Excluding motor vehicle collisions, construction accidents are a leading cause of serious injury and death in the United States. Depending on the circumstances of the accident, the injured worker may have several options when it comes to obtaining financial compensation to cover medical expenses, lost income, and lifetime damages.

Rapid Response Lawyers for Construction-Related Accidents

Over the years, Lead Attorney Doug Horn and the Horn Law team have had a track record of success in maximizing recovery in catastrophic injury claims throughout Missouri and Kansas. Construction accidents are complex and demand immediate investigations to begin securing important evidence that pertains to fault and liability. Early legal consultation enables Horn Law to begin legal investigations, identify parties at fault, outline comprehensive legal strategies for recovery, file claims, retain experts, and begin to assemble evidence to maximize recovery. Because construction accident victims are usually entitled to only one legal recovery, the best foundations must be laid early on to ensure the best possible results.

Ask A Question,

Describe Your Situation,

& Get Immediate Help

Contact Us & We’ll Guide You Through Your Next Steps!

Required Fields*

Your Information Is Safe With Us.

We respect your privacy. The information you provide will be used to answer your question or to schedule an appointment if requested.

Free Legal Consultations

If you or someone you know has been injured in a motor vehicle accident, alert Lead Attorney Doug Horn to the case at 816-795-7500. Horn offers free legal consultations. In addition to telephone consultations, Horn offers office, home, and hospital consultations to provide aid to clients at a convenient location.

As rapid response attorneys, early legal consultation is a priority with Horn Law. An early start allows us to take care of our clients’ immediate issues, including legal, investigative, insurance, and financial questions that arise in nearly every car accident claim.

Close & Convenient

The Horn Law home office is in Independence, Missouri, near I-70 and I-470 (across the street from Costco).

In addition to our home office, consultation offices are located in both Lee’s Summit and Liberty in Missouri, as well as Overland Park, Kansas.

Construction Accident Cases

Horn Law has handled a variety of construction accidents in Missouri and Kansas. Following is a brief overview of the most common cases our law firm handles on behalf of a seriously injured construction worker, including:

- Falls

- Falling Debris

- Construction Vehicle Accidents

- Electrocution

- Respiratory Hazards

- Caught In-Between

Falls: Falls are one of the most common types of injury facing construction workers. Due to the nature of the job, workers are frequently up on scaffolding or other unstable surfaces where falls are an immediate threat. While many precautions can be taken (such as mandating safety equipment, harnesses, etc.), falls usually are from such a height that catastrophic injuries are common. Potential liabilities in fall cases include:

- Failure to provide personal protective equipment

- Failure to assess the construction site’s risk

- Failure to warn, train, and educate employees on the risk of falling

- Failure to abide by regulations and code regarding working from heights

Falling Debris: Falling debris is a cause of injury that is distinctly associated with construction work. Because workers are often completing tasks from heights, they must use the highest degree of care and caution when disposing of scrap materials or other unneeded substances. Utilizing appropriate warnings, bins, and safety protocols can help prevent severe injury. Even when debris naturally or unintentionally falls as a result of the construction process, hard hats, goggles, and other safety equipment can help mitigate injury. Potential liabilities in falling debris cases include:

- Failure to provide personal protective equipment, such as a hard hat

- Failure to train and provide workers with safe disposal strategies

Construction Vehicle Accidents: Motor vehicle accidents on the roadway or the construction site are a common form of construction-related accidents. Often, distractions, blind spots, and the aggressive operation of a vehicle result in serious injury or death. Often, accidents result because drivers are not following safety protocols concerning the operations of vehicles. Our law firm has had cases where serious injury and death resulted because a construction-related vehicle was not properly outfitted with safety equipment, including back up warning alerts, reflectors, and/or cameras. Potential liabilities in construction vehicle cases include:

- Failure to follow strict roadway construction safety regulations

- Failure to provide and maintain vehicle safety equipment

- Failure to properly train and alert workers regarding vehicle operations and risks

