Arqit, a London based company, has launched a quantum cybersecurity platform called QuantumCloud. With this comes the planned creation of 2,000 high tech jobs. Since it was established in 2017, Arqit has received significant financial support from the UK Government through various grants and innovation programs.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the secretary of the State of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in the UK said “Building back better from the pandemic means harnessing the latest developments in science and technology, so we want the UK to be the world’s first quantum-ready economy given its potential to deliver new jobs, skills and knowledge across Britain.”
Arqit’s platform, QuantumCloud, uses transformational innovation in both quantum physics and crypto-mathematics. It has been developed over the course of four years of collaboration with the UK Government, BT and Virgin Orbit. It is designed to solve current and future threats to the security of internet communications.
Arqit announced that BT will be the exclusive reseller of its products in the UK and they will be sold as part of BT’s security solution product line.
The other private funding company, Virgin Orbit, which focuses on developments in aerospace technology, is part of Arqit’s future plans to launch two quantum satellites in 2023. These satellights will build on established QKD protocols to both create and transmit a backbone of secure keys to the data centres of Arqit’s customers all over the world. This would be a huge leap forward from the current situation where the symmetric keys used in data encryption are created terrestrially.
To raise funds for these groundbreaking plans Arqit will be listing in New York, through a merger with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company which values it at £1 billion. The deal will raise the $400 million needed for Arqit to build and launch the two satellites.
Arqit’s CEO, David Williams, commented that “After four years of innovation in stealth mode by a world-leading multi-disciplinary team of scientists and engineers, we are ready to go to market. This technology is important and we need to take it to hyperscale as quickly as possible, because the problems we solve are problems for everyone.”
Howard Watson, Chief Technology Officer of BT, said: “BT has been undertaking pioneering research in quantum security for many years, including working with Arqit on the research and concepts behind their technology”
Source: BusinessCloud
