A supportive government, available capital, and world-class academic institutions are some of the factors behind the nation’s quantum ascendance.
In a special report by the prestigious "Physics Today", Israel is a leader in quantum technologies.
Ron Folman, a quantum physicist, was taken aback when a delegation of top officials from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency paid an unexpected visit to his lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) about 15 years ago. “I asked them, ‘Why are you here? You have a thousand times more money, scientists, and space,’” Folman recalls. “The head of the delegation answered, ‘I heard what you guys are doing, and I wanted to see with my own eyes this Israeli chutzpah.’”
To Folman, the quote neatly characterizes Israel’s outsize global footprint in quantum science and technology.
It’s no accident that Israel is punching above its weight in quantum fields. Despite the turmoil that has roiled Israeli politics in recent years, the Knesset committed 1.25 billion shekels ($400 million) to a five-year National Quantum Initiative, which kicked off in late 2019. Tal David, an experimental physicist who heads the initiative, says it gained a boost from Israel’s economic stimulus program during the COVID-19 pandemic. The program includes $60 million to build the country’s first quantum computer, which is expected to consist of 30–40 qubits. Assembly is due to get underway early next year.
“We don’t aspire at least in the next few years to beat IBM or Google,” says David. “We need to first form a basis for an ecosystem in Israel and that will be the purpose of the project. Maybe in a few years, we’ll be able to jump into the deep end of the pond and compete with the big ones.”
Today 60% or more of the initiative’s funds is spent in academia, says David. Israel consistently ranks high alongside leading European nations by such measures as citations and the number of grants in quantum fields awarded by the European Research Council, of which it is an associate member.