Fund targets new technology

SoftBank Group’s $100bn Vision Fund is scouting for possible investments in quantum computing, an experimental science being researched by companies such as Google and IBM to succeed current computer processor technology.

SoftBank Group’s $100bn Vision Fund is scouting for possible investments in quantum computing, an experimental science being researched by companies such as Google and IBM to succeed current computer processor technology.

Shu Nyatta, who helps invest money for the fund, said the group wanted to back a company whose quantum computing hardware or software would become the “de facto industry standard”.

“We are happy to invest enough to create that standard around which the whole industry can coalesce,” Nyatta said.

The fund, which has attracted investment from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Apple and other large institutional backers, is investing in technologies from virtual reality to the internet of things.

QUANTUM SCIENCE

It recently invested $500m for a minority stake in Improbable, a London-based simulation and virtual reality software start-up that has few customers.

Researchers have made strides in building functioning quantum computers based around a number of different designs and approaches.

IBM, Google and Rigetti Computing, a San Franciscobased quantum computing start-up, have created working machines around one method, while IonQ, a spin-out from the University of Maryland and Duke University, is working on technologies based on another.

Microsoft is backing a third architecture, but has yet to create a working machine.

D-Wave, a Canadian company, is the only firm to sell quantum computers today.

Its system is based around yet another architecture, but its machine can solve only a limited set of problems compared with those Google, IBM and the others have been working on.