#quantumdatacentre

Barcelona Opens Multimodal Quantum Data Centre: Qilimanjaro Opens First Hybrid Data Centre

Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech reached a milestone in the global battle for quantum dominance this week by opening the first multimodal Quantum Data Centre. This facility is the first multimodal quantum infrastructure in Europe and located in Barcelona's fast-growing technological district. The center's hybrid computing ecosystem aims to accelerate quantum application development.

With space for ten quantum computers, the ambitious facility will serve thousands of consumers across the continent. Its "multimodal" nature combines strong classical HPC with simultaneous, integrated access to digital and analogue quantum computers. By matching the specific computing requirements of each use case from basic research to sophisticated industrial optimisation with the greatest hardware, this synergistic combination lets users avoid the drawbacks of single-modality systems.

According to Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech CEO Dr. Marta P. Estarellas, the debut changed the industry. She added the centre is more than a technology facility and acts as an open ecosystem for industry, science, and governmental institutions to prepare for the future. Dr. Estarellas said quantum computing is already influencing innovation. The facility provides a hybrid quantum-classical environment to help organisations bridge theoretical research and practical applications.

Analogue Advantage: Today's Issues Advanced analogue quantum computing platforms are Qilimanjaro's main differentiator. These systems use error-resistant fluxonium-based analogue chips. Since scalability, decoherence, and error tolerance limit the practicality of the current generation of universal digital Quantum Processing Units (QPUs), this focus is crucial.

Analogue quantum systems offer a complementary path ahead. Modelling and solving complex physical difficulties is ideal for these platforms. Their ability to simulate molecules, innovative materials, and complex physical systems speeds up discovery cycles in materials science and medicine. Analogue quantum computing offers fascinating new ways to swiftly and effectively train complicated Artificial Intelligence (AI) models, as even the most powerful conventional supercomputers cannot tackle large-scale optimisation problems. This specialisation leads to faster, more energy-efficient, and cheaper computer systems in the future.

In particular, 2019-founded Qilimanjaro builds integrated, error-resistant quantum computers for faster and more scalable solutions than digital quantum approaches.

Democratic Access Through Dual Strategy

The Qilimanjaro strategy emphasises accessibility. Through SpeQtrum, its QaaS platform, the company aims to democratise quantum capabilities. With SpeQtrum's safe, cloud-based access to the multimodal Quantum Data Centre in the new data centre, European businesses, research institutes, and academic institutions can easily utilise digital, analogue, and hybrid quantum computing.

Qilimanjaro now uses two techniques in addition to QaaS. This technique also includes on-premise system development. National research organisations and major supercomputing facilities can modularly integrate analogue and digital QPUs with these systems. This means that massive public facilities requiring specialised hardware and agile startups using remote access can use quantum technology tailored to their needs. By providing industry and academics with sustainable computational resources and meeting the needs of a digital society, this plan intends to make quantum computing more accessible.

European sovereignty's foundation

This modern facility enhances European technical sovereignty beyond Qilimanjaro's business ambitions. Quantum technologies improve Catalonia's status as a deep-tech investment and research hotspot.

Initiative receives significant institutional support. The Department of Business and Labour under Avançsa and ACCIÓ (Agency for Business Competitiveness) offered vital support to Qilimanjaro. Spanish Society for Technological Transformation is a key ally.

SETT's Business Development Officer, José María García Orois, underlined the commitment, identifying Qilimanjaro's growth as a future-focused company and technical innovator since its foundation in 2019. Orois stated that “SETT has not only invested in Qilimanjaro, but is steadfastly committed to supporting the company through its next stages of growth, which already position it as one of Europe’s leading references in quantum technologies.”

Catalan Minister for Business and Labour Miquel Sàmper praised the company's achievements as regional growth. Sàmper calls Qilimanjaro “a clear example of what we are capable of achieving when the country's scientific and technological talent finds support, trust and opportunities for growth.” He noted that the Catalan government supports this goal and wants to build a strong digital and technical environment to attract investment, retain talent, and create high-quality opportunities.

