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Comment by mapmeld | Hacker News Reader

IBM, D-Wave, and others have press releases about consulting and R&D partnerships. For example, Volkswagen: https://www.vw.com/en/newsroom/future-of-mobility/quantum-co...

TBH it doesn't seem practical - I don't know if this was to boost VW's image or to retain researchers and management (consider how much Facebook gave David Marcus to think about Libra for a couple years). But if you're the quantum hardware provider / SaaS then you'll take the call.

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I don't know, D-Wave looks like a special case, because they use quantum annihilation, which for me seems actually quite useful. I think (I am an outsider here) the newest papers from D-Wave show an advantage, but this is doubted. Nevertheless a lot of companies might want to be familiar with the new tech, to use it the moment D-Wave has a more powerful machine. For me, it looks like I could actually use quantum annihilation for solving some logistics problems, I guess Volkswagen seem to take the same guess.

I believe it's quantum annealing. Not a physicist but my understanding was it can be used for some problems but not universal quantum computing.

Yes, sorry, quantum annealing. Exactly, not universal, but I think quite useful, if really faster. I really can't judge if this is reality or not.

Maybe it’s just a German Big Company thing? Deutsche Bahn also likes to spend money on insane “innovation” gimmics which have no path towards success.

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