- Failure to communicate safety protocols about vehicle operations

Electrocution: Because construction work often involves below-ground digging, managers must make sure that a full electrical and utility assessment is completed to outline spots that should be avoided. Accidentally cutting through a power line often results in very severe injury, if not death. Even once an assessment is completed, flagging should be implemented as a means of protecting workers from high-risk locations. Workers should also receive training to understand and recognize electrical hazards that exist above ground, such as those that may arise when constructing a house or office building where several panels, switches, and lines are needed. Power tools should be used with extreme caution, and open lines should always be flagged. Even if one wire or pipe is missing flagging, deadly consequences could occur. Potential liabilities in electrocution cases include:

- Failure to accurately assess electrical risks above and below ground

- Failure to properly flag specific risks on-site

- Failure to provide adequate electrical training to workers

- Failure to provide personal protective equipment to workers

Respiratory Hazards: Because construction sites will often be subject to many hazardous substances and irritants like dust or smoke, managers should make sure that workers receive appropriate protective equipment and fumigation strategies. Respiratory protection violations are one of the leading breaches of construction site regulation. However, by providing or requiring appropriate equipment, managers can save many employees from serious repertory illnesses that compromise health and lead to a lifetime disease. Potential liabilities in respiratory hazard cases include:

- Failure to provide or require protective fumigation equipment

- Failure to properly assess environmental and air quality risks

- Failure to train and monitor ongoing risks posed by irritants or hazardous substances

Caught In-Between Accidents: Being caught in between or compressed by objects in the workspace is another leading cause of serious injury for construction workers. When heavy objects or materials fall from loading docks, scaffolding, or any other surface, they can pin workers against another hard surface. Such incidents can result in serious injury. Potential liabilities in caught in-between cases include:

Honors & Awards

Related Blogs

Get practical tips, legal perspectives, and safety information directly from the team at The Horn Law Firm, P.C.

What should I do after a car accident in Kansas City if I feel injured but didn’t go to the hospital right away?

Many people don’t recognize the full extent of their injuries until hours or even days…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

How do car accident attorneys handle insurance companies that try to reduce settlement offers?

Insurance companies often look for ways to minimize what they pay out, especially in cases…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

What types of injuries qualify for a personal injury claim after a vehicle accident?

A wide range of injuries may provide grounds to pursue a personal injury claim. These…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

Can I still pursue compensation if I was partly at fault for the accident in Kansas City?

In Missouri, accident victims may still seek compensation even if they were partially responsible for…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

What makes work injury claims different from other personal injury cases?

Work-related injuries, such as those from construction accidents, warehouse incidents, or industrial hazards, often fall…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

What should I do after a car accident in Kansas City if I feel injured but didn’t go to the hospital right away?

Many people don’t recognize the full extent of their injuries until hours or even days…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

How do car accident attorneys handle insurance companies that try to reduce settlement offers?

Insurance companies often look for ways to minimize what they pay out, especially in cases…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

What types of injuries qualify for a personal injury claim after a vehicle accident?

A wide range of injuries may provide grounds to pursue a personal injury claim. These…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

Can I still pursue compensation if I was partly at fault for the accident in Kansas City?

In Missouri, accident victims may still seek compensation even if they were partially responsible for…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

What makes work injury claims different from other personal injury cases?

Work-related injuries, such as those from construction accidents, warehouse incidents, or industrial hazards, often fall…

Douglas "Doug" Horn

November 4, 2025

What should I do after a car accident in Kansas City if I feel injured but didn’t go to the hospital right away?

You Can't Consume Your Way Out of AI Cost Opacity

Government Needs to Manage AI Contracts Upfront

VIENNA, Va., Aug. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Permuta Technologies today published a white paper, "You Can't Consume Your Way Out of AI Cost Opacity," the 2nd in a Series of Whitepapers focused on AI and government, examining how AI pricing is shifting toward token- and consumption-based models and why that change matters for government acquisition, budgeting, and long-term contract control. Using Palantir as a case study, the paper argues that tokenization mechanics can turn AI from a predictable line item into a variable operating cost, potentially creating budget unpredictability, reduced cost transparency, ceiling pressure, source-selection complexity, and lock-in risk as AI becomes embedded in mission workflows. The paper concludes that the next phase of AI oversight in government will be defined not only by mission performance, but by whether agencies can understand and govern AI cost behavior once usage is operationally indispensable.

