Sealsq Signs MoU with Gujarat Government for Semiconductor Center
Welcome to the latest edition of "Quantum Leap" where The Fly decodes news and activity in the quantum computing space.GUJARAT OTSP CENTER:Sealsqannounced the signing of a non-binding memorandum of understanding with the Government of Gujarat and Kaynes SemiCon to collaborate on the establishment of India's first Secure Semiconductor Design, Test, and Personalization Center dedicated to post-quantum cryptography technologies. The proposed OSTP center will be located at Kaynes SemiCon's manufacturing campus in Sanand, Gujarat, and is planned to achieve an annual production capacity of up to 300M post-quantum secure semiconductors. The facility aims to support India's growing demand for quantum-resistant technologies across security-sensitive and regulated sectors, including government, defense, critical infrastructure, telecommunications, automotive, IoT, and digital identity. The parties of the MoU, the Government of Gujarat, acting through its competent authority, Sealsq and Kaynes SemiCon, plan to collaborate on building a trusted, onshore semiconductor ecosystem aligned with India's national security, regulatory, and digital sovereignty requirements. The purpose of the MoU is to formalize the mutual understanding of the parties to cooperate on the establishment of a secure semiconductor platform in India, with a strategic focus on onshore semiconductor personalization, post-quantum cryptography and quantum-resistant semiconductor technologies. Under the MoU, the parties intend to establish a joint venture company in India, tentatively named SealKaynesq, with the aim to secure semiconductor design, testing, and personalization. The proposed initiative includes the planned creation of an outsourced semiconductor test and personalization facility within Kaynes SemiCon's campus, that aims to enable capabilities such as common criteria-compliant wafer testing, final testing, secure personalization, cryptographic key injection, PKI provisioning, and post-quantum cryptographic enablement.QUANTUM COMPUTE IN MEMORY CHIP:BTQ Technologiesand the Industrial Technology Research Institute, or ITRI, announced a strategic collaboration in 2026 to jointly realize and validate BTQ's Quantum Compute In Memory, or QCIM, chip, a next-generation silicon platform designed to enable secure, scalable cryptographic computation for the post-quantum era. The company said, "Advances BTQ's QCIM program into early silicon validation, representing a key milestone toward commercialization; leverages ITRI's applied research capabilities to evaluate feasibility, performance, and energy efficiency at the silicon level; complements BTQ's separate collaboration with ICTK, a South Korea-based leader in hardware-level security technologies, which is focused on the development of a fully integrated, commercially deployable post-quantum chipset and its progression toward real-world validation and deployment. ITRI, one of the world's most influential applied research institutions in semiconductor development, is widely recognized for its role in incubating and commercializing foundational chip technologies that have shaped the global semiconductor industry. QCIM is designed to execute cryptographic workloads closer to where data is stored. In conventional architectures, data is repeatedly transferred between memory and compute, which can introduce power and performance constraints as security requirements increase."QUANTUM COMPUTER PURCHASE ORDER:Rigetti Computing India, a subsidiary of Rigetti Computing, announced that it has received an $8.4M purchase order to deliver a 108-qubit quantum computer to the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, C-DAC, India's R&D organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The system will be installed on-premises at C-DAC's Bengaluru center and is scheduled to be deployed in the second half of 2026.QUANTUM CIRCUITS COMPLETION:D-Wave Quantumannounced that it has completed its previously announced acquisition of Quantum Circuits. D-Wave expects the acquisition to significantly accelerate the time to a scaled, error-corrected gate-model quantum computer alongside and complementary to its commercial annealing quantum computing systems. "The acquisition of Quantum Circuits marks a watershed moment that firmly establishes D-Wave as the world's leading quantum computing company," said Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. "By uniquely delivering both best-in-class annealing and gate-model technologies, we are setting the pace for the entire industry. This dual-platform approach will significantly expand the addressable use cases for our customers, with the potential to deliver profound impact across businesses, the scientific community, and governments worldwide."DAVOS:WISeKey, together with its subsidiaries, WISeSat.Space and Sealsq, announced that its flagship Davos 2026 event which will be held on January 21, will bring together global leaders, policymakers, technologists and thinkers around a single, unifying challenge: how to preserve trust, security and human values in an era where technologies converge and quantum computing reshapes the foundations of digital security. The event is convened and chaired by Carlos Creus Moreira, founder, chairman and CEO of WISeKey. "Quantum security is not a future problem. It is a present responsibility," said Moreira. "The launch of YQS2026 is a natural extension of what we are already executing in the United States via the deployment of post-quantum semiconductor-based trust anchors that are securing real-world systems in production environments."ANALYST COMMENTARY:Maxim raised the firm's price target on Sealsq to $8 from $6 and reiterated a Buy rating on the shares. The firm cited the company's Q4 revenue pre-announcement implying second-half revenue growth of 114%year-over-year, an acceleration from flat in the first half, the analyst told investors in a research note. Results benefited from the acquisition of IC'ALPS on 8/4 and normalization of purchasing by customers following shifts driven by COVID-era semiconductor supply chain shocks, the firm added.Rosenblatt initiated coverage of Rigetti Computing with a Buy rating and $40 price target. The firm likes Rigetti's modular approach to qubit scaling and its internal fab approach. The company's work with leading quantum error correction partner Riverlane is "promising over the medium to long term," the analyst noted.Rosenblatt also initiated coverage of Quantum Computingwith a Buy rating and $22 price target. Quantum has "legitimate" quantum assets across photonics, compute, security and sensing, the analyst told investors. The firm said the company also has "burgeoning" thin film lithium niobate fabs that could supply the company's industry needs for integrated quantum photonics, nonlinear optics and optical waveguides. Rosenblatt likes Quantum's risk/reward, seeing an "immediate opportunity" to participate in quantum computing.
