BTQ Provides Update on Fundraising, Listing Debut on the NEO exchange, and Corporate Development Roadmap
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- Over two financing rounds BTQ has raised over $14 million, allowing for multi-year runway for commercialization of multi-product pipeline
- BTQ has established key partnerships with leading research institutions
- BTQ has grown to over 30 employees (>70% focused on R&D) across its offices located in Canada, Taiwan, Australia, Japan, and Liechtenstein
VANCOUVER, BC, March 1, 2023 /CNW/ - BTQ Technologies Corp. (the "Company" or "BTQ") (NEO: BTQ), a global quantum technology company focused on securing mission critical networks announced that on Tuesday, February 21, 2023, BTQ entered its next phase of growth by going public on the Toronto-based NEO Exchange.
The Company is in discussions with exchanges for the cross-listing of BTQ in the US, Europe, and other venues globally. The Company previously raised an initial funding round of $6.8 million and closed its second fundraising round of $7.2 million in tandem with the listing. This new capitalization will help fund the Company's growth plans and provide ample liquidity to pursue R&D, its roadmap to commercialization and strategic investments. In addition to its existing funding, BTQ is actively exploring a variety of grants and potential strategic investments to maintain its position as a leader in the post-quantum security space.
The quantum computing industry is developing at a rapid pace, with leading nation-states allocating tens of billions of dollars toward quantum research programs. In January, the Government of Canada launched a National Quantum Strategy, backed by an investment of $360 million, with a focus on translating research into scalable commercial products and services. Researchers in China, a country that holds 53% of quantum technology-related patents and has US$15 billion of capital ready to deploy toward quantum technology before 2025, recently claimed that they devised a method to break the RSA algorithm, which is the fundamental basis of secure internet communication. Despite some doubts about the reliability of this publication, quantum technology activity in China is undoubtedly accelerating and is a key geopolitical consideration for developed countries across the globe. To further highlight this, on December 21, 2022, President Biden signed into law H.R.7535, the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, which encourages "federal government agencies to adopt technology that will protect against quantum computing attacks." This marks a major milestone in the global effort to develop and deploy quantum-resilient cybersecurity and further highlights the pressing need for quantum solutions across industries.
One industry especially threatened by quantum computing is blockchain. All blockchains will need to transition to post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) standards just as they initially embraced classical standards. Take Ethereum, the second largest blockchain by market capitalization, as an example. Their publicly released roadmap, published by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, has post-quantum security upgrades as a core area of focus. Unfortunately, this opens up a new problem: PQC algorithms tend to be much more expensive than their classical counterparts in terms of size. This is particularly problematic for blockchains where each full node keeps an entire record of all activities on the blockchain. If Bitcoin and Ethereum were to adopt the newly standardized PQC algorithms today, the size of both chains would explode. Even with the most space-efficient Falcon algorithm, public keys and digital signatures would consume 21.2x and 24.3x more space in Bitcoin and Ethereum, with the size of their respective ledgers increasing by 2.2x and 2.22x. These performance issues have widespread implications, affecting transaction speed, gas prices, and even the decentralization of the entire network.
BTQ's engineering team has been pursuing a diversified range of products geared towards accelerating quantum advantage across core cryptographic infrastructure in line with the standardization of post-quantum encryption technology that has been led by the US government and global standards bodies. The team has identified a specific near-term use case for quantum security within blockchain technology environments.
In July 2022, the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced the standardization of three post-quantum digital signature algorithms: CRYSTALS–Dilithium, Falcon, and SPHINCS+. Upgrading blockchain security is not as simple as dropping in a PQC algorithm as a replacement for current algorithms. PQScale, BTQ's proprietary post-quantum signature aggregation algorithm, can combine multiple FALCON signatures and reduce the aggregated signature size by a factor of around 12.5x when aggregating around two thousand signatures. It also has the potential to generalize and apply to other lattice-based digital signature algorithms. This cloud-based SaaS will offer blockchain clients a unique combination of quantum-resistant defense against quantum-based attacks and an innovative scaling technique that will accelerate transactions and reduce costs.
Keelung is a domain-specific language (DSL) that is designed for creating zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). With Keelung, developers can create high-quality and reliable ZKPs with ease, even without expertise in cryptography.
Kenting is a hardware offering for accelerating zero knowledge proof (ZKP) generation. Initially, Kenting is targeting FPGA and GPU implementations for accelerating FFT, which plays an important part in ZKP computation.
QCIM is a hardware offering for general purpose post-quantum computation, with a focus on lower power applications such as the internet of things.
"Migrating to a post-quantum cyberspace is a long road with lots of work needed to be done fast", said Chen Mou Cheng, Chief Cryptographer of BTQ. "Leaders and influencers around the world have rolled up their sleeves and got to work. We are excited to see that BTQ is actively playing a small but increasingly central role in this grand scheme with our diverse product lines and comprehensive technology roadmap."
"Gaining access to capital through our successful fundraising rounds and listing on the NEO exchange marks a significant milestone for BTQ, allowing us to pursue our ambitious roadmap for the commercialization of our multi-product pipeline," said Olivier Roussy Newton, CEO of BTQ. "We remain committed to further R&D in accelerating quantum advantage, expanding our global presence, and remaining at the forefront of the quantum technology industry to provide mission-critical network security solutions."
Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is one of the world's leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. Jointly, BTQ and ITRI are pioneering a semiconductor technology that discards the traditional von-Neumann computing architecture in favor of so-called Compute-In-Memory (CIM) technology, which supports higher data bandwidth between computing and memory elements as well as lower memory access latency. The joint work of BTQ and ITRI will aim to provide area-and-energy-efficient quantum-secure solutions for critical networks and the billions of devices connected through them.
BTQ also signed a multi-year partnership with Macquarie University on quantum intellectual property development. The R&D efforts are being led by Professor Gavin Brennen, Director of Macquarie Centre for Quantum Engineering and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre for Excellence in Engineered Quantum Systems. Professor Brennen is also an executive board member of the Sydney Quantum Academy and is a strategic advisor to BTQ. He recently sat on a panel representing BTQ at Quantum Australia alongside industry leaders from both the public and private sectors.
BTQ currently employs 30+ employees across Liechtenstein, Canada, Japan, Taiwan and Australia. Current corporate leadership includes:
- Olivier Roussy Newton, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board. Previously founded HIVE Blockchain Technologies (NASDAQ: HIVE), Latent Capital, and Valour (NEO: DEFI)
- Nicolas Roussy Newton, Chief Operating Officer and Director. Partner at Latent Capital, focused on quantum technologies. Previously Consultant at Github Inc.
- Chen-Mou Cheng, Chief Cryptographer. Harvard PhD in Computer Science with >2340 citations; previously Professor at National Taiwan University
- Po-Chun Kuo, Chief Technology Officer. PhD, Institute of Electronics Engineering at National Taiwan University. Post-quantum cryptographer with >200 citations
- Ming Chih, Chief Strategy Officer. M.Sc in Computer Science, National Taiwan University. Previously founded Chelpis Quantum
- Peter Lavelle, Chief Legal Officer. Canada-qualified lawyer. Previously at Winkler Partners. JD from University of Saskatchewan, LL.M from Peking University.
- Wei Chih Hong, Head of Hardware. Professor of Engineering at Feng Chia University, post-quantum cryptographer with >10 publications and 49 citations
- Jimmy Hu, Head of Software Engineering. B.Sc and M.Sc in Electronics Engineering.
- Chris Tam, Head of Partnerships. M.E.Sc and B.Sc, Computer Science, Western University. Previously Data Engineering at EQ Works
- Mathieu Gauthier, Head of Corporate Development. MBA, UBC Sauder School of Business. Previously Scotiabank Investment Banking
- Bryan Tan, General Counsel. Dual-qualified lawyer (England, Wales, and Hong Kong). LLB Graduate from University of Hong Kong
- Kaori Tanaka, Head of BTQ Japan. Previously Knowledge Manager at Interbrand and Strategic Assistant at Nomura Securities
The Company's leadership team will also be attending a number of conferences in the coming months starting with the blockchain-focused ETHDenver taking place from February 24th to March 5th where Chris Tam, Head of Partnerships, will be leading a live demo of the Company's marquee zero-knowledge development product Keelung. From March 1st to March 6th, the team will be at the Quantum Beach conference in order to meet with companies, investors, and potential partners across the quantum technologies industry. Mathieu Gauthier, Head of Corporate Development, will be speaking on the quantum security panel on Friday, March 3rd.
BTQ was founded by a group of post-quantum cryptographers with an interest in addressing the urgent security threat posed by large-scale universal quantum computers. With the support of leading research institutes and universities, BTQ is combining software and hardware to safeguard critical networks using unique post-quantum services and solutions.
Connect with BTQ: Website | LinkedIn
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Olivier Roussy Newton
CEO, Director
For further information:
E: [email protected]
Neither the NEO nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of any of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful, including any of the securities in the United States of America. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "1933 Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) unless registered under the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws, or an exemption from such registration requirements is available.
Certain statements herein contain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Such forward-looking statements or information include but are not limited to statements or information with respect to the business plans of the Company, including with respect to its research partnerships, and anticipated markets in which the Company may be listing its common shares. Forward-looking statements or information often can be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "intend", "expect", "plan" or "may" and the variations of these words are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information.
The Company has made numerous assumptions including among other things, assumptions about general business and economic conditions, the development of post-quantum algorithms and quantum vulnerabilities, and the quantum computing industry generally. The foregoing list of assumptions is not exhaustive.
Although management of the Company believes that the assumptions made and the expectations represented by such statements or information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that forward-looking statements or information herein will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking statements and information are based on assumptions and involve known and unknown risks which may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, expressed or implied, by such forward-looking statements or information. These factors include risks relating to: the availability of financing for the Company; business and economic conditions in the post-quantum and encryption computing industries generally; the speculative nature of the Company's research and development programs; the supply and demand for labour and technological post-quantum and encryption technology; unanticipated events related to regulatory and licensing matters and environmental matters; changes in general economic conditions or conditions in the financial markets; changes in laws (including regulations respecting blockchains); risks related to the direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 including, but not limited to, its impact on general economic conditions, the ability to obtain financing as required, and causing potential delays to research and development activities; and other risk factors as detailed from time to time. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
SOURCE BTQ Technologies Corp.
Olivier Roussy Newton, CEO, Director, E: [email protected]
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