D-Wave announced on 15 October 2026 that an Advantage2 quantum-annealing computer had arrived at Villa Saporiti in Como, Lombardy. The installation, called VoltaB1 inside the Q-Alliance ecosystem, is scheduled for formal inauguration on 16 October and is described by D-Wave as Italy’s first on-premises annealing quantum computer.
What arrived in Como
VoltaB1 is an on-premises D-Wave Advantage2 system being installed at Villa Saporiti. Unlike a cloud-only service, an on-premises machine places the hardware in Italy, giving participating organizations a local facility for research, training and experiments while still allowing approved users to work remotely.
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The deployment is part of Q-Alliance, an initiative intended to build a physical hub for Italian and European quantum-computing work. The announced objective is to move beyond education and exploratory research toward production applications for industry.
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How the installation is funded and who can use it
Swiss Quantum Technology SA (SQT) is financing the deployment under a €10 million agreement. SQT has acquired 50% of the system’s capacity for five years and holds an option to purchase the entire system. The announcement does not state the price or terms that other users will pay.
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After configuration, the machine is intended to serve European researchers, universities and companies. Access is planned in two forms:
- On-site capacity: eligible projects can use the physical installation in Como, subject to the operating arrangements set by Q-Alliance and its partners.
- Remote access: users are expected to connect through D-Wave’s Leap cloud service. D-Wave’s support documentation lists Italy as a Leap-supported country.
A public reservation process, queue policy and service-level terms for VoltaB1 had not been specified in the announcement, so organizations should not assume that general Leap access automatically guarantees time on the Italian installation.
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Advantage2 specifications
| Specification | What has been announced | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Qubits | More than 4,400 | D-Wave figure in its 2026 announcement |
| Couplers | More than 40,000 | D-Wave product documentation for Advantage2_system1.1 |
| System generation | Advantage2; Advantage2_system1.1 generally available | Product documentation published by D-Wave in 2025 |
| Processing approach | Quantum annealing | Designed primarily for optimization and related sampling workloads, rather than the gate operations used by gate-model quantum computers |
D-Wave says Advantage2 uses a lower-noise fabrication stack than the previous Advantage generation. The company also reports higher energy scales, longer coherence and lower noise. Those are vendor specifications; no independent measurement of the Como installation was reported with the delivery announcement.
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteAnnealing is different from a gate-model quantum computer
Quantum annealing encodes an optimization problem into an energy landscape. The machine searches for low-energy states that correspond to good solutions, making the approach relevant to scheduling, routing, assignment and other combinatorial problems. A gate-model system instead applies a sequence of quantum gates and is intended for a broader set of algorithms, including approaches being studied for chemistry, cryptography and general-purpose quantum computation.
That distinction matters when evaluating VoltaB1. Its qubit count is not directly comparable to the logical-qubit or gate-count claims made for gate-model machines. The useful question is whether a specific business or scientific problem can be expressed in the form supported by the annealer and whether the resulting solution improves on the organization’s existing classical workflow.
What Italian companies are expected to try
D-Wave chief executive Alan Baratz pointed to logistics, shipping and manufacturing as Italian sectors with problems that could benefit from quantum annealing. In an ANSAcom interview published on 15 October 2026, he said: Potranno risolvere questi problemi molto più velocemente, con soluzioni, se non ottimali, che migliorano le loro attività
. In English, his stated meaning was that companies could solve such problems much faster, obtaining solutions that improve operations even when they are not mathematically optimal.
Baratz also said Italian businesses often simplify complex problems because classical computers cannot handle their full complexity. That is an executive explanation of the opportunity, not an independently measured result from VoltaB1. Practical projects are likely to involve translating real constraints into an optimization model, comparing the annealer’s output with existing algorithms and checking whether any improvement survives operational and cost constraints.
What D-Wave claims about performance
D-Wave says the Advantage2 platform has demonstrated an advantage over classical computing on a difficult materials-simulation problem. The claim is specific to the company’s reported demonstration and should not be read as proof that every workload, or the Italian installation, will outperform classical systems.
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No independent benchmark or measured customer outcome from the Como machine had been reported at the time of delivery. The hardware still required installation and configuration, and the inauguration was scheduled for the following day. Results from future users will need to identify the problem, classical baseline, embedding or programming method, runtime and operating conditions before a meaningful comparison can be made.
Why the Italian deployment matters
Most organizations interested in quantum computing have had to rely on remote services or laboratory partnerships outside their country. A functioning installation in Como can provide a nearby environment for university courses, workforce training, algorithm development and joint projects between European researchers and companies. Physical access also gives teams a place to study integration, scheduling and operational practices that are difficult to learn from software access alone.
The arrangement combines local infrastructure with cloud reach: SQT receives a defined share of capacity for five years, while Q-Alliance intends to make the system available to a wider European research and business community. Whether that model produces sustained industrial use will depend on the quality of applications, access rules and independently verified results after deployment.
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What is known—and what is not
- Known: the system arrived in Lombardy on 15 October 2026, is located at Villa Saporiti in Como, is identified as VoltaB1 within Q-Alliance and is scheduled for inauguration on 16 October.
- Known: the deployment is backed by a €10 million SQT agreement, with 50% of capacity purchased for five years and an option for the full system.
- Known: Advantage2 is described with more than 4,400 qubits and more than 40,000 couplers, and remote use is intended through Leap.
- Not yet established: independent performance measurements, customer savings, a public booking procedure, or evidence that the Como installation has beaten a classical system on an Italian production workload.
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