Haq's Musings

Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Showing posts with label Quantum Computing. Show all posts

Friday, June 12, 2026

Quantum Computing IPO Makes A British Pakistani Billionaire

Ilyas Khan, the British Pakistan founder of Quantinuum, became a billionaire in the company’s IPO on NASDAQ last week. Khan is a pioneer in the revolutionary field of quantum computing which could speed up computing by orders of magnitude. It will have a huge impact in AI and encryption. Dr. Irfan Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American professor of Physics at University of California at Berkeley, is another top expert in quantum computing.

Ilyas Khan, British Pakistani Founder of Quantinuum. Source: 2023 BLOOMBERG FINANCE LP

Quantinuum raised $1.68 billion in an initial public offering last week, making its founder Illyas Khan a billionaire, according to Forbes. The listing, which is the largest to date for a quantum startup, valued Quantinuum at over $15.6 billion after it sold 28 million shares at $60 each on June 3. Its shares opened at $58 per share on June 9. Khan, who owns around 15% of the company, is now worth $2.2 billion. Quantinuum uses a new type of quantum computer; rather than running on silicon chips, it instead uses ions trapped in place with lasers to execute computations.

Ilyas Khan is the founder and former CEO of Cambridge Quantum, which merged with Honeywell's quantum division to form Quantinuum, now regarded as a global leader in quantum technologies valued at over $15 billion. He is involved directly in Pakistan's technology sector, where he provides guidance on integrating high-level quantum technologies into Pakistan's growing tech infrastructure.

Dr. Irfan Siddiqui, Professor at UC Berkeley

In quantum computing, a qubit or quantum bit is the basic unit of quantum information—the quantum version of the classical binary bit physically realized with a two-state device. Here's how Dr. Siddiqui explained quantum computing in an interview with Design News:

"For me, any quantum technology, including quantum computing, is something that takes advantage of entanglement. And entanglement is the idea that if you have different pieces of matter and you put them together, they behave as a single unit. So, for example, each of the bits in a classical computer are independent of each other. If you flip one, it doesn't affect the one next to it. In quantum computers all of these bits have correlation with each other so they're all tied together like one big mass. In fact, the number of states that they can occupy is exponentially larger because of these linkages between neighboring elements. Quantum computing is the science of manipulating this entangled set of bits for some particular problem of interest in either fundamental science and computation or to do a simulation of the natural world."

Four of Ten Pakistani-American Founders of Unicorns

Pakistanis' footprint is growing in the western tech ecosystem. Ten Pakistani immigrants are included among founders or co-founders of unicorns in America, according to a recent study by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). A unicorn is a startup with a valuation of at least one billion U.S. dollars. Immigrant entrepreneurs of US unicorns are diverse, hailing from 76 different countries. India, with 96 companies, is the leading country of origin for the immigrant founders of U.S. billion-dollar companies. Immigrants from Israel founded the second-most billion-dollar companies with 60, followed by the United Kingdom (47), China (41), Canada (30), Russia (23), France (21), Germany (18), Ukraine (16), Australia (14), Pakistan (10) and Romania (10). Some companies were founded by entrepreneurs from the same country or immigrants from multiple countries.

Monday, October 2, 2023

Pakistani-Americans Rising Strength in Academia

Recent appointment of Karachi-born Irfan Siddiqui as Chairman of the Physics Department at the University of California at Berkeley highlights the growing numbers of Pakistani-Americans in the top ranks of the academia. Dr. Irfan Siddiqui is among the top US experts in quantum computing. He is also the head of Lawrence Livermore Quantum Computing Lab at UC Berkeley. He's also one of the architects of the United States Quantum Initiative backed by industry, academia and the federal government.

Pakistani-American Professor Dr. Irfan Siddiqui, Chairman of Physics Dept at UC Berkeley

In addition to Dr. Irfan Siddiqui, there are many other high-profile Pakistani-American academics. For example, astrophysicist Dr. Nergis Mavalvala is the Dean of the School of Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Asad Abidi is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Economist Dr. Asim Khwaja is Director of the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Atif Rehman Mian is a professor of Economics, Public Policy, and Finance at Princeton University. Lina Khan was a professor at Columbia University Law School before she was named Chairperson of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by President Joseph R. Biden. Dr. Mark Humayun is a professor of ophthalmology, biomedical engineering, and integrative anatomical sciences at University of Southern California (USC). Dr. Mansoor Mohiuddin is professor of medicine and director of Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland. Dr. Adil Najam is a professor of International Relations and of Earth and Environment at Boston University. These are just a few of high-profile Pakistani-Americans currently teaching at top universities in the United States.

As of today, Wikipedia lists 39 professors of Pakistani origin and 171 professors of Indian origin teaching at US universities.

Dr. Nergis Mavalvala (L) and Riaz Haq

As of 2019, there were 35,000 Pakistan-born STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) workers in the United States, according to the American Immigration Council. They included information technologists, software developers, engineers and scientists. These figures do not include 12,454 medical doctors from Pakistan.

