At the same time, estimates from the US indicate that power consumption from IT applications has doubled over the past eight years, with the rise of AI. Researchers from California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggest that more than half of the electricity used by data centers will be used solely for AI by 2028.

This puts the rapid advance of the digital revolution at risk as energy demand can no longer be met. Traditional silicon chips, which draw power even when idle, are becoming a critical limitation. As a result, researchers worldwide are exploring alternative microelectronic technologies that are far more energy-efficient.

To address the challenge, the team will begin developing superconducting circuits on January 1. These circuits, which were first envisioned by Hungarian-American mathematician and physicist John von Neumann in the 1950s, exploit quantum effects to transmit data using extremely short voltage pulses.