"AI can amplify mission outcomes, but tokenization can quietly amplify marginal costs and reduce visibility unless contracts are structured to preserve budget control," said Sig Behrens, CEO of Permuta," We have to govern it upfront."

About Permuta Technologies

Permuta Technologies is a readiness software company delivering mission critical solutions to federal, defense, and government organizations. Built on Microsoft technologies, Permuta's platform enables organizations to put the right people in the right place at the right time.

SOURCE Permuta Technologies, Inc.

Share this article

Aegiq and the National Epitaxy Facility extend development collaborations to accelerate the development of photonic quantum computing

Aegiq, a UK-based photonic quantum computing company, and the National Epitaxy Facility (NEF), a leader in semiconductor epitaxial materials, structures and devices, have extended their long-standing collaboration to accelerate next-generation photonic quantum technologies and reinforce the UK’s compound semiconductor supply chain.

NEF has played a key role in supporting Aegiq’s research and early-stage development, supplying high-quality epitaxial growth capabilities that have enabled rapid iteration and device optimisation. In a field where the pace of advancement is accelerating, speed of execution is critical. NEF’s fast turnaround times have allowed Aegiq to shorten learning cycles while maintaining momentum at the forefront of photonic quantum computing.

This collaboration underscores the importance of the UK’s open-access semiconductor infrastructure in bridging fundamental research with scalable quantum and photonic technologies.

“NEF’s mission is to equip the UK research community with advanced semiconductor epitaxial materials, structures and devices, enabling it to compete at the highest level globally in this rapidly evolving field,” said Professor Jon Heffernan FREng, Director of the NEF. “Through collaborative partnering with Aegiq from its earliest stages, we’ve supported rapid progression from prototypes to deployable photonic quantum computing solutions creating impressive economic impact, high skills jobs in quantum technology and a truly pioneering UK quantum company.” 

Recommended by LinkedIn

“High-quality epitaxial growth and fast iteration cycles are fundamental to advancing photonic quantum technologies,” said Scott Dufferwiel, CEO of Aegiq. “NEF’s capabilities have enabled us to optimise device performance and accelerate development timelines. This continued partnership will be important as we scale towards more complex and deployable quantum systems.” 

About NEF

The National Epitaxy Facility (NEF) is an EPSRC funded centre of excellence for semiconductor epitaxial materials, structures and devices to enable the UK’s research community to compete at the highest levels on the world-stage.

About Aegiq

Aegiq is a UK-based full-stack photonic quantum computing company focused on delivering scalable quantum technologies for real-world applications. Working with organisations across telecoms, defence, aerospace, cybersecurity and AI, Aegiq develops solutions to address some of the most demanding computational challenges. Its integrated photonic platform enables high-performance, compact and modular quantum systems, creating a clear pathway toward the fault-tolerant, large-scale quantum computers needed to unlock the full potential of quantum technology.

Diraq: Shaping the Future of Silicon Dot Quantum Computing

Quantum computers need to scale to many millions and ultimately billions of qubits to solve problems of global significance.

If you have tried to operate even a handful of qubits, you have noticed how hard that is—and how hard operating a billion qubits will be. Yet, the semiconductor industry has managed to control billions of transistors on a microchip. What if you could leverage existing semiconductor manufacturing techniques and scale to billions of transistors for quantum computing?

Diraq is a full-stack quantum computing company that aims to deliver the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer. It has established its core IP in the design and operation of silicon spin qubits, which are the same size as today’s transistors and compatible with CMOS foundry manufacturing.

Diraq was founded in 2022 by Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor of Quantum Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. In 2022, Diraq raised a $20M Series A led by Allectus Capital and this spring, it announced a Series A-2 extension led by Quantonation, bringing in an additional $15M in funding.

Learn more about the future of silicon dot quantum computing from our interview with the CEO and founder, Andrew Dzurak:

Why Did You Start Diraq?

