Why quantum has been "10 years away" for 30 years | E2316

This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal Open https://paypalopen.com DigitalOcean https://do.co/twist Rippling https://Rippling.ai/twist Today's show: *For three decades now, we've been told that breakthroughs in quantum computing are right around the corner. So why hasn't anything materialized? On TWiST in Tokyo, Jason sits down with Yaqumo CEO Kazuhiro Nakashoji and discusses what needed to change (like better algorithms and hardware), and why we may finally be nearing quantum's big moment. Find out why quantum machines are so error-prone, explore the unusual international quantum supply chain, and get a heads-up about the cryptography reckoning coming for your Bitcoin. Guest Kazuhiro Nakashoji on X: https://x.com/KNakashoji Yaqumo Inc.: https://yaqumo.com/en/ Relevant Links JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization): https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/ Institute for Molecular Science: https://www.ims.ac.jp/en/ Quantum Insider: Yaqumo Quantum Photonics Agreement: https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/06/04/yaqumo-nkt-photonics-and-hamamatsu-photonics-sign-quantum-photonics-agreement/ Quantonation investment announcement: https://quantumcomputingreport.com/quantonation-selects-neutral-atom-hardware-developer-yaqumo-for-first-japanese-investment/ NIST: What is Post-Quantum Cryptography? https://www.nist.gov/cybersecurity-and-privacy/what-post-quantum-cryptography Timestamps: 0:00 Intro / Founder University Tokyo 2:20 Guest intro: Kazu of Yakumo 3:20 What is a qubit? 8:34 Why quantum computers are so fragile 8:45 PayPal - Built for payments, growth, and agentic. Paypal Open, built for all business. Visit https://paypalopen.com to get started 13:36 Spinning IP out of the university lab 18:42 DigitalOcean - Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%. 28:01 Building the "Toyota of Quantum" 29:38 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 31:25 AI for quantum, and quantum for AI 38:35 Harvest Now, Decrypt Later 41:41 Q&A: Yaqumo's business model 43:22 Q&A: Yaqumo's business model Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