Building Future

The Quantum Data Centre symbolizes a new era of government-business-science partnership for a sustainable and responsible future. The development of next-generation materials, precise optimisation of energy networks and logistics processes, dramatic reduction of AI development resources, and other practical applications of quantum technology are laying the groundwork for future computing.

Europe, Qilimanjaro, and Qblox: Promoting Hybrid Digital-Analog Quantum Computing via Strategic Cooperation

Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech and Qblox are boosting the European rollout of powerful digital-analog quantum computing (DAQC) devices after expanding their strategic partnership. This BSC-based relationship is vital. This improved synergy aims to include these technologies into Qilimanjaro's forthcoming Hybrid Quantum Data Centre in Barcelona, opening in November.

The development of hybrid quantum computers drives Qilimanjaro's approach. These systems combine European superconducting digital processors with the company's proprietary analogue processors. By combining Qblox's advanced control stacks and Qilimanjaro's quantum computers, scalable and reliable systems are conceivable. End users will be able to use these systems via cloud services or on-premise HPC integration.

This agreement enabled the deployment of these integrated technologies in Qilimanjaro's Hybrid Quantum Data Centre, which will be offered as a cloud service. A global milestone will be reached when digital superconducting quantum computers and analogue quantum computers are made available on a single platform and software environment.

Building on Barcelona Supercomputing Centre Success

A solid foundation of BSC quantum computer integration work underpins the expanding partnership. Qilimanjaro has led superconducting quantum system integration at this top HPC centre. The company has successfully positioned its cutting-edge quantum technology adjacent to MareNostrum 5, a powerful supercomputer.

This early collaboration has yielded results. The Quantum Spain program runs two digital quantum computers at the facility. The EuroQCS-Spain project is also integrating an analogue quantum computer. With the completion of this analogue system, digital and analogue quantum computers using superconducting technology will function together in a high-performance computing environment for the first time in Europe.

Executive Views on Hybrid Systems and Broad Access

The leaders of the two cooperating organisations stressed the impact of this expanded partnership on technology and accessibility.

Work with Qblox makes “opening quantum technology to end users” easier, says Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech CEO Marta P. Estarellas. She stressed the company's goal of “real impact across both industry and research” and “broad access through with quantum data centers”.

Qblox CEO Niels Bultink called Qilimanjaro “uniquely positioned globally, with expertise in both digital and analogue quantum computing.” He said the two companies had “demonstrated it can build the world’s most advanced hybrid systems” and that the “longstanding partnership is key to Qblox’s mission of advancing the customers towards industrial-scale quantum computing.”

Driving European Quantum Sovereignty

Expanding this relationship supports Europe's quantum sovereignty aim. The cooperation achieves this goal through national and EU programs as ImpaQT. Qblox brings its world-renowned control stack expertise to these collaborations, while Qilimanjaro leverages its hybrid quantum computing expertise. This collaborative resource pool aims to boost Europe's leadership in this innovative area.

Detailed Look at Collaborators

Qilimanjaro, a Barcelona-based quantum computing firm formed in 2019, aims to accelerate the deployment of practical quantum computers. The company mostly does this by making “signature analogue quantum chips”. Qilimanjaro builds full-stack quantum computers with fluxonium analogue qubits. This novel architecture allows faster and more scalable solutions by avoiding error correction. Analogue quantum systems are recognised to provide short-term advantages in AI, optimisation, and simulation.

Digital quantum processing units (QPUs) may be limited or expensive in some domains.

Qilimanjaro uses dual technologies for quick quantum computing access. This approach begins with the SpeQtrum QaaS platform, which provides remote access to hybrid quantum data centres that efficiently integrate analogue, digital, and classical computing resources. The company's on-premise systems for HPC centres and research institutes offer full-stack and flexible quantum integration for analogue and digital QPUs.

IBM and RIKEN launch the first IBM Quantum System Two in the US.

Researchers can now use quantum and classical supercomputing for challenging scientific advances with IBM Quantum System Two and Fugaku Architecture.

The first IBM Quantum System Two outside the U.S. marks a global milestone for quantum technology and promises to alter high-performance computing. RIKEN, Japan's foremost scientific organisation, and Kobe use highly powerful quantum computers. On June 24, 2025, the system debuted.

