Victor Canivell, founder and president of the Spanish quantum computing startup Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech, one of the European leaders in the sector, and Corresponding Member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (READ), acted as host during the visit that the academic community made last Wednesday, 27 May, to the innovative company at its Barcelona headquarters. The firm is the only company in Spain that designs, manufactures, installs and manages quantum computers. The activity was held in collaboration with the Department of Justice and Democratic Quality of the Government of Catalonia and the Association of Manufacturers and Distributors (AECOC).
During the visit, a presentation was given, with a brief introduction to this new technology, its significant economic and cybersecurity impact, and the expected timetable for its availability, within a horizon of 5 to 15 years. After this introduction, the academics visited Qilimanjaro’s laboratories and quantum data centre, which provides cloud access services to users. The recent acceleration in the development of these technologies made this visit particularly timely, Canivell himself pointed out, in order to discover how they will have an impact and what a quantum computer really consists of, as well as why the Barcelona metropolitan area has all the potential to become the ecosystem hub of a new industry, since it has developed its own expanding ecosystem of startups and scientific institutions.
The academic explained that the first quantum systems are already operating in supercomputing centres and are expected to enable high-value applications in optimisation, chemistry, materials, finance and cybersecurity. At this point, he warned that one of the most sensitive effects of this transition is that future quantum computers will be able to break current encryption systems, a factor that has made quantum technology a geopolitical priority. Added to this is growing economic interest, reflected in the strong stock market revaluation of sector companies and in investments by major technology companies and public administrations. For the expert, quantum computing will not replace classical computing but will complement it in hybrid systems.
Canivell was admitted to the Royal Academy on 28 January with the speech “The Future Is Quantum: the Disruption Coming after AI and Its Impact on the Economy”, in which he argues that the world is already quantum, from semiconductors to magnetic resonance imaging, but that the true revolution is yet to come with quantum computing, a technology capable of exponentially multiplying computing power and drastically reducing the energy consumption of data centres. After more than twenty years in executive positions at North American multinationals such as Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, 3Com and Perkin-Elmer, he returned to Spain to lead several cybersecurity and bioinformatics startups. He is a member of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics and the American Physical Society. Among other distinctions, he received the 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Catalan Association of Telecommunications Engineering and Digital Technologies.