• 0:00Speaker 00

  All right, everybody. Welcome back. It's This Week in Startups from Tokyo.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Yes, we're at Founder University back in Tokyo. I go twice a year. I go in the summer. It's 96 degrees and 100% humidity. It's the exact opposite of what happens in January when I come here to do Founder University and ski for a week. But I love coming to Japan. If you're a founder or an investor and you're in the This Week in Startups or the Launch or Syndicate Family, you can join us for Angel University. You can apply for that. We do that twice a year here in Tokyo. If you're a founder, you can apply for founder.university website. You'll see Japan, you'll see Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and then you'll see the US edition.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  You can come to any of those editions. You can apply. It's a bit competitive to get in. We like to look for teams of two or three founders. For Founder University, you don't even have to be incorporated yet, but you should have a project, a product in market, maybe one customer, a pilot. And then for our Launch Accelerator, you need to have a couple of customers, and that's where we invest in companies. And finally, we have the syndicate.com where if you're an angel investor, you can join. And twice a month or so, we share one of the deals we're investing in it with you. And as an angel investor, you can put as little as $5,000 or $10,000 into a deal, well below the cap or the minimum that most founders charge.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  So, you know, join us for any of those programs and make sure you subscribe to This Week in Startups as well on your podcast player. When I'm in Japan, my team looks for the most successful, the most inspiring founders for me to meet while I'm here. And we're very lucky today. We have Kazu Nakashogi. Nakashogi?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  Oh, I got it.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  This Week in Startups is brought to you by Rippling. Don't settle for AI. That's all talk. Head to rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot AI slash twist. Sign up for exclusive access today. Digital Ocean. Want to see what building on a true AI-native platform looks like? Head to do.co/twist to start building on Digital Ocean's AI-native cloud today and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%. And PayPal. Built for payments, growth, and agentic. PayPal Open. Built for all business. Visit paypalopen.com to get started.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  And you're with a company, Yakuuma.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yakuuma.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  Yakuuma, which is spelt Y-A-Q-U-M-A. And you're building quantum computers.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Hardware.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Yes, hardware. And hardware is hard.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Hard, yeah, of course.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Hardware is very hard. Quantum computing has been five to 10 years away for the past 30 years. Why is it taking so long?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  That's a really good question. More self difficulty part is coming from hardware itself. Yes, so we try to generate very special carriker units, QPU, quantum processing units.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Quantum processing units.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why you call it QPU instead of CPU.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Right. But it's really hard to create those kind of things as a hardware. And we have to make it a bunch of number of QPU to do very useful calculation.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  And from my understanding of qubits, this is instead of one or zero.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  You get to have one, zero, or neither, one or zero.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  At the same time.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  At the same time.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yes, super positions.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  So you could have each of those positions simultaneously.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Technically, yes.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Technically, yes. So explain to, you know, founders in technology who use GPUs and CPUs all day long. Why is this the white whale? Why is this the holy grail of computing? Why is this the next paradigm? Why is it so powerful?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. So first of all, I think there is some big misconception about quantum computer.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Once we use quantum computers, maybe people believe that, oh, maybe we can do more nice, very fast calculation compared to CPU or GPU. But this is first of all, it's not correct. Yes, we can apply quantum computer for particular questions or problems. For example, combinations over like RSA, cryptor.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Those kind of difficult question, we can only, we can apply those kind of problems to quantum computer or quantum calculations.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  And we saw Google and Microsoft and some other quantum computer companies went public over the last maybe two or three years.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Lots of excitement.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  And we had the same wave of excitement five or 10 years ago, but it seems like it's getting closer and closer to having an application in the real world. When will we see a company, a startup, that uses a quantum computer to solve a problem in the world? As opposed to all these companies spending billions of dollars trying to get a quantum computer to work?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  So when do they have enough power and enough software and maybe the compilers and the tools have to be built as well, I understand, to actually make it accessible to founders at Startup University?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Or startups at Founder University?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. So that is really, really important question.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  So there's two way to understand these circumstances or at the same time. So first of all, if you're looking at question or some kind of programs that quantum computer going to solve. In the past, for example, five years ago, people believing that we need 1 million qubit, QPU, to solve some certain problems. But recently, that number is drastically decreased.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, close to, for example, 10,000 qubit.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Just one percent of what we expected 10 years ago, for example. Since we updated some softwares, algorithms, or some other like schemes, for example. Besides, in terms of the hardware, looking back, for example, 10 years ago, we only have maybe one to 10 qubit.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Wow, it's super tiny.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Super tiny, but recently.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  It's less than like a punch card from an old computer.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. But recently, for example, one of the United States university demonstrated 6,000 physical qubit.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  It's amazing. So what I mean is like the number we need for doing actual calculation is decreasing. The number of the physical qubit is close to that numbers. So we believe that we reach to like two of them meet each others close to 2,030, for example, in next four to five years.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Got it. So we'll be sitting here in five years and there'll be companies who have quantum computers in their data center using them?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Of course, we can imagine that. And some of the quantum computer already installed into data center already.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  For example, in Japan, Tokyo Soba. Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  There's one there.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Got it. And it's being used for what? Just doing simple math calculations now and just trying to make it work? Because my other understanding is it's not consistent yet. It has, it's maybe fragile or brittle?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  So why is it fragile or brittle?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you very much for question. So once we do quantum calculations, they made a lot of error.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  For example, every thousand times, every hundred times, they make error.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a problem.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  It's a problem, right?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  And this is big problem. So we have to correct this error. So call we call it quantum error corrections.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Quantum error corrections.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we call it QEC. And by doing so, we have to protect the information that qubit has. So by doing so, we can create very scalable, very robust quantum computer. So this is recent approach the human being tried to take.

