Kristen Smith 
D-Wave Quantum has formed a government–focused business unit and appointed longtime government contracting executive Jack Sears to lead it as vice president of U.S. government business solutions.
Sears will oversee go-to-market strategy, application development and product support tailored to federal customers, with responsibilities covering secure systems designed to meet federal requirements, D-Wave said Tuesday.
Who Is Jack Sears?
The new D-Wave vice president brings nearly three decades of experience driving growth strategies across defense and aerospace markets, including profit-and-loss oversight, proposal development, price-to-win modeling and federal acquisition compliance.
Prior to joining D-Wave, Sears served as chief growth officer at Precise Systems. His career also includes senior leadership roles at Aquia, Parsons and Epsilon Systems Solutions. His experience spans mergers and acquisitions, federal contract capture and management of multibillion-dollar sales pipelines.
Why Does D-Wave Create a U.S. Government Business Unit?
D-Wave said the move reflects increasing demand from U.S. government leaders for quantum capabilities to support national defense and logistics challenges. Recent calls for quantum applications have come from senior officials within the Department of War and the service branches.
D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz said the dedicated unit is intended to help accelerate development of quantum applications aligned to national security, defense and infrastructure needs.
The company is working to expand adoption of its quantum technology for real-world government use cases, including through a multiyear collaboration with Davidson Technologies in Alabama. D-Wave recently announced that its Advantage2 quantum system is now operational at Davidson’s Huntsville headquarters, where it is expected to support mission-critical problems and, over time, run sensitive applications.
Sears said D-Wave is positioned to address government challenges now that the quantum system is operational.
“Now is the time to aggressively push quantum adoption in service of national security and defense,” he said.
