King’s College London secured exclusive early access to Google Quantum AI’s Willow chip through an NQCC competition, the first formal sharing of Google’s premium quantum hardware with a British government institution.
The team will use Willow’s 105 physical qubits to simulate many-body interactions and build a mathematical model of biological neurons, targeting quantum dynamics that classical supercomputers cannot tractably compute.
Willow is Google’s successor to Sycamore and the first hardware to show below-threshold quantum error correction with a distance-7 surface code, alongside up to 100-microsecond coherence and 63-microsecond real-time error decoding.
NQCC specialists will work with Google engineers on the project, which sits within the UK’s £2.5 billion National Quantum Technologies Programme and is meant to speed progress toward practical quantum advantage.
The resulting software framework is intended for public-domain use across neuroscience, chemistry and materials science, with potential applications in photovoltaics, power-grid efficiency and drug discovery.
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Quantum Milestone: KCL Gains Early Access to Google's 105-Qubit Willow Processor, Advancing UK Science and Strategy
Overview
On May 28, 2026, King's College London announced it had secured exclusive early access to Google's advanced 105-qubit Willow quantum processor, marking the first time Google has granted such access to a British government institution. This partnership is a major milestone, setting a new standard for international scientific cooperation in quantum technology. The collaboration is expected to accelerate groundbreaking research in computational neuroscience and quantum systems, moving quantum computing from theory to real-world applications. Experts highlight Willow's ability to open the door for practical quantum machines, making KCL's exclusive access especially significant for future research and development.