00:00Up next, Willink, a French startup from Paris, born of Sorbonne University and CNRS.
00:08They built a connection between quantum computers, the equivalent of Cisco for quantum, world-leading quantum technologies.
00:19Already selling their first commercial units across Europe, building tomorrow data center.
00:27Please welcome Tom Daras, co-founder and CEO of Willink.
00:41Good morning, everyone. It's a real pleasure for me to be here today.
00:45My name is Tom Daras. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Willink.
00:49And today, it's a real pleasure for me to present to you how Willink is building tomorrow's quantum data centers,
00:56current data centers which are going to be supercharged by quantum computing to solve problems which are much beyond the
01:03reach of conventional computing.
01:05A few words about our company, Willink, first.
01:14If they allow me.
01:21Well, good.
01:23Yeah, so Willink, we are a French startup based in Paris.
01:26We incorporated four years ago.
01:29And at Willink, what we are doing is that we are not developing quantum computers.
01:33What we do at Willink is that we develop and provide the technology that connects quantum computers together,
01:40which is called quantum networks.
01:42It's a company we founded four years ago after more than 20 years of research, leading quantum networking and pioneering
01:49the field.
01:50And in 2023, we raised our first investment to kick off our activities.
01:55And with that, we've delivered beyond expectation because we have now put different products on the market and we are
02:02currently generating revenue.
02:03And now building up on this achievement, we are the first company in the world which is building tomorrow's data
02:10centers in which we are going to take several quantum computers developed by different quantum computing manufacturers.
02:16And we are going to deploy very powerful clusters of such quantum computers in tomorrow's infrastructure.
02:23So as I have mentioned, we are currently in a phase, as you know, where data centers are completely revolutionized
02:30as a computing industry.
02:31They are, of course, very important infrastructure, which are the basis of today's AI revolution.
02:37But if we want this data center to follow the demand in computing power, this infrastructure needs to welcome new
02:45technologies.
02:46And the next technologies that this data center are now incorporating are quantum computers.
02:52And here, of course, it's not just Willink's idea to deploy quantum computers within data centers.
02:58It's now a broad market consensus.
03:00And even tech giants like NVIDIA are now very actively working on the deployment of such quantum computers.
03:07And quantum computers are now a reality.
03:10It's not anymore a lab experiment.
03:11We have more than 120 quantum computers which have been sold and deployed all around the world.
03:18But the thing is, no matter the type of technology you are considering,
03:22if you want this machine to outperform what we can do with conventional computing, they need to work in clusters.
03:28We need to go beyond the current stage where we have standalone machines and be able to deploy them all
03:33together to drastically increase their computational power.
03:37And that's exactly what we are doing at Willink.
03:40So this is the image of the data center of tomorrow powered by Willink.
03:44What we see at the front of this picture in the various boxes are different quantum computers.
03:50These quantum computers can be based on different qubit modalities.
03:53And the network which is in the center and connects the quantum computer allows to create a very powerful quantum
04:00computing resource within the data centers.
04:03And also very importantly, it allows infrastructure to be flexible and to send the use cases that we want to
04:10solve to the relevant machines we have access in this infrastructure.
04:15And beyond deploying such clusters of quantum computers, what we are also ensuring is that Willink solutions are compatible with
04:22conventional infrastructure.
04:24And what we see at the back of this image here are conventional computers, CPUs and GPUs, that continue their
04:30work.
04:30So we designed Willink networking solutions to ensure that they can enable hybrid classical quantum computing in this infrastructure.
04:38So now how does that work and how Willink is leading the way in quantum networking?
04:44Well, let's have a look and open the box of this quantum network.
04:48This is another representation of what we are doing at Willink.
04:52Here you can see on the edges of the picture we have different quantum computers which come from different leading
04:58quantum technologies.
04:59We have atoms and ions, for example, atoms are developed by Pascal in front, superconductors, photonic quantum computers,
05:07or either quantum computers based on silicon qubit.
05:10Well, at Willink, we are developing a multi-platform solution to interconnect all together these clusters of quantum computers
05:16and create homogeneous but also heterogeneous architectures.
05:20And we have also a full-stack approach in the sense that, of course, we provide the solution to make
05:25the end-to-end connection between the devices,
05:27but we also provide all the software stacks that allows to make this cluster operational along conventional computing,
05:35but also, very importantly, that answers the question,
05:38how do you run a big quantum algorithm on such clusters of quantum computers?