Initial IBM Quantum System Two installations outside a Quantum Data Centre are paired with RIKEN's Fugaku supercomputer, the most powerful conventional computer. Moving beyond “quantum-centric supercomputing,” these two massive computational powers are meant to boost computational power and precision.

Architecture Fugaku

The Japanese supercomputer Fugaku was built by RIKEN and Fujitsu using the Arm-based A64FX CPU. The first supercomputer with this architecture to top the world rankings. With almost 150,000 nodes, a 48-core processor, and tremendous memory bandwidth, its architecture prioritises high-performance computation. Fugaku's Tofu Interconnect D mesh network allows nodes to communicate smoothly, making it ideal for AI workloads and scientific simulations. Its well-balanced design produces outstanding computational and energy efficiency, making it crucial for drug discovery, climate modelling, and other fields requiring massive processing capacity.

Due to the complex relationship between quantum and classical devices, this co-location is crucial. A high-speed basic instruction network makes the systems a “proving ground for quantum-centric supercomputing”. This low-level integration allows RIKEN and IBM developers to create complex parallel workloads, low-latency classical-quantum communication protocols, and compilation passes and libraries.

This intricate link attempts to allow quantum and classical computing paradigms to effortlessly execute their optimal algorithm sections, maximising their performance. This hybrid method speeds up the understanding of complex algorithms, including basic chemistry algorithms.

The 156-qubit IBM Quantum Heron processor powers the new IBM Quantum System Two at RIKEN. Heron is the world's most performant quantum processor and IBM's best-performing quantum processor due to its high quality and speed.

The Heron processor achieves an astounding 3×10^-3 two-qubit error rate on a 100-qubit multilayer circuit. The best two-qubit error rate is 1×10^-3. This is ten times better than the IBM Quantum Eagle processor with 127 qubits.

The speed of Heron is 250,000 circuit layer operations per second. In the last year, this represents another ten-fold advance over the IBM Eagle CPU. Due to its 156-qubit scale and sophisticated requirements, the Heron processor can perform quantum circuits that even the most powerful classical computers cannot.

The strategic importance of this undertaking cannot be overstated. NEDO, a division of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), provides crucial support. This money comes from the “Development of Integrated Utilisation Technology for Quantum and Supercomputers” initiative, part of the “Project for Research and Development of Enhanced Infrastructures for Post 5G Information and Communications Systems.”

Financial analysts perceive this deployment as IBM's strategic investment to expand its global quantum computing capabilities. This measure is likely to generate new money and cooperation, especially in Asia where governments favour technology.

Market research analysts say the IBM Quantum System Two in Japan is a turning point in quantum computing and may increase acceptance and creativity in Asia.This boosts IBM's quantum computing supremacy, which may influence market dynamics and spur digital innovation.

The cooperation aims to accelerate the discovery of "quantum advantage," the moment at which a quantum computer can solve a problem better than any traditional approach. A Science Advances study by RIKEN and IBM showed promise in this area. Iron sulphides are complicated systems that were thought to require fault-tolerant quantum computers for meaningful modelling, yet their sample-based quantum diagonalisation (SQD) techniques accurately represent their electronic structure. When paired with solid classical infrastructure, near-term quantum computers can deliver significant scientific gains.

There are some obstacles ahead. Authorities say integrating quantum and classical systems is difficult and resource-intensive. Since quantum systems are still being researched, achieving a useful quantum advantage is a long-term goal.

CEOs from both firms remained optimistic despite these challenges. Jay Gambetta, IBM Quantum VP, said, “RIKEN collaborators are taking a huge step forward to make this vision a reality. Computing will be quantum-focused in the future. The new IBM Quantum System Two will allow engineers and scientists to push the limits by connecting to Fugaku and employing the latest Heron CPU.

RIKEN-CCS Quantum-HPC Hybrid Platform Division Director Dr. Mitsuhisa Sato said, “RIKEN hopes to guide Japan into a new age of high-performance computing by integrating Fugaku and the IBM Quantum System Two. Create and demonstrate quantum-HPC hybrid workflows for industry and academics to study. These two systems' interaction allows us take key steps towards this goal.