Israel allocates $60 million to build first quantum computer

Israel is investing 1.25 billion NIS in a national initiative to build up quantum proficiency, and this project in particular is part of that initiative.

Computer code and an Israeli flag (photo credit: JPOST STAFF)
Computer code and an Israeli flag
(photo credit: JPOST STAFF)
Israel is joining the global race in producing some of the world's most advanced technologies, as the nation is looking to build its very first quantum computer, according to a report by Bloomberg
To fund the project, the Innovation Authority and the Defense Ministry are taking bids from multinational companies, Israeli businesses and universities for a 198 million NIS ($60 million) project to build the computer, said Aviv Zeevi, Vice President at the Authority’s Technological Infrastructure Division.
“We want to be in the game,” Zeevi told Bloomberg. “We need to be at least at a reasonable level to be able to develop” hardware and software associated with quantum computers.
Israel is investing 1.25 billion NIS in a national initiative to build up quantum proficiency, and this project in particular is part of that initiative.
Dr. Itamar Sivan, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Machines told the agency: "If you would have asked an AI/ML expert 15 years ago what industry artificial intelligence and machine learning were going to have the greatest impact on, they would have given their best guess, but today we know that the question is unfair.
In layman’s terms, computer scientists and other scientists are taking quantum mechanics, which the superhero Avengers famously used in the movie End Game to travel through time, in order to create a super computer that will make today’s fastest computers look like a typewriter.
Except that quantum computing is real and just around the corner.
The implications could be no less than to remake who are the world’s military, economic and technological powers and redefine industries as diverse as communications, health, finance and energy. And there is a race between the US and China, with others like Russia, the EU, Canada and more recently Israel, all hoping to achieve dominance (or in Israel’s case, at least a respectable place at the table) – much like the space race.