The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 49 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Shadbolt: One-million-qubit quantum computer will outperform all global conventional compute
“A single million qubit quantum computer would outperform The net total of conventional computing on the entire planet. So you take all of the supercomputers on the planet, you take every AWS system, every Azure system, you add them all together, and we trash t…”
Shadbolt: Useful quantum computing requires roughly one million qubits
“The general consensus is that you need more like a million qubits to do anything commercially impactful with a quantum computer.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum's million-qubit bet relies entirely on existing semiconductor fabs
“The only reason that we could afford to make that really extreme bet that we're going to go straight to a million qubits. The only reason that we felt that was plausible is that our technology fits into the fabs and the OSATs and the contract contract manufact…”
Shadbolt: Quantum will parallel AI's sudden breakthrough via hardware and architecture
“It was really the convergence of two things to my mind the availability of hardware that was built for another purpose in this case, gaming GPUs, and then also progress on the architecture where I see very strong parallels between what we've done and what has …”
Shadbolt: Quantum computers will solve simulations impossible on classical supercomputers
“Our conventional supercomputers suck at predicting the properties of these microscopic things. And that happens to be exactly the set of problems where a quantum computer is perfectly suited and where we will solve problems that can never be solved by any conv…”
Shadbolt: Semiconductor industry and PsiQuantum use almost no AI in chip design
“We basically don't use AI at all inside the company to design chips. And I think if you go and look at people who are building millions of chips in industry, there's a very small amount of AI, if any, that's being involved in the actual design of those chips t…”
Shadbolt: AI will not dramatically accelerate PsiQuantum's hardware timelines
“So no, I don't think the AI is going to dramatically reduce our timelines. Currently our timelines are mostly determined as far as I can tell by infrastructure, right? We're breaking ground on these sites in Australia and Chicago. These are roughly a hundred m…”
Shadbolt: Australia's chief scientist found PsiQuantum a 'country mile ahead'
“And then at the end of that, I don't know, 18 month process she concludes that we're a country mile ahead of anyone else.”
Shadbolt: Quantum computing companies are far more likely to go to zero
“Yeah, I think that there is a serious prospect that these companies do that, but there is a much greater chance that they go to zero is basically my simple way of putting it.”
Shadbolt: Basic qubit physics is a small part of quantum scale
“That stuff is really important, but it's a small piece of the puzzle of building a data center sized machine.”
Shadbolt: Venture capital pressure for early revenue warps quantum startups
“We get coached that there is a certain way to do a venture backed company. And the coaching is very often you got to get some kind of revenue by any means necessary really early. And that's certainly true if you're a SaaS company, right? Like if I'm building a…”
Shadbolt: Quantum Computing Faces Severe Practical Limits for Optimization
“Our view on optimization is that it's really difficult to do like tremendously impactful optimization with a quantum computer. Conventional computers are already surprisingly good at optimization, and the quantum algorithms that we know of for optimization pro…”
Shadbolt: Quantum commercial adoption will precede cryptographic security risks
“You should get like an economic early warning sign essentially where you should see quantum computing companies Doing commercially impactful things, making money, and then eventually scaling towards systems that are big enough to be cryptographically relevant.”
Shadbolt: Quantum has consumed billions and 100k human-years without useful machines
“Quantum computing has already consumed billions and billions and billions of dollars of capital. It has consumed the entire adult life of tens of thousands of our best scientists and researchers. Some total has got to be nearly a 100,000 years of human life. B…”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum plans to enable its Australian quantum site by end of 2027
“The plan of record that the company marches to is that we want to have that site enabled by end of 20, 27 in Australia.”
Shadbolt: $1B in revenue marks the starting point for useful quantum computing
“When you're making a ton of revenue you're probably doing something that, you know, within reason you could call useful and like a billion dollars of revenue would be a nice starting point for a useful machine like this. Yeah, definitely what is not useful is …”
Pete Shadbolt: Quantum computing has repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises
“Quantum computing is a pain in the ass. And it is, you know, failed promises and endless confusion and all of this competitive jostling and it's a pain in the ass and it's like failed to deliver many, many times.”
Shadbolt: Quantum Founders Cannot Win by Mudslinging Rival Architectures
“In quantum computing, you get all of these founders, they all show up and they all think that their way is the only way to do it and sling mud at everybody else. Everything else is crap. Like, you can't win that game. Like, nobody wins in that game.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum secured $1B AUD Australian deal for Brisbane quantum computer
“Last year we announced these major deals with the Australian government. So that's about a billion dollar Australian deal for us to build a very large scale quantum computer in Brisbane.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum has raised more private capital than any quantum peer
“That's right to my knowledge, yeah.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum allocates zero resources toward small intermediate demo processors
“We've invested in the semiconductor manufacturing, in the networking, in the cooling, in all of the technology that we need to deliver a million qubit machine. And we haven't spent any of our resources On like taking a 20 qubit processor, sticking it online, l…”
Shadbolt: Jensen Huang's 15-to-30-year quantum timeline is likely accurate
“And I think he's probably right on average on that timeline.”