I got involved with quantum computing in the early days when I moved back to Australia after doing my PhD in Cambridge, UK, and became a postdoc at the University of New South Wales in the 1990s. I have a long history in research, from studying quantum effects in semiconductors to exploring nuclear spins in silicon as qubits for quantum computing. The more I dug into quantum computing, the more exciting it got, which led me to get involved with establishing the Australian National Center for Quantum Computer Technology at UNSW, founded and led from 2000-2008 by my former mentor, Professor Bob Clark.

Over the past 25 years, it has become one of the longest-running research centers in quantum computing, helping hundreds of PhD students graduate, including Jeremy O'Brien, one of the co-founders of PsiQuantum.

Together with Professor Andrea Morello, we demonstrated the first electron and nuclear spin qubits. But we soon figured that for quantum to have an impact, we would need to make quantum error correction work and, thus, find a way to manufacture millions, if not billions, of qubits in a scalable way. We knew how hard it was to produce quantum devices with a few qubits, so billions of qubits seemed like an enormous challenge. There needed to be some unique insight on how to make it happen.

Yet semiconductor companies have already produced microchips with billions of transistors for classical, digital computing. Maybe there is a way to reuse semiconductor manufacturing techniques for quantum computing. Specifically, what if we could reuse existing transistors?

We took conventional MOSFET transistors and reduced the number of electrons they contained to just one electron, and then showed that we could use these electrons as a qubit. Over the next decade, we built a ton of IP and demonstrated that we could manufacture high-fidelity qubits out of transistors, perform two-qubit logic gates, and develop a quantum computing platform compatible with semiconductor manufacturing.

Finally, in May 2022, all of this research culminated in Diraq, which spun out of UNSW, Sydney, and raised a Series A round from Allectus Capital. We’re still working closely with the university and just opened a company lab on campus a few weeks ago. This way, we stay close to the latest advances in research while Diraq can focus as a company on leveraging semiconductor manufacturing to build a billion-qubit quantum computer.

Recommended by LinkedIn

How Do You Build Silicon Dot Quantum Computers?

Our qubits are modified transistors, literally the standard MOSFET transistors used in 99% of all integrated circuits today. A metal gate electrode is brought on top of an insulating oxide layer, which sits on top of the silicon substrate connecting the source and the drain. Turning the gate voltage on and off controls the current flow between the source and the drain.

What’s special about our technology is that we have found a way to reduce the number of electrons in such a transistor, even down to a single electron or a few electrons. These are confined to nanoscale regions within a silicon substrate, which are also called quantum dots.

We found a way to encode information in the spin of the electrons with a quantum dot, make quantum dots interact with each other, and thus perform a two-qubit logic gate—one of the fundamental prerequisites needed to build a quantum computer.

We need to combine many of these to build a powerful quantum computer: not only will we need many qubits to perform the actual quantum computations, but we’ll also need many qubits for quantum error correction.

The big advantage of our technology is that since it’s already compatible with semiconductor manufacturing, we will be able to put a large number of qubits on a chip—even millions, which is about the order of magnitude we’ll have to reach to make fault-tolerant quantum computing a reality.

Importantly, our qubits are much smaller at 20-30 nm than all other non-semiconductor-based quantum platforms: for example, superconducting qubits take 10s to 100s of microns. Packaging a million superconducting qubits will require a lot of space, and it will be hard to cool all of them down to cryogenic temperatures. This means scaling beyond a few 1000s of superconducting qubits while maintaining quantum entanglement across the entire chip and transferring large amounts of data between the qubits will be an enormous engineering challenge.

Even if one could solve these challenges, the cost of operating such a giant quantum computer would also be massive, requiring thousands of dilution refrigerators and enormous costs for cooling and operating these. In comparison, our chips and the required cooling infrastructure are much smaller and cheaper, so we can envision thousands of quantum computers in a data center, augmenting classical compute.

The major challenge for most quantum platforms is how to make many qubits interact with each other. Microchips faced the same problem when coordinating the operations of billions of transistors. Using metal gate electrodes between transistors, we’ve already demonstrated that we could use the same approach to turn the interaction between qubits on and off. Of course, interconnecting qubits will be more demanding than just standard transistors, requiring a more complex architecture. But we have developed a complete physical architecture for this, allowing for quantum error correction.

