D-Wave Brings Italy’s First Annealing Quantum Computer to Como

D-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS ) announced on October 15, 2026, that an Advantage2 annealing quantum computer with more than 4,400 qubits has arrived in Lombardy, Italy, for installation at Villa Saporiti in Como. Funded by Swiss Quantum Technology SA (SQT), the machine is Italy’s first annealing quantum computer, the company said in an investor relations release issued at Digital Innovation Forum 2026.

Referred to within the Q-Alliance ecosystem as the VoltaB1, the system will give European researchers, universities and businesses access to production-grade annealing quantum computing technology once installed, according to D-Wave. The company describes itself as the only dual-platform quantum computing company providing annealing and gate-model systems, software and services.

“Bringing Italy’s first annealing quantum computer to Como marks a historic milestone toward making quantum computing a working capability for Italian innovation and industry,” said D-Wave chief executive Dr. Alan Baratz. He said Italy has exceptional scientific talent and industrial strength, and that with SQT and Q-Alliance the company can give Italian teams the technology and hands-on experience to tackle complex problems, develop applications that can move into production and build expertise in the country.

The €10 Million SQT Agreement

The arrival follows a €10 million agreement between D-Wave and SQT to deploy an annealing quantum computer in Europe. Under the agreement, SQT acquired 50% of the system’s capacity for five years and holds an option to purchase the full system. Once operational, the Advantage2 will be accessible through D-Wave’s Leap real-time quantum cloud service, which the company said offers 99.9% availability and uptime.

“The arrival of the Advantage2 system in Lombardy puts physical infrastructure behind our vision for Italian quantum innovation,” said Thomas F. Darden, acting CEO of SQT. Darden said the investment is intended to connect researchers and businesses with advanced computing resources, support the development of useful applications and help build the expertise that will sustain Italy’s role in the quantum economy.

D-Wave first announced the agreement on October 15, 2025, at Digital Innovation Forum – ComoLake 2025, describing it as a €10 million commitment from SQT with an option to purchase the system, according to the company’s newsroom release at the time. That announcement said the placement of the Advantage2 system supports the newly formed Q-Alliance, an initiative intended to give Italy new global infrastructure in quantum computing to support the country’s digital transformation, and said the SQT-funded system would be accessible to customers via the Leap cloud service.

In the 2025 release, Baratz called the agreement an important milestone in D-Wave’s ongoing effort to expand global access to its fleet of annealing quantum computers and to help its customer base solve computationally complex problems. Enrico De Mitri, SQT’s CEO at the time of that announcement, said traditional computing was reaching its limits in performance and energy efficiency, and that hosting an Advantage2 system reinforced SQT’s commitment to meeting the growing need for advanced computation without accelerating energy consumption.

Q-Alliance and the Volta Declaration

Q-Alliance brings together D-Wave, IonQ and academic and industrial partners, and connects quantum technology companies, the scientific community and industry to develop research programs and evaluate applications of advanced computing. A Scientific High Council guides the research agenda, connecting expertise in physics, mathematics, statistics and computational science, with an emphasis on well-defined problems, reproducible methods and measurable outcomes, according to the alliance.

The alliance’s research agenda proposes 26 strategic programs across eight domains. Areas outlined by Q-Alliance include materials, artificial intelligence, finance, life sciences, infrastructure, and governance and insurance, with listed topics spanning quantum simulation and materials design with QUBO models, quantum neural networks and generative models, portfolio optimization, Monte Carlo pricing, credit risk and fraud detection, drug discovery and protein-folding optimization, routing, traffic and HPC scheduling, and socio-economic simulation, risk aggregation and reinsurance optimization. Q-Alliance states that the performance and practical relevance of these areas remain questions for investigation.

The system placement follows D-Wave’s signing of the Volta Declaration at the World Tech Conference in Milan in June 2026, which established a framework for cooperation on quantum, artificial intelligence and sovereign computing infrastructure. Q-Alliance dates the declaration, titled “On Quantum, Artificial Intelligence and Sovereign Computing Infrastructures,” to Milan on June 25, 2026, and said its Volta Forum provides a platform for scientific exchange, technology transfer and policy dialogue.

The alliance also runs the Great Challenge, which invites academic and industrial teams to formulate real-world NP-hard optimization problems as Ising or quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) models for quantum annealing and hybrid solvers. Q-Alliance said evaluation focuses on model clarity, hardware compatibility, scalability, reproducibility and solution quality, and that quantum and hybrid approaches must be assessed against appropriate classical baselines.

D-Wave describes the Advantage2, which features more than 4,400 qubits, as its most advanced annealing quantum computer. The company said the system has demonstrated the ability to outperform classical computing on a complex materials simulation problem that would have taken one of the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers nearly one million years and the world’s annual electricity consumption to solve. According to D-Wave, organizations across aviation, manufacturing, telecommunications and health care are using the Advantage2 on problems spanning optimization, materials simulation and artificial intelligence. The October 2025 announcement described the system as an energy-efficient quantum computer designed to facilitate quantum and hybrid quantum applications for production deployment.

The VoltaB1 is scheduled for formal inauguration on October 16, 2026, at Q-Alliance’s “Quantum per l’Italia” event at Villa Saporiti, with Baratz delivering remarks alongside representatives from research, industry and government, in the lead-up to the bicentennial of Alessandro Volta’s death. Q-Alliance’s event listing sets the ceremony for 12:00 CEST and describes it as the inauguration of Volta B1, a quantum system with over 4,400 qubits.