our license plate should say, ‘Quantum State,'” he said. Was the proposal serious? Was it a joke? In the spirit of World Quantum Day, it was probably both.
