The Quantum Bridge: Software Unlocks Carbon Nanotube Computing Power

PARIS and TEL AVIV, Israel – January 27, 2026 – In a significant move to accelerate the quantum computing industry, French hardware innovator C12 and Israeli software leader Classiq have announced a strategic partnership. The collaboration integrates C12's novel spin qubit processors, built from ultra-pure carbon nanotubes, with Classiq's enterprise-grade software platform, aiming to bridge the critical gap between next-generation hardware and practical application development.

This partnership tackles one of quantum computing's most persistent challenges: making powerful but esoteric hardware accessible to the developers and enterprises poised to benefit from it. By pairing a scalable software solution with a promising new qubit architecture, the two companies are laying down a crucial piece of infrastructure for the future of the quantum ecosystem.

The Carbon Advantage: A New Spin on Qubits

At the heart of C12's innovation lies a fundamental material science breakthrough: the use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to house their spin qubits. Unlike more established qubit modalities like superconducting circuits or trapped ions, spin qubits leverage the intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of an electron as the basis for quantum information. While promising, they have historically been vulnerable to environmental "noise," particularly from the material they are embedded in.

C12's approach directly confronts this challenge. By using CNTs—cylindrical molecules of carbon with remarkable properties—the company creates an exceptionally clean and quiet environment for its qubits. Researchers describe the result as the closest physical realization of a "single spin in a vacuum," effectively shielding the delicate quantum state from the charge noise and material imperfections that plague other solid-state systems, including silicon-based spin qubits.

The results of this material purity are striking. C12's technology has demonstrated world-record low levels of charge noise and a coherence time—the duration a qubit can maintain its quantum state—of 1.3 microseconds. This is an order of magnitude longer than silicon-based spin qubits under comparable conditions. Furthermore, these qubits can operate at a relatively high temperature of 300 millikelvins, which could simplify the complex and costly cryogenic systems required for many quantum computers, aiding future scalability.

Overcoming the historical difficulty of manufacturing with CNTs has been key. C12 has developed and patented a proprietary nano-assembly technique that allows these microscopic tubes to be precisely integrated onto standard semiconductor wafers, paving the way for scalable production.

Bridging the Chasm with Agile Software

While C12's hardware represents a significant leap forward, its potential would remain locked away without a way for developers to program it. This is where Classiq's platform enters the picture. Classiq has established itself as a leader in quantum software by focusing on a higher level of abstraction than typical software development kits (SDKs).

Instead of requiring developers to manually construct complex quantum circuits gate by gate, Classiq's platform allows them to define the high-level functional model of the algorithm they wish to run. Its powerful "synthesis engine" then takes over, automatically translating this functional description into an optimized, hardware-ready quantum circuit.

This process is not only automated but also hardware-aware. The synthesis engine tailors the final circuit to the specific characteristics of the target quantum processor, accounting for its unique gate set, qubit connectivity, and noise profile. This "design once, deploy anywhere" philosophy is crucial in today's diverse quantum landscape, where enterprises are hesitant to be locked into a single hardware technology. With this new integration, C12's spin qubits join a growing list of modalities supported by Classiq, which already includes superconducting, ion-trap, neutral atom, and photonic systems.

"Partnering with C12 to integrate an architecture that is dedicated to the highest quality qubits brings exciting new options to quantum developers," said Nir Minerbi, CEO and co-founder of Classiq. "Hardware diversity is increasing rapidly, and ensuring developers have access is more important than ever."

A Digital Twin for Future-Proofing Development

A central component of the new partnership is the integration of Classiq's platform with Callisto, C12's digital twin. Callisto is a sophisticated quantum emulator that simulates the behavior of C12's in-development carbon nanotube hardware, including its realistic physical parameters and noise characteristics.

The initial "Discovery edition" of Callisto supports up to 13 noisy qubits and models specific noise sources like charge noise, phonon noise, and qubit relaxation. It also includes advanced features like mid-circuit measurement, a critical capability for implementing error correction codes and more complex algorithms.

For developers, this offers a powerful advantage: the ability to build, test, and refine quantum algorithms on a highly accurate simulation of future hardware, long before the physical processors are widely available. This "future-proofing" of research and development allows organizations to build valuable intellectual property and gain intuition for how their algorithms will perform on C12's unique architecture. They can experiment with error mitigation strategies and benchmark performance in a risk-free cloud environment, dramatically accelerating the learning curve and reducing development costs.

"At C12, we believe quantum computing must move beyond theory and become a practical accelerator for the most demanding computational challenges," said Pierre Desjardins, C12’s CEO. "By working with Classiq, we empower developers today to harness tomorrow’s hardware, bridging the divide between breakthrough quantum hardware technology and usable quantum software."

The integration means developers can now use Classiq’s high-level Qmod language to design an algorithm, have the synthesis engine compile it for C12's architecture, and then execute it on the Callisto digital twin to see how it would perform. This seamless workflow from high-level idea to hardware-specific simulation represents a mature step forward in the quantum development lifecycle. This co-design approach, where software tools are built in tandem with hardware, is seen by many in the industry as essential for unlocking quantum's true potential and moving beyond the current noisy, intermediate-scale era. The joint solution between C12 and Classiq provides a scalable framework, starting with the Callisto digital twin and extending to C12's future physical quantum devices, ensuring that software development keeps pace with hardware innovation.