In August 2018, the Australian government announced AUD 29 million in equity investment for Silicon Quantum Computing Pty Ltd (SQC), a company established in 2017 to develop a silicon-based quantum computer. The investment was made through the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and supplemented earlier commitments from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and the state government of New South Wales.
The federal investment brought SQC’s total funding to approximately AUD 83 million. SQC was founded to commercialize research conducted at the UNSW Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T), led by Professor Michelle Simmons, who in 2018 was named Australian of the Year. The company’s approach is based on the precise placement of individual phosphorus atoms in silicon to create qubits.
According to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, the government’s investment aimed to support SQC’s goal of producing a ten-qubit prototype quantum integrated circuit in silicon by 2022. The investment represented one of the largest single quantum technology commitments by the Australian federal government at the time and reflected a strategy of building on Australia’s established strengths in silicon-based quantum research.