LG CNS and D-Wave Sign Quantum Optimisation MOU

LG CNS, the IT services arm of South Korea’s LG Group, has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with D-Wave Quantum to apply quantum computing to enterprise optimisation problems, the two companies said on Wednesday. Chief executives Hyun Shin-Gyoon and Alan Baratz announced it on stage at D-Wave’s Qubits Asia conference in Seoul, according to D-Wave’s release.

The plan is to put D-Wave’s annealing machines to work on scheduling, routing and resource-allocation problems for LG CNS clients in manufacturing, telecoms, finance and retail, first in South Korea and then in other markets. No money, customers or timetable were disclosed. D-Wave also filed the release with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and announced it on X.

What the two companies say they will do

According to the release, the companies intend to combine D-Wave’s annealing quantum computing technology with LG CNS’s industry knowledge, mathematical optimisation skills and systems integration experience. The stated goal is “moving applications from proof of concept into production”. They also intend to pursue joint go-to-market opportunities, meaning they plan to sell together.

LG CNS describes itself as an “AI transformation” company. The release says it already covers the full optimisation workflow, from defining a problem and building a mathematical model to validating algorithms and putting them into use, including for manufacturers and the public sector. It has also researched applying optimisation and quantum computing to image reconstruction and inspection, and to detecting underground anomalies.

“To generate meaningful results from quantum computing in industrial settings, quantum technology must be supported by a deep understanding of industries and strong optimization capabilities,” said Hyun. He said the partnership would “connect quantum computing to real-world customer problems and new business opportunities”.

Baratz said D-Wave’s annealing technology “is driving positive business outcomes for customers today”, and that LG CNS “understands both the optimization problems enterprises need to solve and the systems those solutions must work within”.

Optimisation means picking the best option from a huge number of possible combinations, such as the order in which to run jobs on a factory line or the routes for a delivery fleet. The release notes that as variables and constraints multiply, finding good answers within operational time limits gets harder. That is the class of problem D-Wave’s annealers are built for. Unlike gate-based machines, an annealer is designed to settle into low-energy states that correspond to good solutions.

Why an integrator matters more than another pilot

The interesting part of this deal is not the quantum hardware. It is the sales channel. Most enterprise quantum projects stall at the proof-of-concept stage because someone has to translate a messy business problem into a form a quantum machine can take, then wire the result back into the client’s planning software. That is systems-integration work, and it is what LG CNS sells. D-Wave’s release says its customers are “already running hybrid-quantum applications in production”. If true at scale, an integrator with big manufacturing and finance clients is the fastest way to add more.

LG CNS, for its part, is collecting partners. It has recently signed with Chainlink on digital-asset infrastructure and with HD Hyundai Electric on AI data-centre power. Quantum optimisation gives it another service to offer the same corporate customers.

The caution is in the wording. A memorandum of understanding is a statement of intent, and this one is explicitly non-binding. There is no named client, contract value or delivery date, and “international markets” are not specified. The test is whether the first joint project is announced with a customer’s name attached, and whether it reaches production rather than another trial.

D-Wave’s busy month

The LG CNS deal adds an Asian distribution partner to a run of D-Wave news. An Advantage2 system has arrived in Como, Italy for installation, and D-Wave has signed a multi-year chip-manufacturing deal with SkyWater in Minnesota. Rival Quantinuum, which builds gate-based machines, said this week that GE Vernova will use its Helios computer for superconductivity research.

The same 8-K filing carried a second D-Wave release about Japan. D-Wave said its customer Shionogi had won first place and ¥40m in the Quality of Life category of a quantum challenge run by NEDO, Japan’s state R&D agency, with drug-design research that partly used D-Wave hardware. NEDO itself announced the winners on 16 October without mentioning D-Wave. In the underlying study, 97% of molecules from a quantum-assisted generative model were chemically valid against 73% for its classical counterpart, though no lab tests were described. Japanese firms are also pooling effort on a NEDO-backed quantum and AI materials platform.

Watch for LG CNS to name its first quantum optimisation client. Until then, this is a partnership on paper.