• 8:45Speaker 00

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• 9:31Speaker 00

  And we had these in the early days of computers. The hard drive or a floppy disk, the memory tape or the memory in the computer would go bad. Or it would, you know, have to be rebooted and you'd have to clear all the memory out and start over.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  And you maybe sometimes I'll have somebody who's having a problem with their laptop. And they say, when's the last time you rebooted? And they're like, I've never rebooted my computer. I've had it for a year.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  And I say, oh, I'm from the 1980s. In the 1980s, you would reboot your computer every two hours.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  To make sure you didn't have memory leaks or problems and the hard drive was working okay. Cause you wanted the software to, the operating system to be fresh and it would run faster. And then by the end of the day, your computer will be sluggish, memory leaks. And you have to unload one program to run the other. It reminds me of what you're going through right now.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. That's yeah, definitely right. So probably what we expected or experienced like 60 or 50 years ago.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  For classical computer.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  We experienced in the quantum computer this moment.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Now you're doing something different at Yakuma.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  With the chemicals or the material science, yeah?

• 10:48Speaker 01

  So you're talking about application or hardware?

• 10:50Speaker 00

  No, the hardware itself is slightly different.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Or it's advanced and they're using different materials now, I understand.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you very much for asking that. So I think there's a couple of methodologies to do quantum calculations. For example, if you're looking back the history of classical computers. Let's say if you're using this kind of CPU.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  This is like most of the CPUs created by silicon, right? But maybe 60 or 50 years ago, I don't know. We tried to use vacuum chamber.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  To do calculation, isn't it? For classical computers. Same. So at this moment, quantum computer market tried to test which kind of QPU is the best for quantum calculations.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  The quantum processing unit.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  As a QPU, exactly. So for example, Google or IBM.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  This kind of large amazing company tried to create QPU by using superconducting qubit.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Superconducting qubit.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why they have to put those kind of chips into huge refrigerator to make it super, super chill.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  It has to be super chill.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  And some people are trying to use ions which have a charge like plasma.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Like plasma.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, yeah. They have charge and we use atoms.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Neutral atoms. We don't have any charge. We tried to configure or tried to create array of the atoms in the vacuum chamber. To use one atom, another atom as a qubit.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And some people tried to use photons or semiconductors to do quantum verification at the same time. But there's so many very severe, like, you know, competitive landscape happens in this moment.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  So let's talk about, this is your first startup, company building.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  We have some hardware startups here. Hardware is hard.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Latations.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  You've picked the hardest of the hardware because you have a, you know, five year window to commercialization maybe.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  And you came out of a university.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  And your company is based in Kyoto.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  So you get to have a beautiful life, a beautiful city.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  And all that talent from Kyoto University, yeah?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Oh, some of them, yes.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you came out of the university. Explain to us how technology in a university, how they do the IP transfer into a commercial organization? Not just at Kyoto, not just your company, but just generally how that happens. Cause some venture capitalists and Stanford does this and some venture capitalists specialize. Or investors specialize in going to universities and saying, what are the students working on? What are the professors working on? Is there anything we can spin out? I think they will generally say a spin out, yeah?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Or is there a term for taking IP out of the university? Like a technical term or a term of art? Do you know one?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Probably, I'm not super familiar with the situation in the United States.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  But compared to overseas, Japan or Japanese university have not so much experiences to use IP as a startup, as a spin out.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  So it's, it's pretty new here.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  I would say, so normally we call it deep tech startups.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  Deep tech startups, sure.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Japan, which is using the IP coming out from university.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  And at this moment, there's not very solid methodology. How to use IP from university to startup. Some people choose stock options.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Pay for university.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Ah, so the university can get some equity.