#superconductingprocessors

In 2025, quantum technology company Qilimanjaro achieved several milestones related to its fluxonium qubit design, which is stable and error-reducing. The first multimodal Quantum Data Center in Europe, in Barcelona, combined high-performance classical resources with digital and analog processors to boost hardware capabilities. To provide this infrastructure, they launched QiliSDK, an open-source software toolkit for hybrid quantum workflow researchers and developers.

Strategic partnerships with CERN and Hospital del Mar have proved their technology' versatility in medical surgical scheduling and particle physics. The successful deployment of quantum systems through massive European innovation efforts and team expansion enabled these technological advances. Qilimanjaro's proprietary software, cutting-edge chip architecture, and cloud-based access made it a hybrid quantum computing pioneer.

European Innovation’s New Home

Qilimanjaro opened its multimodal Quantum Data Center in Barcelona's 22@ innovation zone, the year's biggest milestone. Additionally, this lab has a strong infrastructure that can house ten quantum computers. The center's fusion of analog and digital superconducting processors with HPC resources lets users match computing workloads with the most efficient gear.

This strengthens European technical sovereignty and makes Catalonia a quantum research hub. SpeQtrum Quantum-as-a-Service (QaaS) allows chemistry, AI, and materials science universities, research facilities, and businesses to access the facility.

Machine Heart: Fluxonium

The fluxonium qubit drove Qilimanjaro's hardware success. The more popular transmon qubit is used by competitors, but Qilimanjaro's architectural choice has improved accuracy and stability. Fluxonium gives more stability and cleaner control, resulting in quieter, more accurate calculations, according to the company's 2025 study.

The millisecond coherence proof was a technical achievement this year. This lifetime is one of the longest for superconducting qubits and provides a solid foundation for hybrid (digital-analog) and scalable analog systems. The company released QiliSDK, an open-source Python framework, alongside this hardware. As a "unified software stack," this toolkit lets developers handle circuits and Hamiltonians in one place and swap between CPU, GPU, and QPU backends.

National Initiatives and Strategic Infrastructure

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center boosted Qilimanjaro's public-private partnerships in 2025. EuroQCS installed an analog quantum computer at the BSC and improved cryogenic equipment and shielding.

In the meantime, Quantum Spain began its last delivery. This project will establish two 20–30 qubit digital quantum computers at the BSC. The BSC plans to run three quantum machines—two digital and one analog—to demonstrate that quantum computing may be utilized as a supercomputing accelerator.

Measureable Effects: Public Health to High-Energy Physics

Qilimanjaro worked with top colleges to demonstrate the technology's practicality.

Qilimanjaro helped CERN and the Open Quantum Institute rebuild ATLAS detector tracks using "Quantum Reservoirs," an analog technique. This cooperation used Quantum Extreme Learning Machines for image categorization to show that analog systems can handle particle physics' severe inference problems.

Healthcare with Hospital del Mar: The company solved Barcelona public health issues. The partnership optimized medicinal materials, drug-design procedures, and operation scheduling with quantum optimization to boost surgical capacity by 30%. Two patents increased efficiency and reduced saturation in patient recovery units. Also see Scialog QMI Awards $1.1M to Quantum Innovation Researchers.

Globalization and Ecosystem Development

Internally, the company has grown rapidly. The team swelled to 74 professionals this year, providing the scientific depth for its “full-stack” strategy. This information was presented globally by Qilimanjaro personnel at 78 international events like MWC Barcelona, the APS March Meeting, and the International Year of Quantum.

Strategic relationships have expanded the company. Qilimanjaro, a European ecosystem staple, collaborated with Qblox on control systems and joined IMPAQT in Delft as its lone hybrid full-stack integrator. It also worked with the GSMA Quantum Network Services working group to shape quantum infrastructure.

Considering 2026

Quantum Transducer

Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory scientists developed a mm-wave-to-optical converter for quantum communications and next-generation computing. A triply-resonant integrated superconducting electro-optic transducer was disclosed in Nature Communications. Future quantum processor networking may require this component.

The Millimeter Wave Frontier

Modern communication systems must operate at higher frequencies to provide faster data transfer rates and visual resolution. The mm-wave spectrum, from 30 GHz to 300 GHz, is essentially unexplored for classical and quantum applications, while common microwave systems operate in the low gigahertz (GHz) region.

The researchers focused on 107 GHz under Jason F. Herrmann and Kevin K. S. Multani. This high-frequency regime is useful for quantum physics because superconducting processors can function at higher temperatures than microwave qubits. More cooling power may help fault-tolerant quantum computing overcome its massive scalability challenges.

Architecture of Transducer

The device relies on complicated light-matter interactions. The transducer uses an on-chip niobium titanium nitride (NbTiN) superconducting resonator and a thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) optical racetrack resonator.

Functioning requires the electro-optic effect. A mm-wave signal at 107 GHz modulates the X-cut TFLN's refractive index. This modulation creates new light sidebands with a telecom wavelength “pump” laser. The researchers created a triply-resonant system by matching the mm-wave mode frequency to the optical cavity's free spectral range (FSR). In this system, the generated optical sideband, optical pump, and input mm-wave are all resonant for optimal photon conversion.

Researchers found an average single-photon interaction rate (g0​/2π) of 0.7 kHz and a maximum photon transduction efficiency of ηOE​≈0.82×10−6.

Overcoming Substrate Interference

One major concern in the inquiry was “substrate modes” interference. A 500 µm thick sapphire substrate acts as the device's dielectric cavity at mm-wave frequencies. The superconducting resonator may hybridize with these extraneous modes, leaching photons and decreasing device performance.

The researchers developed a complex input-output model with various parameters to simulate the transmission spectrum. According to their calculations, lowering the sapphire chip's physical volume might reduce the number of substrate modes from 29 to one in the 95 GHz to 110 GHz region. This would enable hardware upgrades.

“Quasiparticle” Challenge

Another challenge is superconductor-laser interaction. The superconducting electrodes absorb stray photons as the optical pump intensifies. It splits Cooper pairs, electron pairs that give resistance-free current, and creates non-equilibrium quasiparticles.

These quasiparticles enhance the cavity's temperature by increasing internal loss and dissipation. By evaluating this impact, scientists discovered a 0.86 µK temperature shift for each additional intracavity photon. Pulsing the optical pump between conversion events allows the quasiparticle density to return to thermal equilibrium, which could reduce this in future quantum applications.

The Path to Quantum Networks

Despite these challenges, integrated mm-wave photonic systems may be superior for hybrid quantum systems, according to the experiment. Once built, this transducer might connect superconducting qubits to optical fibers to send quantum information across long distances at normal temperature.

These transducers can operate at 5 K, unlike millikelvin microwave qubits, proving they can work at greater temperatures in a dilution refrigerator. This may lead to multistage transduction, which connects microwave gear to optical networks via millimeter-wave intermediaries.