Cracking quantum computing?

A tall order.

Good Morning Team.

We’re here to answer one question:

Can Nano-Gold Crack Quantum Computing’s Biggest Problem?

In December 2025, a new company went public on London’s Aquis Growth Market at 10p per share. Two months later, those shares are trading at 26p — a >160% gain that has catapulted Delta Gold Technologies from a £5.9 million market cap to circa £15.5 million.

They haven’t sold a single product. They don’t have a factory.

They don’t even have a patent yet.

What they do have is a research agreement with the University of Toronto, one of the world’s top quantum physics labs, to investigate whether nano-scale-gold (gold particles measured in billionths of a metre) possesses properties that could solve quantum computing’s most vexing challenge: creating stable, scalable qubits.

And if they succeed? Well, they’d be solving a problem that IBM, Google and Microsoft have collectively spent billions trying to crack.

To understand why nano-gold matters, you first need to understand the state of quantum computing in 2026.

Classical computers — the laptop you’re reading this on or perhaps the phone you keep in your right trouser pocket — process information in bits: ones and zeros.

A qubit, the fundamental unit of quantum computing, can exist in multiple states simultaneously through a phenomenon called superposition. This means a quantum computer with just 20 qubits can theoretically process over a million possible values at once.

The potential applications are staggering. Drug discovery that would take centuries could happen in weeks; financial models could predict market crashes before they happen; climate models could forecast disasters with unprecedented accuracy, and encryption that’s currently unbreakable could be cracked in minutes or even seconds.

Market researchers project the quantum computing sector will explode from $3.5 billion in 2025 to somewhere between $7 billion and $20 billion by 2030, depending on whose forecast you believe. McKinsey suggests the total economic value could reach $72 billion by 2035.

There’s just one problem: qubits are extraordinarily unstable.

Current quantum computers must operate at temperatures near absolute zero(that’s negative 459 degrees in Fahrenheit terms) inside massive fridges.

Even then, qubits lose their quantum state within milliseconds, or sometimes microseconds, through a process called decoherence. Heat, electromagnetic interference and even cosmic radiation can scramble the delicate quantum information.

Princeton University announced in November 2025 that they’d achieved qubit coherence of just over 1 millisecond — and described it as ‘a major breakthrough,’ the largest improvement in a decade. IBM’s latest Quantum Nighthawk processor, unveiled in late 2025, boasts 120 qubits but still requires extreme cooling.

As Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, put it bluntly: practical, widely useful quantum computing is likely ‘15 to 30 years away.’

This is where Delta Gold becomes an interesting bet.

In July 2025, researchers at Penn State published groundbreaking findings: gold nano-clusters (particles containing just a few dozen atoms) exhibit the same quantum spin properties as trapped atomic ions, currently the gold standard for quantum systems.

But unlike trapped ions, which exist as dilute gases and are ‘very difficult to scale up,’ these gold clusters can be synthesised in large quantities.

Ken Knappenberger, lead researcher at Penn State noted:

‘For the first time, we show that gold nanoclusters have the same key spin properties as the current state-of-the-art methods for quantum information systems. Excitingly, we can also manipulate an important property called spin polarization in these clusters, which is usually fixed in a material.’

The researchers identified 19 distinct spin-polarized states in the gold clusters and achieved spin polarization of up to 40% —competitive with leading two-dimensional quantum materials.

By modifying the surrounding molecular structures, they could tune the spin properties, creating what they called ‘super atoms’ that behave like individual atoms but with the scalability of solid materials.

Meanwhile, Stanford University announced that they’d developed a nanoscale device using engineered silicon and specialised materials that achieves quantum entanglement at room temperature.

Previous systems required temperatures just above absolute zero; this works at 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

‘If we can do that, maybe someday we could do quantum computing in a cell phone,’ said one of the researchers.

University of Toronto Bet

Delta Gold’s founder, Michael Jones, is a professional engineer who graduated from the University of Toronto in 1985. He’s spent 40 years founding companies and taking them public, including one that developed technology using platinum group elements that’s now in commercialisation.

In mid-2025, Delta Gold signed a CAD$3 million research sponsorship agreement with the University of Toronto — one of the world’s premier institutions for materials science and quantum technology.

The university ranks alongside MIT, Harvard, and IBM’s quantum research centers.

Leading the research is Professor Harry Ruda, who earned his PhD from MIT and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center — the birthplace of much of modern quantum computing research.

His work has been cited nearly 9,000 times.

He’s assembled a team of three senior researchers, three graduate students, and support staff, all working in dedicated laboratory space at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Nanotechnology.

The terms are remarkable: Delta Gold funds the research over three years, and in exchange, receives 100% exclusive global licensing rights to any intellectual property developed.

The university keeps just 1.5% of net sales.

As Jones explained in the company’s IPO documents: ‘We have the luxury of starting at the basic physics level of innovation without investment so far in a particular path. We recognize it is a long road to a fully developed system but also that an innovation at the basic physics level can be very revolutionary.’

Elsewhere:

‘The Delta Gold Technologies approach to achieve a stable qubit has not been utilized to our knowledge elsewhere in the world.’

