Quantum Tech Pod Episode 59: Théau Peronnin, CEO and Co-Founder, Alice & Bob

Quantum Tech Pod

Christopher Bishop’s latest Quantum Tech Pod with Théau Peronnin, CEO and Co-Founder of Alice & Bob, is live! As a student, Théau was into both physics and electronics. An innovator to the core, he competed in the International Young Physicist tournament but soon realized he was 50 years too late to develop new groundbreaking low level electronics. Quantum computers provided the perfect setting for him to apply his passion for physics with his desire to innovate. His collaborative work with Raphaël Lescanne (CTO and Co-Founder) on a bit-flip-protected qubit design that could dramatically improve quantum error correction led them to start Alice & Bob in 2020. The two error types that affect a quantum bit are bit flips - that switch a zero into a one and vice versa – a somewhat classical error – and phase flips - a purely quantum error that switches the phase of a superposition from zero plus one into zero minus one. Alice & Bob’s cat qubits exponentially suppress the first type of error - bit flips - by design, thereby providing a new level of error correction! Thanks to this feature, a cat qubit-based quantum computer would run Shors’ algorithm with 60 times fewer qubits than the state-of-the-art, the company demonstrated earlier this year. Check out Chris’s conversation with Théau!