05:43So we have developed our own software solution about that.
05:46And just to tease you, we are going to make an announcement with NVIDIA about our software stack at ESC
05:52next week.
05:54But now I don't want to go too much into the science and the technology,
05:57but I just want to give you a look at the technologies that we are building at Willink
06:02and the current stage of development of this technology.
06:04One amazing technology that we have developed at Willink, which is represented in this box,
06:09is what we call an entangled photon pair source.
06:12So what is entanglement?
06:13Entanglement is really the quantum resource that we need to be able to generate and share between quantum computers.
06:20This is this quantum resource that will allow all this quantum computer to work all together as unity
06:27and to increase the computational power.
06:30And this technology, it has been developed for more than 20 years of academic research in leading laboratories in France.
06:36And at Willink, in less than three years, we have turned this technology into a real product
06:41that we have already commercialized and deployed in Europe.
06:45But we are not limiting on this amazing entanglement generation technology.
06:50One of the moonshot technologies that we have developed at Willink is called a quantum memory.
06:55Again, very briefly, a quantum memory is a device that allows you to buffer entanglement in a network.
07:01Without this quantum memory, you cannot scale your infrastructure,
07:05you cannot connect quantum computer efficiently,
07:08and so you cannot scale quantum computing beyond today's promises.
07:12And at Willink, we have developed the world's most performant quantum memory,
07:17typically five times more performant than our competitors in the U.S. or in China.
07:23And then again, in less than two years of development,
07:26we have transitioned this technology into a fully-fledged product,
07:30which again is already sold and deployed in Europe.
07:34So this gives you a snapshot of the technologies that we are building at Willink to make this quantum networking.
07:40But of course, now that we have the quantum network operational,
07:43we need to plug it to quantum computers.
07:45And to do that, we are working with a variety of partners across the quantum industry.
07:50And one initiative that I want to mention is the collaboration that Willink has again with Pascal,
07:56Pascal which is a leading quantum computing manufacturer based on neutral atom technology,
08:02based in France.
08:03And we have a partnership together where Willink is building for Pascal
08:08the networking solution that will allow them to scale their architecture
08:12and deploy clusters of quantum computers all together.
08:16So, as you understand, we build a network.
08:19We work with quantum computing manufacturers to accelerate their roadmap development,
08:23but also the commercialization of this technology.
08:26But of course, we need also to work with data centers,
08:29because we need now to make sure that these technologies,
08:32the quantum computers, the quantum networks,
08:34are deployed in real computing environment for them to deliver their promises.
08:40And on that front, we at Willink are leading and sharing this vision
08:45where we are currently building in Paris, in France,
08:49the first quantum augmented data centers,
08:52where we are working with QPU manufacturers, such as the one I mentioned,
08:56to connect locally their quantum computers in their data centers.
08:59But also, we make sure that we connect the infrastructure at a metropolitan scale
09:04to make sure that customers and users of the infrastructure
09:07can have remote and secure access to these quantum computers.
09:11So, this is an extremely powerful and secure quantum infrastructure
09:15that Willink is building.
09:16We are starting today in France, scaling in Europe, and all around the world.
09:21But very importantly, as I mentioned,
09:23we need to work hand-to-hand with data centers and cloud providers
09:27to deploy the technology.
09:29And to do that, we have announced earlier this week
09:31a partnership between OVH Cloud and Willink OVH Cloud,
09:36one of the leading cloud providers in Europe,
09:38to accelerate the deployment of Willink networking technology
09:42in their infrastructure.
09:43And we are very delighted to work with OVH Cloud,
09:46which is one of the first cloud providers
09:48to accelerate on the deployment of the technology.
09:52Well, that's pretty much give you another view
09:54of what we are doing at Willink.
09:56So, with our team, we are present here at Vivatech
09:59for the full week at the booth of OVH Cloud.
10:02So, feel free to join us if you are interested in quantum computing,
10:05if you are a quantum computer that's seeking to increase
10:08its computational power, or more importantly,
10:11if you are a data center or an end user
10:13who want to accelerate the adoption of quantum technology,
10:16feel free to come and talk to our team.
10:18Thank you very much.
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