-Corporate Deck, November 2025

Let’s be clear about what this is: it’s a highly speculative bet on early-stage research that may never produce a commercial product.

The research is in year one of a three year program. The first provisional patent hasn’t been filed yet. The team is still procuring equipment and finalising laboratory space. Success is far from guaranteed — even the company’s own materials acknowledge that ‘a working scalable and stable qubit is still elusive’ globally.

Delta Gold is competing against companies with infinitely deeper pockets. IBM spent years and billions developing quantum systems. Google achieved ‘quantum supremacy’ in 2019. Microsoft has entire divisions dedicated to quantum research.

Amazon offers quantum computing as a cloud service.

However, the top five shareholders control 57% of the company. And nearly 50% of shares are locked up for a year.

So liquidity is thin; hence the rise and capacity for further increases.

Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come from outsiders.

IBM, Google, and Microsoft are all heavily invested in specific quantum computing architectures — superconducting qubits, trapped ions and topological qubits. They have entire product roadmaps, manufacturing facilities and commercial partnerships built around these approaches.

Delta Gold, by contrast, is starting from scratch at the fundamental physics level. They’re not committed to any particular path.

If nano-gold proves to have unique properties for hosting stable qubits — and recent research from Penn State suggests it might —they could leapfrog years of incremental improvements by the tech giants.

Stanford has announced room-temperature quantum entanglement using novel materials. The quantum computing world has spent decades assuming extreme cooling was necessary. Suddenly, that assumption is being challenged.

Penn State’s gold nanocluster research was published just weeks ago. The field is moving fast — and in unexpected directions.

Delta Gold’s business model is also clever: they’re not trying to build quantum computers. They’re developing intellectual property to license to companies that will build quantum computers.

Their potential customers include Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google — companies with combined market caps in the trillions and R&D budgets in the billions.

As the company notes in its corporate materials: ‘Delta Gold’s early ideas, and potential innovations may be interesting to third parties given the scale of investment in early stage research by other larger companies.’

In other words, they don’t need to build a working quantum computer. They just need to develop IP that’s valuable enough for the tech giants to license.

Given how much money is pouring into quantum computing — an estimated $1 trillion in economic impact by 2035 — even partial success could be extraordinarily lucrative.

There’s another angle worth considering: scarcity value.

Most quantum computing investment is locked away in private companies or buried within the R&D budgets of tech giants. Pure-play quantum computing stocks are rare.

IonQ, Rigetti and D-Wave trade on US exchanges with billion-dollar valuations despite minimal revenues.

Delta Gold, at £15.5 million market cap with zero revenue, is offering UK investors something almost impossible to find: direct exposure to frontier quantum computing research, at a micro-cap valuation, with the potential for exponential returns if the research produces breakthrough IP.

Trailblazer valuations are possible.

The share price increase since IPO suggests the market is pricing in something. Maybe it’s speculation around the team announcement. Maybe it’s broader quantum computing enthusiasm following recent breakthroughs at Stanford and Penn State.

Maybe it’s simply momentum trading in a thinly-traded stock.

But it’s worth noting that even at 26p, Delta Gold’s enterprise value is around £13 million — less than the annual R&D budget of a single quantum computing lab at a major tech company.

What Happens Next

Delta Gold’s stated timeline calls for filing a provisional patent within 12 months — so sometime in 2026. The company plans to ‘seek out other research sponsorship agreements across the quantum computing space’ and establish a ‘centre of excellence’ by uniting leading quantum research universities.

Commercialisation isn’t expected until 2027-2028, assuming the research produces patentable innovations worth licensing.

The key milestones to watch:

• Mid-2026: First provisional patent filing would signal the team has discovered something potentially novel

• Late 2026: First tranche of founder shares (33%) becomes eligible for release from escrow — potential selling pressure

• Throughout 2026: Research updates, equipment procurement, additional university partnerships

• 2027: Targeted patent filings, identification of potential licensees

Delta Gold Technologies is not an investment for the faint of heart.

This is pre-revenue, pre-patent, pre-product speculative research that might produce nothing. A major tech company could announce a quantum computing breakthrough tomorrow that renders nano-gold obsolete.

But investors aren’t buying Delta Gold for what it has. They’re buying it for what it might discover.

Consider the asymmetry: at £15.5 million market cap, you’re essentially betting that a world-class quantum research team at the University of Toronto, working with cutting-edge materials science on one of computing’s hardest problems, might develop intellectual property valuable enough to license to companies spending billions on quantum computing.

If they succeed, even partially, the upside could be enormous. Recent research from Penn State and Stanford suggests nano-scale materials with novel quantum properties are attracting serious scientific attention.

The quantum computing market is projected to grow 30-40% annually through 2030. The tech giants are desperate for breakthroughs.

If they fail, you lose your investment.

This is the definition of high-risk, high-reward, but with better odds than most because it’s backed by legitimate research at a top-tier institution.

Just remember: the house always wins in quantum computing. Unless, of course, you’re the house that owns the patents.