Foreign-Born STEM Workers in America. Source: American Immigration Council

Foreign-born workers make up a growing share of America's STEM workforce. As of 2019, foreign-born workers made up almost a quarter of all STEM workers in the country. This is a significant increase from 2000, when just 16.4% of the country’s STEM workforce was foreign-born. Between 2000 and 2019, the overall number of STEM workers in the United States increased by 44.5 percent, from 7.5 million to more than 10.8 million, according to American Immigration Council.

India and Pakistan Among Top 10 Countries Receiving US Immigrant Visas. Source: Visual Capitalist

India topped the top 10 list of foreign-born STEM workers with 721,000, followed by China (273,000), Mexico (119,000), Vietnam (100,000), Philippines (87,000), South Korea (64,000), Canada (56,000), Taiwan (53,000), Russia (45,000) and Pakistan (35,000). Enormous number of Indian STEM workers in the United States can at least partly be attributed to the fact that India's "body shops" have mastered the art of gaming the US temporary work visa system. Last year, Indian nationals sponsored by "body shops" like Cognizant, Infosys and TCS received 166,384 H1B visas for work in the United States. By comparison, only 1,107 Pakistanis were granted H1B visas in Fiscal Year 2022. In addition to H1B work visas, 9,300 Indian nationals and 7,200 Pakistani nationals received immigrant visas to settle in the United States as permanent residents in 2021.

Doctor Brain Drain. Source: Statista

In addition to 35,000 Pakistan-born STEM workers, there were 12,454 Pakistan-born and Pakistan-trained medical doctors practicing in the United States, making the South Asian nation the second largest source of medical doctors in America. Pakistan produced 157,102 STEM graduates last year, putting it among the world's top dozen or so countries. About 43,000 of these graduates are in information technology (IT).

H1B Visas Issued in Pakistan. Source: Visagrader.com

H1B Visas Issued in India. Source: Visagrader.com

Every year, applicants sponsored by Indian body shops claim the lion's share of H1B visas. In 2022, Indians received 166,384 new H1B visas, accounting for nearly three quarters of all such visas issued by the US government. The figures reported as India IT exports are in fact the wages earned by millions of Indian H1B workers in the United States.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Pakistani-American Scientist Irfan Siddiqi is Top Expert in Quantum Computing

Karachi-born Pakistani-American Dr. Irfan Siddiqi is the head of Lawrence Livermore Quantum Computing Lab at the University of California at Berkeley. He's also one of the architects of the United States Quantum Initiative backed by industry, academia and the federal government.

Silicon Valley Diversity:

Dr. Siddiqi was recently featured on Silicon Valley-based NBC Press Here TV hosted by Scott McGrew. Others who made an appearance in the same show were Krishna Motukuri and Kevin Guo. Motukori is Indian-American founder of Zippin which is pushing automated checkout technology that will obviate the need for buyers to stand in line to pay. Amazon is already using this technology at Amazon Go stores. Kevin Guo is Chinese-American founder of AI startup Hive. This show was a good representation of Silicon Valley's diversity with many immigrant techies at its center. In fact, minorities are now majority is Silicon Valley.

Dr. Siddiqi's Background:

Dr. Siddiqi was born in Karachi, Pakistan. He came to the United States in his teen years with his family and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, Bronx, NY. Then he got his bachelor's degree from Harvard and Ph.D. at Yale where he worked on superconducting qubits, also written as q-bits. Dr. Siddiqi has been teaching at UC Berkeley since 2006.

Dr. Irfan Siddiqi

Quantum Computing:

In quantum computing, a qubit or quantum bit is the basic unit of quantum information—the quantum version of the classical binary bit physically realized with a two-state device. Here's how Dr. Siddiqui explained quantum computing in an interview with Design News:

"For me, any quantum technology, including quantum computing, is something that takes advantage of entanglement. And entanglement is the idea that if you have different pieces of matter and you put them together, they behave as a single unit. So, for example, each of the bits in a classical computer are independent of each other. If you flip one, it doesn't affect the one next to it. In a quantum computers all of these bits have correlation with each other so they're all tied together like one big mass. In fact, the number of states that they can occupy is exponentially larger because of these linkages between neighboring elements. Quantum computing is the science of manipulating this entangled set of bits for some particular problem of interest in either fundamental science and computation or to do a simulation of the natural world."

Quantum Computing Applications:

Top American tech companies are racing to build a new generation of powerful quantum computers backed by $1.3 billion commitment from US Congress to help them compete with the Chinese. Advanced quantum computing power will likely have many defense and intelligence applications like decrypting computer coded messages. Potential civilian applications include new drug discovery and artificial intelligence.

Summary:

Dr. Irfan Siddiqui is a Karachi-born Pakistani-American scientist engaged in leading edge research in quantum computing. He's part of the increasingly diverse technology workforce of Silicon Valley, California where immigrants from many emerging economies such as India, Pakistan and China are helping define the future.

Here's a video of Dr. Irfan Siddiqi speaking on quantum computing:

https://youtu.be/4dfoCf-noHE

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