Tech
IBM makes developing for quantum computers easier with the Qiskit Functions Catalog
IBM today launched the Qiskit Functions Catalog, a new set of services that aims to make programming quantum computers easier by abstracting away many of the complexities of working with these machines.
“I do think it’s the next big transition ince we put the quantum computer on the cloud,” Jay Gambetta, IBM’s VP in charge of its quantum programs, told me. “I’m looking forward to seeing what it can do and the only way that’s possible is with performant hardware, of course, but also performant software. To me, I’m as excited as when I put the quantum computer on the cloud to see how the community will react to it.”
Quantum computers continue to get bigger and better (and more error-corrected). And while we’re still at least a few years out from having machines that can run algorithms that would take impossibly long to compute on a classical computer, we are at a point where the current generation of machines is usable for at least a limited set of experiments. It’s one thing to have usable hardware, though. It’s another to write applications for that hardware.
Launched in 2017, IBM’s Qiskit is one of a handful of quantum programming frameworks that also include Microsoft’s Q# and Google’s Cirq, but it’s likely the one with the largest mindshare. The idea behind the Functions Catalog to enable domain experts — who may not be experts in managing quantum computers and their fickle ways — to start using quantum computing. A company like Qedma, for example, is putting its novel way of doing error mitigation into a function.
And that’s IBM’s overall approach here: work with the wider quantum computing industry to create this library of functions that, just like in programming a classical computer, developers can then call upon in their Qiskit-based applications. Other partners include Q-CRTL, Algorithmiq, and Qunasys. Like Qedma, Algorithmiq is contributing a service that focuses on error mitigation in noisy systems, while Qunasys is offering a service that aims to solve the ground state energy estimation problem, which has some fundamental applications for chemistry-related problems.
“What has driven the progress of software and compute in the classical world of abstraction is becoming a reality in the quantum world,” Gambetta said. Not many developers today, after all, focus on writing assembly. Yet in quantum computing, it’s not that long ago that developers had to figure out how to map their algorithms to quantum circuits for a specific target hardware. The Qiksit framework already abstracted much of this away and now the Functions Catalog aims to make it easier for non-quantum computing experts to take many of the innovations in the overall ecosystem and apply them to their problems.
“I think this is going to be as big as when we put the computer on the cloud because it’s going to transition everyone from having to learn what a quantum gate is and quantum circuits to ‘can I actually start to see how quantum computing will be injected into my workflow? And I don’t need to worry about these details. And this is just the start,” Gambetta said. He also stressed that it’s the continuous innovation in software and hardware, combined with the innovations from the larger partner ecosystem, that will bring a simplified developer experience to users that will, eventually, unlock quantum computing’s potential.
Now, Gambetta stressed that we’re not yet at the point where the company is targeting enterprise developers. “It’s gone from the physicist, to the computational scientist, to the chemist. […] It’s opening the aperture to really allow computer scientists to come in and to increase the technical breadth of what can be done with the quantum computer,” he said.
As part of today’s announcement, IBM is also launching Benchpress, a set of new benchmarks for quantum software development kits. Using over 1,000 tests (with only a handful written by IBM itself), IBM pitted Qiskit against BQSKit, Braket, Cirq, Stak and TKET. Qiskit, which IBM has been rewriting in Rust to make it more performant, typically outperforms the other SDKs by a wide margin. It was 13 times faster and transpiling and producing circuits, for example, and also created more efficient circuits in the process.
Tech
Revolut eyes valuation of up to $200B in eventual IPO
British neobank Revolut seems to be eyeing a major valuation bump when it eventually goes public. The company is targeting a market cap between $150 billion and $200 billion in an initial public offering, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous investor sources.
The fintech giant, which secured a full banking license in the United Kingdom in March after years of waiting, was most recently valued at $75 billion, up from $45 billion in 2024, in a secondary share sale that made it one of Europe’s most valuable private tech companies.
Revolut’s co-founder and CEO, Nik Storonsky, last week said that the company’s IPO was at least “two years away,” according to Bloomberg.
According to PitchBook and the Financial Times, the company is working on another secondary share sale, scheduled for the second half of 2026, that would value it at more than $100 billion.