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Or in the United States, sometimes we hear about a royalty for some number of years. And yeah, this is, or maybe even a cash payment. I guess people could pay to take it out, but.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  The university wants, the university's motivation is to recoup some money that they invested, yeah? In the research. So you were there for some number of years. They spent some money on you and maybe gave you some resources. And then also maybe they could make a profit, some kind of profit. That then helps the university invest in the next set of.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Free investment, yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it becomes evergreen, yeah?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And this is a negotiation that occurs?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Between the university and the founder, yourself?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. Tough negotiation to be honest.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  Oh, is it tough negotiation?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's not easy, yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, so they want to make sure they get a good deal and you have to get a good deal. Or you can just leave and not take the IP.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's a, let's talk a little bit about how you've raised over 10 million, I think, for the company. You got some grants, you have some venture capital, you've done a seed round. How do you think about runway? Most companies here, if they're building software or maybe consumer hardware. They can think about 12 months of runway, 18 months of runway. Maybe getting to their first dollar of revenue in six months, three months, nine months, depending on the company type. How do you think about runway and when you have to make money? And how you keep pushing the team to get to revenue? Even though it might take you years to commercialize.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. So that's pretty subject to the type of the startup, of course. Hardware startup, software startup. But for our case, we expected, for example, 18 months runway after we. We just completed our seed extension round.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  Oh, congratulations.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Just last month, we have been invested by Online Ventures from the United States.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  Which one?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Online Ventures.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Oh, great.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was, to be honest, that was their first investment to Japan.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. How did you meet an American VC and convince them to invest in a company in Japan? Tell us the story.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. So we spread the round into two pieces. Seed round and seed extension round. So seed round, this company is being now from Kyoto University. So that's why you have been invested by Kyoto ICAP. It's sort of CVC company from Kyoto University. And they have a bunch of network in the EU or United States. So they nicely connected me to Online Ventures. And yeah, and.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Oh, so they, there was a group that was able to put you in touch with them and that?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  Venture firm had shown interest already?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  Or they cold called them?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, they, they have like soft connection.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Online Ventures. And they kindly connected to me to the Online Ventures.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Are you a Japanese company or do you file as like an American company or both? For the venture capitalists in America to invest? Usually they have to be a Delaware company or something.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're based in Japan.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Based in Japan?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Based in Japan. There's no launching overseas.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  So you don't have, you don't have a corporate entity in the United States?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Or you do?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  No, okay. So you have to be here. So was that, that wasn't a blocker for the venture firm? They figured out how to do it?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't think so. It's, it's, it's cannot be a super, super big deal.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Ah, got it.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess. And we also have like investment from the VC named Coin Nation. As you can see from the name of this VC, this is a top VC for corner computer hardware from all over. So they're coming from France. That was their first investment to Japan at the same time.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Got it. And did the venture capitalists come visit you for the board meetings? And they get to come to Japan a couple of times a year?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. It's like we talk online basis.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Online basis, but I've been.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  See, that's the opposite of me. When Jetro and Japan said, we want to do Founder University with you. I said, oh, I get to come to Japan twice a year?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  That's why.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  I'll do it. That's why I'm doing it also to meet great founders. But I was coming anyway for skiing in January, so. Every time we see a revolution in how software is built and used. One company ends up owning the infrastructure that everyone else depends on. The next great platform is being built right now. That company is Digital Ocean and they just launched their AI native cloud. This is not just another place to rent GPUs or a hyperscaler overwhelming you with features and services. But leaving you on your own to patch it all together. No, we're talking about a full stack platform that comes pre-assembled. And that sends you just one bill at the end of the month. Workato runs a trillion automated workloads on Digital Ocean.

