Nvidia joined a host of Israeli companies in forming a coalition to develop quantum secure communications network technologies.

The Post-Quantum Communications (PQC) Consortium is led by cybersecurity and network intelligence firm Allot. The effort ties together the chip giant along with Israeli academic institutions, quantum software development firms, and enterprise security vendors to create protections against future quantum computing threats across multiple network layers.

The Allot-led group will develop and evaluate technologies based on PQC – which leverages cryptographic algorithms to secure data and communications – along with quantum key distribution (QKD), which employs the quantum state of photons to generate symmetric keys to instantly detect fiber-optic eavesdropping.

The Technological Infrastructure Division of the Israeli government’s Innovation Authority is supporting the project, which will also look at hybrid approaches combining both PQC and QKD to develop mechanisms capable of securing Ethernet, internet protocol, mobile, data center, and satellite-based communications.

“The transition to quantum-safe communications is one of the most important cybersecurity challenges facing the world today," Allot CTO Yaakov Stein noted. “We are proud that Allot is a founding member of this initiative, working alongside Nvidia, Rad, leading technology innovators, and Israel’s top academic institutions. Together, we will help create the technologies needed to protect global communications networks, enterprises, and users in the quantum era.”

The PQC Consortium’s formation comes as quantum computing – and the potential security headaches the technology could bring – creep ever closer. Google earlier this year set a 2029 deadline for PQC migration, a timeline later echoed by Cloudflare, though not every vendor is on the same page.

Nvidia’s involvement in the group is notable given its increasingly engaging in the realm of quantum computing in what represents a complete departure from CEO Jensen Huang’s poorly received comments about the technology’s maturity at CES last January.

In the year since, the chip giant and self-proclaimed “largest networking company in the world” has backed a handful of quantum computing developers, including PsiQuantum, QuEra, and Quantinuum. It also unveiled NVQLink, which it bills as an open architecture for interconnecting quantum and classical computers, with Quantinuum, QuEra, and IonQ having signed up in support of the architecture.