The Public Sector Pension Investment Board is investing $20 million in Burnaby, B.C.-based quantum computing systems and software company D-Wave Systems Inc.
In April 2017, D-Wave received a conditional commitment from PSP Investments for the investment. A press released noted the company has now satisfied all the key conditions, including the fabrication and testing of a working processor and the installation of a D-Wave 2000Q system for a customer. The system was installed at the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, which is run by Google Inc., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Universities Space Research Association.
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“The new prototype demonstrates our new architecture, with more densely-connected qubits that can represent more complex problems more efficiently,” said Vern Brownell, chief executive officer at D-Wave, in a news release. “The design and fabrication of this prototype represent major advances in our capability to build the world’s most complex superconducting circuits, and we did it ahead of schedule. We will use this funding to continue to deliver systems and software that provide real-world quantum computing today, and to push our technology forward.”
The funding from PSP Investments brings D-Wave’s total funding to approximately US$220 million.
D-Wave is based in Palo Alto, Calif. and Hanover, Md. As well as Google, NASA and USRA, its systems are used by Lockheed Martin Corp., the University of Southern California, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Temporal Defense Systems Inc.