Los Angeles, 28 October 2026. Quantum Elements and Qarakal Quantum have been selected by the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation to jointly develop a quantum simulation platform for understanding and designing the chemical reactions that occur on material surfaces. The project, one of seven approved by the BIRD Foundation, has a budget of $2.4 million.
The project will combine Qarakal Quantum's modular superconducting quantum hardware and hardware-software co-design approach with Quantum Elements' software for advancing fault-tolerant quantum computing, using AI-driven co-design, error suppression, error correction and decoders. The companies will work toward a validated prototype capable of taking industrially relevant catalyst problems and turning them into quantum-ready computational workflows.
The project targets heterogeneous catalysis, with catalytic processes involved in the manufacture of an estimated 80-90% of chemical products. According to a MarketLine study cited in the release, the global chemical processing industry generates between $5 and $6 trillion annually. Surface reactions on catalysts play a central role in clean hydrogen production, CO2 conversion, nitrogen-fixation chemistry, hydrocarbon processing, and the performance and degradation of advanced coatings.
Today these systems are studied using high-performance computing and methods such as density functional theory. The release states that problems involving strong electronic correlation, surface defects, transition-metal active sites and complex bond-breaking pathways can require significant computational approximation. The project will investigate how quantum computing can complement existing tools.
"Our architecture is modular by design and tailorable for real-world workloads that s what makes this collaboration work," said Dr. Nissan Maskil, CEO and co-founder of Qarakal Quantum. "Useful quantum applications cannot be developed in isolation from the hardware that has to run them," said Izhar Medalsy, Co-Founder and CEO of Quantum Elements.
Quantum Elements' digital-twin technology will model the behavior and noise environment of Qarakal's superconducting system, supporting decisions around compilation, calibration, pulse-level execution, error suppression and algorithm design before quantum hardware time is used. The collaboration is designed to produce benchmark chemistry models and quantum algorithms with demonstrations and API outputs intended for chemists and materials engineers.
Source: Qarakal Quantum news
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