Software Analyst Intern

Japanese industrial conglomerate Hitachi operates across digital systems, energy, mobility and industrial equipment, with nuclear operations housed within its Green Energy & Mobility segment. The segment handles nuclear power plant design, supply, reactor control systems and fuel cycle services. Revenue is distributed across Energy (¥3,464.3 billion), Connective Industries (¥3,352.3 billion), Digital Systems & Services (¥3,012.3 billion), Mobility (¥1,380.6 billion) and Others (¥534.1 billion). Hitachi holds a market capitalisation of approximately ¥24,888.2 billion. The company's nuclear business relies on long-term plant construction and maintenance contracts. Management aims to improve margins through grid modernisation, AI-enabled control systems and portfolio streamlining. Analysts note risks including high project complexity, dependence on external funding for capital-intensive projects and the need to secure steady order intake to justify current valuation levels.

Mitsubishi and Hitachi partner to enhance power-trading for grid-scale batteries. Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. and Hitachi, Ltd. have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a cooperative framework aimed at delivering advanced power-trading support services for grid-scale battery operators. The collaboration will integrate Mitsubishi's MERSOL service with Hitachi's Power Trading System, creating a unified Power Trading Service. The service, set to launch in fiscal year 2027, aims to streamline operations by providing seamless support from automated bid planning to actual market transactions. This integration will allow operators to internalize sophisticated trading operations, which are often outsourced, thereby improving profitability and scalability. As Japan accelerates its renewable energy expansion to meet carbon neutrality goals by 2050, grid-scale batteries play an essential role in balancing supply and demand. The new service will help battery businesses navigate multiple markets such as the Japan Electric Power Exchange and the Electric Power Reserve Exchange, enhancing their ability to conduct strategic trading in-house. By automating complex trading workflows, the service is expected to reduce outsourcing costs, enable faster decision-making, and allow companies to accumulate valuable operational expertise. This will not only enhance profitability but also make it easier for operators to scale their business operations across multiple battery-storage sites. Through this partnership, Mitsubishi and Hitachi aim to support the growth of grid-scale battery businesses, contributing to a sustainable and carbon-neutral society. The companies plan to offer their respective systems as standalone solutions, in addition to the integrated service, to further support the sector's expansion.

IMS unveils Japan's first full-stack neutral-atom quantum computer "Shunkai," Now operational. Aug 25, 2026, 3:00 AM ET OKAZAKI, Japan, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Institute for Molecular Science (hereinafter "IMS"), National Institutes of Natural Sciences, announced on August 24 that Japan's first full-stack neutral-atom quantum computer "Shunkai," developed by a research team led by Professor Kenji Ohmori, is now operational. Quantum computers are being developed in various modalities worldwide. However, there remain challenges to address for their practical applications, such as scalability and error correction during computation. Anticipated to overcome those challenges, neutral-atom quantum computing has been rapidly attracting attention from industry, academia and government worldwide as a groundbreaking new modality. Neutral-atom quantum computing uses a single atom as a qubit (*1) and has exceptional features, including: - Room-temperature operation without the need for a refrigerator. - Achieve quantum entanglement (*2) (the source of quantum speedup) between arbitrary qubits by moving the atoms (qubits) during computations. - Flexibly optimize qubit configuration for each algorithm. - Relatively easy to increase the number of qubits. - Long lifetime of quantum information in each qubit. At the IMS, Professor Ohmori is the project manager leading the neutral-atom quantum computing research and development team for the project "Large-scale and high-coherence fault-tolerant quantum computer with dynamical atom arrays" under the Cabinet Office/JST Moonshot Research and Development Program Goal 6, "Realization of a fault-tolerant universal quantum computer." Aiming at practical quantum computers, the team has developed Japan's first full-stack neutral-atom quantum computer named Shunkai (see Fig. 1). A "full-stack" system, as shown in Fig. 2, refers to a system that integrates multiple layers (stacks) necessary for converting user inputs into drive signals for the computing device to execute computational output as its result. Personal computers and supercomputers are examples of full-stack systems. Inside Shunkai, atomic qubits are captured in an array using "optical tweezers (*3)" generated by tightly focusing laser light with an objective lens. Quantum calculations are performed by irradiating the atoms with microwaves or laser light. The computational results are interpreted by observing the fluorescence from each individual atom with a camera. The IMS has taken the lead in developing this full-stack quantum computer, leveraging a strong industry-academia collaboration within the Ohmori Moonshot Project with Hitachi, Ltd. for the software stack and with Infleqtion, Inc. for the Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) stack. Shunkai will use approximately 50 qubits in its early stage, and will expand its scale to approximately 500 qubits. The system will be partially open to external users for the development of its applications and the demonstration and improvement of quantum error correction (*4). Plans also include collaboration with Yaqumo Inc., where Professor Ohmori serves as a founder and executive advisor, from the viewpoint of the social implementation and upgrade of the quantum computer. Future Developments In the second stage of the Ohmori Moonshot Project "Neutral atom-based fault-tolerant quantum computer" that just started in April 2026, the team will operate this full-stack quantum computer to further develop and improve the integration and control technologies, upgrade the system toward fault tolerance and larger scales, and enable high stability and high-fidelity quantum computation for extended periods of time. By March 2031, at the end of the second stage, the goal is to realize a large-scale, high-performance neutral-atom fault-tolerant quantum computer, with 10,000 physical qubits and quantum error detection and correction capabilities, available to external users. Message from Professor Kenji Ohmori, Institute for Molecular Science: "Neutral atom-based quantum computers have recently been rapidly attracting attention around the world as a new modality that could exceed the limits of the superconducting modality, which started its development earlier. I think it is extremely significant that now we have developed Japan's first full-stack quantum computer in this cutting-edge modality and started its operation. We expect that the external use of our full-stack machine Shunkai, for example, by the theory and software researchers for the development of error-correction technologies, and by the corporate researchers toward practical applications would lead to ripple effects on various fields in industry, academia and government around the world. It is also expected that Shunkai will be integrated with the existing shared supercomputer facility at the IMS to develop into a quantum-GPU hybrid computing center." About Shunkai It is named after Harumi Shibukawa, where his given name "Harumi" is also pronounced as Shunkai, an Edo-period (1603-1867) astronomer who established the first original calendar system in Japan. Calculations of celestial motion on the celestial sphere evoke the precise control of quantum states on the "Bloch sphere," which represents the state of a qubit in the physics expert community. With the highest respect to Shibukawa who developed Japan's first indigenous calendar based on precise calculations, this system Shunkai has been named in the hope that Japan's first full-stack neutral-atom quantum computer will perform precise quantum computations. (Takafumi Tomita, Assistant Professor, Institute for Molecular Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences) Glossary (*1) Qubit: The basic unit of information in a quantum computer. Unlike conventional bits, which can only take on either "0" or "1," a quantum bit can simultaneously represent both "0" and "1" states through quantum mechanical "superposition." (*2) Quantum entanglement: A phenomenon unique to quantum mechanics where two or more particles (quanta) maintain a strong correlation with each other, even at distances, and the observation result of one instantly determines the state of the other. (*3) Optical tweezer: A technique that uses laser light to capture particles such as atoms or dielectric particles near the focal point. (*4) Quantum error correction: A technique for correcting calculation errors caused by the imperfection of manipulations and influence of the surrounding environment on quantum bits during the calculation process. Because quantum states are extremely fragile and easily broken, this technique is essential for quantum computers. SOURCE Institute for Molecular Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences NOTE: This content is not written by or endorsed by "WOWK", its advertisers, or Nexstar Media Inc.