• 19:15Speaker 00

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• 19:43Speaker 01

  You went to Niseko for example?

• 19:44Speaker 00

  Uh, go to Niseko.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  I like to go cat skiing.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  You know, the tractor that goes up the mountain?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  So there's an abandoned ski resort. I won't say the name anymore because when I say the name on the podcast, they sell out all the seats.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Okay, got it.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  And then people get disappointed, but there's an abandoned ski resort.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Really?

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Maybe 40.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  In Japan?

• 20:05Speaker 00

  There's many.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Wow.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  There used to be 1,000 ski resorts. Now there's maybe three or 400 active ones.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Because there was many more children and a bigger population. And so it's come down a little bit. So a lot of those small resorts and people moved to the city. So in those local resorts, some of them shut down.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  So an American fell in love with this resort.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Outside of Niseko. It's a good story. And he asked them every year, can I have this resort?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Why don't you make businesses there?

• 20:36Speaker 00

  I might need to. And he said, he said it took him four years. Every year he went to the city council, to the elders and said, hey, I would like to do this. They said, oh, tell us your plan. And they said, okay, yeah, maybe next season. And then he came back. I'd like to do this. I'd like to. And when I went to see the ski resort. Half of the lifts were

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Uh, broken down.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  The cables were down, the ski lifts were down. And he cleaned it up and he left one run, perfect. And all the local people get to have a ski ticket for maybe fifty dollars for the season. If they live there. And they ski that one run. And then they make very good katsu curry and nice ramen. And then they have two cats with eight seats in each. So sixteen people come from around the world.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  And they drive you up the other eight runs.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  So one run for the locals, the other runs are broken down. They drive you up, it takes fifteen minutes to go up.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  And then it takes ten minutes to go down.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  And you do eight runs in one day.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  One thousand dollars a day. Hundred dollars a run, maybe.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  But it's worth it.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  I

• 21:48Speaker 00

  Cause every run

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  is fresh powder, J pow, Japanese powder. J pow.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Is it so? Oh, nori.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Beautiful.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  Do you ski or snowboard or neither?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I know, I was born in Bangkok, I was raised up in Malaysia, so maybe I'm not super, super from Europe, still kind of.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. Anyway, it's a dream. And then unfortunately, years ago, I talked about it on the podcast. And then other people talked about it on social media. And just like Tokyo, all the great restaurants have too many Americans coming to take pictures. And if you really like the ramen at this place, somebody puts it on TikTok and then no locals get to go anymore. So now some of the locals are not putting them, they don't put in a English name on the restaurant.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Just for

• 22:35Speaker 00

  And they hide the address more. So only locals.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  And some of them have signs now, only local. But in Japan, uh, in Niseko, uh, there's now at Niseko, the actual resort is too many.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  I see.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Too crowded.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  So I go with the other ones.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, Japan more than me, I guess.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. So talk about this, um, hiring of talent here. And the work expectation, um, and then building a company and building talent and culture in Kyoto. Where it's very beautiful.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  But maybe do people work hard? And do they want to be in the office for ten, twelve hours a day, grinding? How do you build a culture here in Japan and even in, you know, uh, Kyoto?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that is really, really important question as a startup. At this moment, the size of the company is close to seventy.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Seven zero.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Seven zero.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  We just launched this company, um, fifteen months ago.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  So two thousand twenty-five April. And most of them are tech side, I mean, engineers, scientists, or we also hire mathematicians. Who's like, you know, uh, very capable.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  So one to two hires per week?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, sort of, yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that's the biggest job for me, to be honest, hiring the people.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Got it. And how many of the seventy are Japanese or recruited to come to Japan?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think there's, um, close to fifty, five zero tech people. And I guess twenty to thirty percent of them is non-Japanese.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Non-Japanese.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Non-Japanese.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And interesting point is that there's three divisions under the CTO, who is managing, of course, tech side. Uh, two of them. To head of three divisions, uh, non-Japanese.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so one of them is coming from Sydney.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  From Sydney?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Oh, beautiful.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he's very talented. Uh, I really want to work with him. I've been to Sydney, I need good excuses to been to that beautiful city.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Sydney is one of my favorite cities.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so beautiful.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  So beautiful.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  And the other, uh, another guy is coming from Turkey.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  In Turkey?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Turkey, yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  So it's a very international organization.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  I would say.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  What's the selling pitch to say, leave Turkey, leave Sydney, beautiful city? And come live in Kyoto, another beautiful city, but this is a culture change for them, yeah?

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we do see that's fit, let's look.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Rock, paper, scissors, yes, no, no.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Anyway, it's, it's just joking, but, um, I think, um, Kyoto have a very great advantages. Um, in terms of the beauty of the city.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Very chill. And we had a spin out from Kyoto University. And Kyoto University have a very profound research background, the history. Uh, we, we use neutrons.

