Honeywell In Merger With Software Firm

Honeywell International plans to spin off its quantum computing business and merge it with a software firm to form a new company that is likely to trade publicly, reported Bloomberg.

Honeywell will own a 54% stake of the venture after combining the business with Cambridge Quantum Computing, a London-based specialized software firm that will own the remaining 46%. Honeywell has committed to investing up to US$300 million in the company, which may seek to sell shares to the public, said Tony Uttley, who heads Honeywell’s quantum computing business and will be president of the new entity.

“We are setting up this company to accelerate. This is truly about hyper-scaling,” Uttley said in an interview Tuesday, June 8. “You put the capital in now and grow massively.”

Honeywell scientists have been working to build a quantum computer, which could be vastly more powerful than traditional computers, for about a decade with tools from its energy and aerospace units. The effort has thrown Honeywell’s hat in the ring to be among the first to build a practical quantum computer, a race pitting it against a number of startups and tech giants including International Business Machines and Alphabet’s Google.

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