Alice & Bob, a Paris and Boston-based quantum computing company aiming to create the first universal, fault-tolerant quantum computer, has been awarded €3,404,446 ($3.9 million) from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry (QC 3) programme.
This funding will support the development of fault-tolerant quantum algorithms focused on discovering rare-earth-free permanent magnetism, a crucial component in electric motors and turbines.
“Designing high-performance magnets without rare earth elements is one of the hardest problems in material science, as these materials are extremely difficult to simulate with classical computers. A hybrid approach – where classical methods compute environmental parameters and quantum computers simulate highly correlated electronic systems more accurately – could significantly accelerate the discovery of new magnetic materials,” said Juliette Peyronnet, U.S General Manager at Alice & Bob.
Founded in 2020 by Raphaël Lescanne and Théau Péronnin, Alice & Bob specialises in cat qubits, a pioneering technology developed by the company’s founders and later adopted by Amazon. The company, by showcasing the capabilities of its cat architecture, has demonstrated that it can cut hardware needs for constructing a useful large-scale quantum computer by as much as 200 times compared to other methods.
“At the centre of cat qubits’ hardware-efficiency is the inherent suppression of bit-flip errors, one of the two types of errors that plague quantum computers. This property is key to enabling more efficient architectures for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computers (FTQCs) that resist errors and can be used in real-world applications,” explained the company. It claims to be the only player developing quantum computers exclusively using this type of qubit.
Alice & Bob assert that high-performance magnets are fundamental to many technologies essential for the global energy transition. Today’s dominant magnet, neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB), was discovered in the 1980s and relies on rare-earth elements and related processes whose supply chains are geographically concentrated and politically constrained.
The company states that finding alternatives has been difficult. The magnetic behaviour of candidate materials results from complex quantum interactions between electrons, making accurate simulation very challenging for classical computers. Quantum computers, which directly model quantum systems, could enable researchers to simulate these materials much more efficiently.
To meet their goal, Alice & Bob will strive to achieve a 10,000-fold speed-up in computing time compared to state-of-the-art classical simulations, enabling realistic material calculations within approximately one day. They will show this speed-up experimentally on Alice & Bob’s fault-tolerant quantum computers, and theoretically with resource estimates.
“Finding ways to prepare high-quality states via tensor network optimisation is a critical tool that will help develop fault-tolerant quantum algorithms applied to challenges like rare-earth-free minerals permanent magnets. This team effort converges expertise to leverage quantum computing for an important, practical outcome,” said Marco Cerezo, Los Alamos scientist and Laboratory lead on the project.
Alice & Bob will lead the three-year project in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory, GE Vernova’s Advanced Research accelerator, and Professor Emanuel Gull (a visiting Professor at Warsaw University and a Professor at the University of Michigan), heading a group that will develop classical algorithms to work alongside Alice & Bob’s quantum algorithms.
Los Alamos will develop tensor network tools to optimise quantum circuits, and GE Vernova’s Advanced Research accelerator will perform a technoeconomic analysis of material discovery opportunities enabled by the hybrid algorithm.
Alice & Bob believe that if this approach is successful, it could accelerate the development of cheaper, more sustainable magnets for future energy and industrial technologies. The algorithm developed could also be easily adapted to solve other challenging problems in chemistry and materials science.
Last year, the company raised €100 million in its Series B funding round, led by Future French Champions (FFC), AVP (AXA Venture Partners) and Bpifrance.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/04/alice-bob-secures-e3-4-million-arpa-e-award-to-discover-rare-earth-free-magnets-using-quantum-computing/