• 25:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  But one of the professors, uh, coming from Kyoto University, his name is Yoshio Takashi. He study neutrons, uh, for example, itorium, YB, that's one of the species in neutrons, by the way. He studies that species more than thirty years.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  And he, uh, discovered, um, I get say sixty to seventy percent of the fundamental scientific.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Study of the itorium.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  Credit.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that professor is very famous. And at the same time, an interesting point, a selling point about this company is that, uh, I, we try to integrate two entities, research output. One is Kyoto University, one is coming from IMS. IMS stands for institutional, institutional market science in the IT profession. Uh, whose name is Kenji Omori, he's the head of that institute. And two professor, two top, try to create independent startup, similar startup. But if you're thinking about the competitive landscape over the world, oh, why don't we make one startup? These two ex- extraordinary.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Professors, researchers.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Scientists.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  So now you've incorporated them into the startup there.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Advisors, board members.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Advisors, advisors, yeah. So, uh, this is one of the great history behind this company. And, uh, many people knows that, know that these two professors co-work together in past.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  So they're rock stars.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, rock stars, yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  And it draws talent.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, very talented two professors. So, uh, we closely work with two entities, Kyoto University and IMS. And I would say this company is spin out from Kyoto University and IMS. Yeah, so this is not a good selling point since from D zero, we have a large scale of research entities as a startup. That is not a good point.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Um, and so is your intent to build the entire computer or be part of working with other companies, building computers and empower them as a provider to them?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Very, very good, very, very good question, very, very good question. So I believe that, um, our neutron and quantum computer.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Is something like car, automotive car.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Just, and we try to become the, uh, quantum computer company, something like Toyota.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  So if you're thinking about Toyota, they don't create tire.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  No.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  They don't create engines. They, they design everything, integrate everything to one and sell that car.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Into the market, see? So we are the quantum computer company, try to assemble the lasers, a vacuum chambers, a meters, whatever.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  So there are many people building these components now?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Exactly, co-work together.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Where, where are they all based and are they also centered around universities?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  You're always asking very, very good question. So, uh, we use neutrons. And most important device for this quantum computer is laser. Very high power laser, uh, very not, less noise lasers.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  So high fidelity.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Exactly, I like that word, much high fidelity lasers. And this is coming from Hamamatsu Photonics in the Hamamatsu, Japanese company. And they also have an amazing, uh, com- subsidiary company in Copenhagen in Denmark.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  In Denmark?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  In Denmark.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Of all places.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's like, no wonder, um, since, uh, Niels Bohr, one of the, uh, like an amazing, uh, uh, scientists from Denmark. And Denmark is very, very strong capability in terms of the physics. And that company name is Indicate Photonics, they creating amazing high power lasers. And recently, uh, Yoclimo, our company and Hamamatsu Photonics and Indicate Photonics did nice MOU in between Denmark and Japan, try to create special devices for neutron on basis quantum computer. I mean, this kind of supply chain is very crucial for industrialization of quantum.

• 29:38Speaker 00

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• 30:21Speaker 00

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• 30:43Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  So many different people around the world are working

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Together.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Together to try to, to, to, uh, hit this vision.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Is something happened in the time you were starting this company, uh, and quantum computing has been working towards this very ambitious goal, which is large language models, artificial intelligence, GPUs have become very powerful. So how has the advances in AI impacted what you're building and how you're building it?

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, thank you very much. So so-called, we call it, uh, AI for quantum.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  And vice versa, quantum for AI.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Explain both.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So AI for quantum, this is very, very powerful. So for example, this is very, very interesting story behind quantum calculations, but if we use quantum computer, as I mentioned, error happens. And we have to estimate what kind of error happened by using classical computer.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  A GPU for example.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  CPU. So they help us, I mean, ask me is quantum computer to identify or estimate what kind of error to what extent or something happened and try to correct through classical computation. So and through this kind of activities, we definitely use, we already use a lot of AI, LM Transformer, for example, to do quantum recollection. So this is something very tangible example of the AI for quantum.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  And. Just doing that error correction.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like the most like.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  And it's so powerful now.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Very, very powerful because of the AI. And opposite side, so quantum for AI. So at this moment, there's no practical or tangible example about quantum for AI. Since the power of quantum computer is not enough.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Not enough yet.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Not enough yet. However, recently, the researchers coming from MIT wrote beautiful papers about how quantum for AI happens. We believe the future is not super, super far away.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  And so would it be used for inference or model training, both? And then if it does work, let's say we go five years into the future, maybe even 10 years into the future, what impact could that have on either of those two practices? And obviously, there'll be other jobs to be done and new modalities are being created. But using the current paradigm of the language model and the building of the language model or inference, the customer, you know, getting their query answered, what impact could quantum have on that?