As of November 2025, the company had raised a total of $5.89 billion, according to PitchBook. Revolut reported revenue of $6 billion in the financial year ended December 31, 2025, up from $4 billion in 2024. The company’s net profit grew to $1.7 billion, up from $1 billion in 2024, and counted 68.3 million retail customers at the end of 2025.
Revolut declined to comment.
Founded in 2015, Revolut offers a range of services spanning multi-currency accounts, payment and transfer services, crypto products, insurance, and more. The neobank has been pouring truckloads of cash into expanding its operations internationally, and recently applied for a banking license in the United States.
Besides the U.K., Revolut has a banking license in the European Union, and it operates in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil, and the U.S. Revolut launched operations in India last October, is about to start operating in Colombia this year, and has received a banking license in Mexico.
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Tech
Amazon taps Sweden’s Einride for its electric big rigs
Einride is adding 75 of its electric heavy duty trucks to Amazon’s Relay freight network as part of a deal that gives the Swedish startup a toehold in the e-commerce giant’s operations. Einride will also provide charging infrastructure across five locations in the United States, under the agreement announced Tuesday.
Amazon isn’t buying or operating the electric trucks. Instead, Einride will own and manage (using its own Saga AI software) the trucks, which can be used by drivers in Amazon’s Relay freight network. Relay, launched in 2017, is an app that truck drivers can use to book hauling gigs with Amazon.
Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli, who took over as chief nearly a year ago, said working with Amazon is a powerful validation of the startup’s technology and strategic vision.
“By deploying our intelligent platform within one of the world’s most sophisticated logistics networks, we are accelerating growth, while continuing to build industry-leading operational expertise,” he said in a statement.
Einride has gained attention and investment for its two-pronged approach to freight. The company has developed and now operates a fleet of about 200 heavy-duty electric trucks for companies like Heineken, PepsiCo, and Carlsberg Sweden in Europe, North America, and the UAE. It has also developed autonomous pod-like trucks, which stand out for their cab-less design.
The agreement with Amazon doesn’t include the autonomous pods.
Einride has landed this agreement at a critical time: The startup is finalizing a merger with blank-check company Legato Merger Corp. and is expected to go public soon.
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While the agreement might not carry the same weight for Amazon, which has a market cap of $2.7 trillion, it does contribute to its low-carbon goals. Amazon has said it wants to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040.
“This rollout is an important step forward in addressing one of the toughest challenges we face in decarbonizing our transportation network — electrifying heavy-duty trucking,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We’re excited to continue to collaborate with Einride and learn from these operations as the trucks hit the road.”
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Tech
YouTube expands its AI likeness detection technology to celebrities
YouTube is expanding its new “likeness detection” technology, which identifies AI-generated content, such as deepfakes, to people within the entertainment industry, the company announced on Tuesday.
The technology works similarly to YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users’ uploaded videos, allowing rights owners to request removal or share in the video’s revenue.
Likeness detection does the same, but for simulated faces. The feature is meant to help protect creators and other public figures from having their identities used without their permission — a common problem for celebrities who find their likenesses have been used in scam advertisements.
The technology was first made available to a subset of YouTube creators in a pilot program last year before expanding more broadly to include politicians, government officials, and journalists this spring.
Now YouTube says the technology is being made available to those in the entertainment industry, including talent agencies, management companies, and the celebrities they represent. The company has support from major agencies like CAA, UTA, WME, and Untitled Management, which offered feedback on the new tool.
Use of the likeness detection tool does not require entertainers to have their own YouTube channels.
Instead, the feature scans for AI-generated content to detect visual matches of an enrolled participant’s face. Users can then choose to request removal of the video for privacy policy violations, submit a copyright removal request, or do nothing. YouTube notes that it won’t remove all content, as it permits parody and satire content under its rules.
In the future, the technology will support audio as well, the company says.
Related to this, YouTube has also been advocating for similar protections at a federal level, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in Washington, D.C. This would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized re-creations of an individual’s voice and visual likeness.
The company hasn’t yet said how many removals of AI deepfakes have been managed by the tool so far, but noted in March that the amount of removals was still “very small.”
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