QUDORA Technologies will spearhead a seven-member consortium tasked with building a trapped-ion quantum computer boasting at least 1,000 physical qubits and 50 logical qubits. The NFQC-1k project carries a budget near €122 million and stands as a cornerstone of Germany’s push to field two fault-tolerant quantum machines by 2030.
The initiative falls under the Quantum Computing Competition, a linchpin of the federal government’s High-Tech Agenda Deutschland. Quantum technologies rank second among six priority areas there, underscoring Berlin’s conviction that computational superiority will decide future industrial competitiveness.
Research Minister Dorothee Bär framed the stakes bluntly: quantum computers could accelerate drug discovery, optimize traffic systems, and supercharge AI through novel machine learning techniques. Germany’s sovereignty, she argued, hinges on leading rather than following in this race. The funding program targets three hardware platforms: neutral atoms, superconducting circuits, and trapped ions. NFQC-1k represents the trapped-ion track.
The consortium blends academic depth with industrial muscle. QUDORA leads system development and integration. Partners include TU Braunschweig, Leibniz University Hannover, PTB (Germany’s national metrology institute), NXP Semiconductors Germany, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and AQT Germany, the German arm of Alpine Quantum Technologies. Together they aim to construct a pilot line for high-performance ion-trap quantum processors.
The technical bar is steep. The demonstrator must control at least 1,000 individually addressable physical qubits and maintain 50 logical qubits with a logical gate error rate below 0.01%. Verification will come through a Quantum Fourier Transform, a foundational algorithm component.
“Fault tolerance is not a milestone achieved by improving a single qubit,” said QUDORA CEO Amado Bautista-Salvador. “What truly matters is building an architecture in which thousands of resilient qubits can be controlled, and operated reliably, without the system falling apart as it scales.”
COO Henning Hahn added that the selection reflects government confidence in QUDORA’s NFQC technology and the expertise concentrated in Quantum Valley Lower Saxony.
Funding spans up to five years under BMFTR’s Quantum Systems research program. With the outline phase complete, the partners now prepare a full application before moving into concrete implementation.