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for example, a very, very interesting example is that after we do calculation of by using quantum computer result coming from them. For example, if you do fluid dynamics calculation by using quantum computer, that data or result is not normally coming from the classical computer, isn't it? This is only coming from quantum computers. Why don't we use this data to make AI even smarter? We can differentiate the model by doing so.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Got it. So the models become more powerful.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  I guess so.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, because we're going to be very interesting.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Very interesting. I believe quantum for AI, once this kind of happens, quantum computer company makes tons of money.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yes, and it could be like the answer to many problems. Do these quantum computers, are they as power hungry or more power hungry than their equivalent GPU or CPU type computer? What's the energy consumption like?

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Very less, let's say, very, very less.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  Really?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yes. Recently, one papers talking about, we find out one papers talking about the comparison in between classical computers and quantum computers as a function of the consumption of energy, as a function of the number of the qubits. And they mentioned that the number of the qubit is close to 40 or 50 or something.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Then we do a particular program solving, the number, the energy that quantum computer use even, even less than classical computers. So in the context of less CO2, less energy.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  We definitely believe that quantum computer contributing to the.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Are they always going to be very large data center computers? Or will we ever see the, you know, desktop revolution equivalent of quantum computing? I know it's a silly question, maybe, but I'm just curious.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I would say again, I cannot say that.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Quantum computers take over all the position of the classical computers, just one part of it. But I believe quantum computer could be the very, very great accelerator to make classical computer even smarter.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  So there would be a hybrid computer with both.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Like a hybrid Toyota Prius.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  So some jobs go to the quantum processing unit and maybe some other parts of the job go to the GPU and CPU.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  They share loads.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  Wow, and they could share the memory.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yes, so there's kind of a primary research work happened already in Japan.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  For example, in Tsukiba. And there's many way to do demonstration of hybrid system in between quantum and classical.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  Fascinating. Okay, final question. Everybody's a bit nervous about cryptography.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  And that someday quantum starts up and all of our phones are hacked and everybody sees our bank account and you take all of my Bitcoin. When will you be taking all of my Bitcoin?

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is really, really big question. So recently, once they reveal that how quantum calculation researcher take about, there's can decrease for if it happen.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  And they mentioned that in next five to 10 years, we have to be very, very be careful about it. But if you think.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  And it's true, yeah?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I think it's true.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Sometimes technologists are a little bit hyperbolic. They get a little bit excited like we saw with AI. So, but it's true.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true. So we, some research works already proven that if you reach to certain amount of the size of the qubit, QPU, we can solve RSA cryptography. But it won't be happen next two years, for example. No worry, it's time to sell your Bitcoin.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  No.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Plenty of time.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but the point is that maybe not only for Bitcoin, but for, for example, some like in a top secret coming from Japan, United States.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  They already.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Military applications.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. There's kind of dual use cases are very, very crucial. And for example, some country already collected top secret, which is already protected by RSA cryptography, but we, they already has that, isn't it? So.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  They have the data, they just haven't cracked it.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and once they create quantum computer.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  So take now, solve later.

• 38:18Speaker 00

  Encrypted data, solve later.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. So get the, get the hard drive now.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  Crack it later.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Put it on a shelf.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  It was very dangerous. And so is there an international body or has the government gotten involved and created a regulatory body that's in any way monitoring your progress? And do you get a knock on the door that says, hey, you know, we need to have a conversation?

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's, that, that is really, really important, like topics that this kind of dual use or like, you know, quantum computer based deep tech startup, that is really important topic. We talk with governmental people very carefully. And for example, United States recently announced that they tried to launch or they want to have a very useful quantum computer by 2028.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Hmm. It's aggressive.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Aggressive, pretty aggressive. And so in order to nicely communicate this comment to people, we, we are very happy to discuss our, or we want to like talk, talk transparently with government of people, how to use it, how to protect the technologies.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is really.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  It's a very important, the world is very dynamic.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  It's a very dynamic world, it's constantly changing.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  And as a technologist, we can't take it for granted that everybody has good intent. There are some people in the world who have bad intent and so we have to be thoughtful. We have to get there first, yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, true.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Is China making progress on quantum? Do you see big progress from China?

