Microsoft has announced a strategic co-innovation collaboration with Photonic Inc. to build scalable, fault-tolerant, and distributed quantum technologies. The two companies aim to unlock the next stages in quantum networking and empower the quantum computing ecosystem with new capabilities enabled by their unique and complementary approaches to scalable quantum infrastructure. Photonic's novel spin-photon architecture natively supports quantum communication over standard telecom wavelengths, and when combined with the global scale and state-of-the-art infrastructure of Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing service, the two companies will work together to integrate quantum networking capabilities into everyday operating environments.

The collaboration will address three stages of quantum networking: entanglement distribution over long distances, a quantum repeater that can capture, entangle, and hold quantum information reliably for a short time, and a reliable quantum repeater that is fault-tolerant and operational with Azure cloud. The companies plan to integrate Photonic's unique quantum hardware into Azure Quantum Elements offering as it becomes available, empowering scientists with the best available offerings in the ecosystem.

Why does this matter?

The collaboration aims to unlock the next stages in quantum networking and empower the quantum computing ecosystem with new capabilities enabled by their unique and complementary approaches to scalable quantum infrastructure. Furthermore, they promise to usher in a new era of quantum networking and accelerate innovation across the quantum computing ecosystem.