Shadbolt: Manhattan-sized classical supercomputers represent the limit of scaling
“I think a Manhattan-sized supercomputer is like, let's put it this way. It is likely the end of the road. Like, it seems difficult to me that you can indefinitely progress beyond Manhattan sized supercomputers.”
Shadbolt: Quantum computers will generate training data for standard GPU models
“With that, we should be able to generate extremely precise data in otherwise unexplored territory of chemical space of material space and use that data to drive to train a conventional machine learning system. I think through that kind of mechanism, we can Pro…”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum is one of two companies in DARPA's final quantum phase
“And they have just graduated to the final phase of our program. They're one of two companies to have reached that point.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum will not sell its physical quantum computer hardware systems
“Once that machine comes online, we're not going to sell it. Selling a, you know, a 100,000 square foot system is is dangerous and stupid is probably how I'd put it.”
Shadbolt: Claims of Quantum Machine Learning Acceleration Are Premature Hype
“Quantum machine learning is really nice to think about. It sounds awesome in like a press release. It's really early is how I put it. Like the development of the theory is not yet at a stage where you can confidently say quantum computing is going to be awesom…”
Shadbolt: GlobalFoundries is the last remaining US tier-one pure-play foundry
“GF is really the last remaining pure play semiconductor, like tier one semiconductor foundry in the United States. So we offshored huge fractions of our semiconductor industry, as far as like a high volume, 300 millimeter foundry that is making chips for indus…”
Shadbolt: Quantum codebreaking requires a larger system than commercial utility
“As far as we understand still, despite these new architectural results, algorithmic results, you still need a bigger computer to do code breaking than you do to tackle the commercially useful applications that we talked about earlier.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum alone produces its optical material on 300mm wafers
“We're the only people in the world who make that on a 300 millimeter wafer.”
Shadbolt: Reaching the end of Moore's Law will be painful next decade
“Like we're coming to the end of Moore's law. We cannot make smaller transistors. That's going to get really, really painful in the next decade.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum builds 35-layer superconducting wafers in commercial foundries
“So when I look at those wafers that you've seen in our facility, and I think about the fact that there's 35 layers of stuff on that wafer, that there's a superconducting material inside, and that it was made in a commercial foundry next to regular chips.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum is anchor tenant of $500M Chicago quantum campus
“And then also that we would be the anchor tenant Of a new five hundred million dollar quantum computing campus that's being built in Chicago.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum is collaborating with NVIDIA across multiple tracks
“We are actually working with NVIDIA on a whole bunch of different tracks.”
Shadbolt: NVIDIA is explicit about not building a quantum computer
“NVIDIA have been pretty explicit that they're not building a quantum computer, but they do see a whole bunch of opportunities to contribute to the ecosystem.”
Shadbolt: Most people will never directly interact with a quantum computer
“Quantum computing is the same, right? Like most people will never program a quantum computer. Most people will never directly interact with a quantum computer.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum uses South Bay site as the Foxconn of quantum computing
“And my shorthand on what that building is doing is that it's the Foxconn of quantum computing. So our whole approach is to leverage existing fabs and contract manufacturers and so on. But that building is doing the exceptions to that rule. So where we have to …”
PsiQuantum Spent Over $100M to Establish Manufacturing at GlobalFoundries
“We've spent over a hundred million dollars over the last eight years or so to establish that manufacturing process at GF.”
Shadbolt: The public never cares about supercomputers, only their output
“People have been building leadership class supercomputers for a very long time, and usually people don't care about them, and that's fine. Like nobody cared prior to GPT-III. Nobody cared that Azure and Microsoft and open AI were building big, ugly computers. …”
Shadbolt: BTO is the strongest electro-optic material known to science
“It's made with the strongest electro optic material known to science.”
Shadbolt: Hyperscaler leaders understand quantum computing requires 1M qubits
“I've actually been honestly pretty impressed that they know you need about a million qubits. They know you need error correction. They know that it's not for PowerPoint and Excel. They understand, you know, these guys have got 20 other things of extreme high p…”
Shadbolt: BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, and Temasek invested in PsiQuantum
“We've had, so BlackRock, Bailey Gifford, Tamasek are all involved in the rounds, and then we have a bunch of new investors also coming into the rounds. But a lot of familiar names from Silicon Valley, and then also some maybe slightly surprising late stage cro…”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum employs a 50-person team partnering with industrial companies
“So we have about a 50 person applications team who engage with car companies, materials companies, energy companies, et cetera to prepare them for the existence of that big machine.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum acquired 140,000-square-foot South Bay facility with clean room
“And so now we've moved to the South Bay. We've got 140,000 square foot of space in this new building. We've got 40,000 square feet of former class 10 clean room space.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum operates a hardware cabinet at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
“So we have some of our cabinet, one of our cabinets right now installed at Slack and up and running and supporting chips.”
Shadbolt: 80% of PsiQuantum's Supply Chain Is Based in the US
“Like 80% of our supply chain is in the United States. We have hundreds of companies in that supply chain here in the US.”
Shadbolt: 14 chip and optical companies sought PsiQuantum's breakthrough material
“When we published that paper in nature, I think it was something like 14 regular optical networking and semiconductor companies rang up global foundries asking how they could get access to that material because it is basically the strongest optical material kn…”