I have written over the past few months of the opportunity for pension schemes to invest in Quantum Software. This blog was from last month, when I went to Scotland in September I was impressed by organisations organising funds for this sector

This is the opportunity for our DB, DC and now our CDC pension schemes to invest in Britain and make the arguments about backstops irrelevant.

The message coming out time again from our universities is that they need capital so that firms like Phasecraft and Riverlane can stay in Britain and not follow Deep Mind and Aim abroad.

Here is how John Gapper finishes his article in the FT

But scale is likely to tell over time. McKinlay says that more acquisitions are inevitable at some point and the most important thing is that the UK industry is given time to mature and Britain retains its research base: “It really matters whether your children leave home in their teens or twenties.”

The UK has achieved its own form of quantum advantage. Its promising start-ups and their investors must hold their nerve to keep it.

Before we get carried away, it is important that we understand what is behind the Quantum Computing opportunity we have in Britain.

Our companies are not trying to rival Google and IBM, but to partner with them. This makes sense to me. Here’s John Gapper..

Rather than trying to build quantum computers themselves, UK start-ups such as Phasecraft, spun out of the University of Bristol and University College London in 2019, and Riverlane, which emerged from Cambridge university in 2016, have focused on the algorithms and software needed for the machines to work.

This has two potential advantages in an uncertain field. One is that they can work with companies building different kinds of quantum computers, rather than having to bet on a single technology. Phasecraft is collaborating with companies including Google and IBM. “There are many hardware efforts and one or more horses will pull ahead over time,” Hogarth says.

The second benefit is that software development requires less capital than hardware, one reason for the UK’s historic strength in cryptography and software. What Hogarth describes as “a lot of clever people sitting and thinking very hard” is comparatively inexpensive and has produced ventures such as the chip design company Arm Holdings.

Riverlane has developed error correction technology for quantum computers. Phasecraft is focused on applications for the machines as they advance. It is working on materials science, and with the UK National Energy Systems Operator on modelling complex renewable energy grids. The latter could involve quantum and classical computers working together.

To suppose that we should allow our pension fund to America , supporting the big technology firms to the exclusion of British companies such as these two examples, is to miss the opportunity I hear of whenever I have a conversation , read an article or listen to a talk by those who operate in Quantum Computing.

That we have funded pension schemes, brilliant investment opportunities and changes to legislation that make investment in growth stocks more attractive than at any time this century, is a happy coincidence for us. Let’s not throw the chance away!

Maybe it is Pension Funds as well as Phasecraft and Riverlane who need to be brave , if British computing is to remain independent and ahead.