How Spain’s ICFO Helped Build a Quantum Security Startup for the AI Era

In Barcelona, Quside leverages photonic chip technology to generate high-quality, verifiable entropy—essential for cryptographic functions such as encryption keys, secure communications, and authentic... Read original →

Quside’s photonic-chip-based true random number generation is addressing a critical infrastructure gap at the AI–quantum security intersection. By leveraging quantum light emission instead of silicon noise, it delivers verifiable entropy that strengthens the trust foundation for post-quantum cryptography (PQC). This forces HSM vendors to redesign root-of-trust architectures and pressures foundries like TSMC to enhance EUV-enabled photonics integration below 3nm. With NIST SP800-90B certification, Quside gains regulatory tailwinds as EU’s Cyber Resilience Act and FIPS 140-3 updates raise compliance bars—marginalizing software-only entropy solutions. Against rivals like IDQ, Quside leverages ICFO’s R&D-to-fab pipeline for rapid IP iteration. Within 18 months, as NVIDIA and others embed hardware-rooted security in AI accelerators, on-chip quantum randomness will become standard in AI clusters, positioning Spain as a pivotal node in Europe’s quantum-safe supply chain.