ARPA-E has selected Phasecraft, the UK quantum computing company, to apply quantum algorithms in hydrogen catalyst discovery, thereby focusing on designs that use significantly less of the rare and expensive metal iridium.
Phasecraft, which, by the way, happens to be the leading quantum algorithms company of the world, on June 16, 2026, announced that it has won an award with the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy – ARPA-E of the U.S. Department of Energy so as to start work under the Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry – QC3 program. QC3 seeks to speed up energy innovation through supporting the creation and implementation of quantum computing methods for issues related to chemistry and materials science that are far beyond the capabilities of classical computers.
The Partnership
The $4.5M USD contract will see Phasecraft create highly optimized quantum algorithms that simulate and identify novel catalysts for application in the energy industry. The project will work to decrease the present dependence on critical minerals, especially platinum group metals, including iridium, which is utilized in catalysis. The initial emphasis is on low-cost hydrogen production, but the conclusions drawn are anticipated to be applicable across syngas production, petroleum refining, metallurgy, and various other industrial sectors where the economics are centered around the chemistry of catalysts.
Phasecraft will work on development of quantum algorithms in hydrogen catalyst in partnership with Harvard and QuEra, in addition to Johnson Matthey. The approach builds on the published work of Phasecraft in quantum materials simulation, in which the company’s algorithms have delivered efficiency gains of as much as 43,000,000x over prior quantum approaches.
According to the co-founder and CEO of Phasecraft, Ashley Montanaro, “Quantum computing is no longer a distant promise. It’s a working technology, and the question now is which problems it gets pointed at first. As industry and governments work together to realize the full promise of quantum computing, we are grateful that ARPA-E has chosen Phasecraft to help solve this critical set of problems on a meaningful timescale.”
Remarks Head of Phasecraft US and Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, Steve Flammia, “Hardware-adaptive quantum algorithms hold immense promise for priority problem sets across the U.S. government broadly, and the Department of Energy specifically. Cutting the iridium requirement in industrial electrolysis would meaningfully change the economics of hydrogen fuel and a wider class of catalytic processes that underpin energy security. Delivering significant quantum speedups with hardware-adaptive algorithms could help shape iridium requirements in a matter of years, not decades.”
Why at this point?
It is well to be noted that QC3 is part of a larger U.S. government push to turn the technical capabilities of quantum computing into a competitive advantage when it comes to the energy sector and the economy as well as national security.
The program focuses on areas of advanced batteries, superconducting transmission lines, and rare-earth-free magnets as well as new catalysts for fuel production, which are at the core of a more reliable and affordable American energy system. Being able to deliver on that timeline is about algorithms that can make useful outcomes from the flawed quantum hardware on hand today, not a future generation of machines. Phasecraft has a proven track record in terms of creating ultra-efficient, hardware-adaptive algorithms that deliver practical quantum applications that operate in the near term and enormous speedups over the classical state of the art.