PsiQuantum Begins Construction of 1 Million Qubit Facility in Chicago

Quantum computing firm PsiQuantum has begun construction of a 1 million qubit facility in Chicago, ChainCatcher reports. Co-founder Peter Shadbolt posted photos on X on Thursday showing 500 tons of steel installed within six days. The company raised $1 billion in September in partnership with Nvidia to make quantum computing commercially viable for next-generation AI supercomputers. Scientists cited in the report say a million-qubit machine could match hundreds of billions of classical computers and potentially break Bitcoin's cryptographic security, though co-founder Terry Rudolph said in July that PsiQuantum does not plan to use its systems to derive private keys from public keys. A February study by CoinShares estimated that 10,230 bitcoins with exposed cryptographic key addresses are vulnerable to quantum attacks, worth roughly $728 million at current market prices, while a recent preprint estimated about 100,000 qubits are needed to crack a 2048-bit key and Bitcoin uses 256-bit keys.