• 39:54Speaker 01

  They, they doing very, very well. So I think one of the top country is China, United States, of course, EU, Japan. I believe these two like area is pretty, pretty aggressive in terms of.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And do they share their progress and papers?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  They just read ours.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they, of course, they post their scientific activity by paper, some of them. But I don't think they share everything.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Very close to the vest.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a very interesting moment in time. Kazu, thank you so much for sharing with the audience. A big round of applause for Kazu.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  I don't know if there's any crypto and any quantum heads in the audience who have a question. Does anybody have a question?

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Thank you, if you can.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  You do? Okay, come and ask a question. We have one question. You don't have to have a question about quantum computers. I'm fascinated by it. And this is like such a treat for us to see around the corner of what you're building. This is like, this conversation is literally like talking to OpenAI DeepMind 10 years ago. Right? Okay. Question.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  Hey, that's a great presentation and a great interview. I'm Karthik. We're building Glibzero Labs. What we're doing is we're building the cryptographic authorization layer for AI agents. And my question is probably two parts. One is, right now, because I've done a lot of work in quantum for the last year and a half before starting my company. And current cost of quantum is really high. Like, if you look at SQBM from Toshiba, it costs like $90 an hour. IBM, I think if you want to rent it, you have to pay like $3,000 an hour. So whatever you're building at Yakumo, how is it going to move the needle? Like, is it going to bring the cost of that down? Or how are you thinking about it from a business model perspective? Like, do you want to sell quantum clouds?

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Like, through a partnership with AWS or Microsoft?

• 41:54Speaker 00

  Good question.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  To bring it down? Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Of course. So, we sent to you one of my colleagues in Japan. He's not in Yakumo. Sorry, he's not in Yakumo. He's creating one of the type of corner computer superconducting qubit. So he mentioned that one physical qubit costs close to 1 million USD.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  It's really expensive. But we use a neutral atoms. And if you're thinking about the, like, you know, the price of qubit, maybe it's maybe 100 times cheaper.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Or 1,000 times affordable. So we believe this methodology is pretty scalable in terms of the financial aspects. Yeah. And if you're thinking about our business model as a startup, there's a couple way of thinking. However, we're thinking about selling our one full stack corner computers next five years. But this is not for commercial use case. It's only mainly for academia who try to use corner computer as a research box. And after 2030, we believe that we can create very useful corner computer, so-called FTQC for two corner computers. And we try to sell this corner computer to data center, for example.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  In that case, we don't have to sell a corner computer one by one.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Maybe one by 10.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  You just sell racks.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's about. And next five years, after 2035, for example, it's time to think about how to use this corner computer as a data.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can sell quantum entropy as a service.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Exactly, just like Scale AI.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Quantum as a service.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, for example. Or, for example, there is one great company have been like MNA by Meta, like, you know, Scale AI.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  They'll sell data for AI.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's quantum data and quantum entropy as a service.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we might expect those kind of things.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Got it. That's actually a part of stuff that I'm working on as well.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Okay, exactly. Why don't we touch on this?

• 43:44Speaker 03

  The second part of the question, do I have time or?

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, quick.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Okay. So you mentioned that RSA is going to be broken, right? But the most of the world, including Visa, Mastercard, all these guys use AES 256. Of course, like hack now, decrypt later is going to happen. But wouldn't it be useful if you just blow up the key bit from 256, if you make it AES 256 to like AES 2048 or 4096? You can buy time to let the hackers linger on the network and then use the same quantum computer to like trace them out and figure out what keys they're using to enter your system, right? Like, what are your thoughts on that?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's the reason why we believe that cryptography is one of, just one of the applications. For example, I'm very, very, Yakumo is very, very keen on to the other application, for example, like, you know, quantum chemistry, which going to create new market.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  So that is something we are thinking about.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  That's interesting.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Like, cryptography is just one, like, you know, very, very dangerous. But that's corner computer company we thinking about some other more.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, you could also end up building like virtual cells

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  and cell models and revolutionize biology and everything. Yeah, makes sense.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  All right. Very exciting.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  All right. Let's thank Kazu for sharing with us for an hour.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. He's so great. Thank you so much for coming. I appreciate you taking the time.