BEIJING : China’s Baidu plans to give a quantum computing laboratory and equipment to the government-backed Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS), a company spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Both parties are currently working out the details, the source added.
Baidu’s move followed that of its peer Alibaba, which in November had said it would wind down its quantum computing laboratory and team within its research arm amid a wider company restructuring, donating both the lab and related experimental equipment to Zhejiang University.
Baidu established its quantum computing research centre in 2018, led by Duan Runyao who got his bachelor’s and doctorate degrees from Tsinghua University. The study centre’s accomplishments include developing Qian Shi, a quantum computer released in 2022.
The BAQIS was created in December 2017 on the initiative of the Beijing municipal government and with contributions from leading academic institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University.
Baidu and BAQIS had previously cooperated in the area of quantum research. Last March, the two organizations teamed up to jointly start the first quantum computing industry intellectual property alliance in China.