BEIJING: A company spokesperson said on Wednesday ( Jan 3 ) that Baidu of China intends to donate a quantum computing laboratory and equipment to the government-backed Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences ( BAQIS ).
The director added that both parties are now working out the specifics.
Following Alibaba’s announcement in November that it would close its quantum computing test and research team within its research arm as part of a larger company restructuring, Baidu donated the lab as well as related empirical tools to Zhejiang University.
In 2018, Baidu opened its center for quantum technology analysis under the direction of Duan Runyao, who earned both his bachelor’s and doctoral degree from Tsinghua University. The development of Qian Shi, a quantum machine released in 2022, is one of the study center’s achievement.
Top academic institutions, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University, contributed to the BAQIS’s founding in December 2017 at the action of the Beijing municipal government.
In the past, Baidu and BAQIS had worked together on classical studies. The two companies launched the second intellectual property empire in China’s quantum computing industry next March.