Northwestern University

Stories

Quantum internet moves from dedicated labs toward existing fiber

Ran the demonstration

For years, quantum networks needed their own private fiber, sealed off from ordinary internet traffic. Northwestern University just broke that rule. Its team sent entangled photons through 24.4 kilometers of Chicago telecom cable while that same cable carried normal commercial internet data.

Updated Jul 23

The race to scale quantum computing

New Capabilities

Pioneering commercial CMOS quantum photonics

Quantum computers can already outperform classical supercomputers on specific tasks, as Google's Willow chip demonstrated when it solved in five minutes a problem that would take the fastest machines 10 septillion years. The breakthrough, announced in October 2025, marks the first verifiable quantum advantage, achieved with Google's Quantum Echoes algorithm, which is 13,000 times faster than supercomputers. But scaling from 100-qubit systems to the million-qubit machines needed for real-world applications requires control hardware that doesn't exist, and current laser systems are tabletop-sized, power-hungry, and impossible to replicate thousands of times over.

Updated Jul 9