While older semiconductor process nodes already allow for many useful things, we’re benefiting from all the advances that come with the most cutting-edge process nodes, smaller feature sizes, and more advanced manufacturing.

How Did You Evaluate Your Startup Idea?

In the long term, our main focus is to manufacture universal, fault-tolerant quantum computers that can address all kinds of problems, and we expect to get there in the 2030s. But as early as 2028, we could see that our chips have thousands of qubits and target the first applications, e.g., in chemistry. Molecular design is certainly one of the domains where combining classical high-performance computing with quantum computing can provide early value. Once we have full error correction in place, we can address many more problems.

What Advice Would You Give Fellow Deep Tech Founders?

Focus on your end goal of leveraging technology to engineer a better product that customers need and will ultimately appreciate. Take advantage of scientific advances when they arise, but don’t get distracted by hype and focus on what your technology can do best.

Diraq is the coolest company name ever. So much progress already - exciting !

Thanks for sharing this wonderful post.Loved the interview.Quite informative

The hidden infrastructure behind intelligence

Connectivity is at the heart of nearly every major technology trend today. From mobile networks and AI infrastructure to satellite communications and IoT devices, RF enables the movement of information across the modern economy. It plays a critical role in every market we serve, making it one of the industry's most important and active areas of innovation. Every AI query, satellite connection and streamed video ultimately depends on RF technologies moving information. RF rarely gets noticed when it's working. Most people don't think about the technologies managing frequency, power and signal integrity until a call drops, a connection fails or data stops moving. That invisibility is RF doing its job.

To meet these demands, RF designers are being asked to do the impossible: higher bandwidth, more output power and greater efficiency, all in the same die area they had before. As AI pushes more computing onto devices, RF systems must provide greater performance using a smaller share of available power budget, while supporting more frequency bands, antennas and simultaneous wireless connections. What once required tradeoffs increasingly requires everything at once.

At GF, our strength has never been a single technology or application. Over the past two decades, we’ve built leadership across RF technologies and the system-level expertise required to bring them from innovation to high-volume manufacturing. RF-SOI, SiGe and RF GaN allow designers to optimize different parts of the connectivity chain, while FD-SOI, FinFET and silicon photonics help move data through increasingly complex communications and computing systems.

"We can serve nearly every component of the radio chain."

As the boundaries between terrestrial and satellite networks continue to blur, new architectures are emerging that promise to extend connectivity to places traditional infrastructure cannot reach. Concepts like direct-to-cell communications, alongside advances in 5G evolution, future 6G networks and next-generation satellite systems, will place even greater demands on the RF technologies that enable them, while creating new opportunities to rethink how wireless systems are designed and deployed.

In this issue, we explore how our RFGaN1 and SLATE™ advanced packaging technology are turning that leadership into scalable platforms customers can deploy today. We also go inside a GF Labs breakthrough that reimagines RF switching itself, built on GF's commercial RF-SOI platform and published earlier this year in Nature Electronics.

— Shankaran Janardhanan , SVP of Photonics & RF

Doubling down on GaN: A Q&A with Dan Denninghoff

RF GaN has spent years as a specialty technology. Earlier this year, GF moved it into volume production, expanding GF's ability to serve connectivity applications that demand higher power and efficiency while complementing the broader RF portfolio customers already rely on. Dan Denninghoff , Senior Director of RF GaN Product Line, breaks down what RFGaN1 changes for designers building the next generation of comms and defense systems.

RF GaN has been around for a while. Why is moving it into production at scale a big deal?

Dan: Up to now, GaN has lived as a high-performance, niche technology that a designer would reach for on a project with a big budget. RFGaN1 is our first RF GaN-on-silicon technology qualified for volume production. It combines GaN’s high output power, efficiency and frequency performance advantages with the cost structure and volume of 200mm silicon manufacturing, enabling customers to build a real supply chain around it instead of treating every design as a one-off.

We are already seeing this shift play out. At IMS 2026, Falcomm launched GaNdalph.ai, an AI design tool built with first-class support for RFGaN1. Together, these tools speed up power amplifier design and deployment. The pairing works because the underlying process is stable and manufacturable at volume. Maturing this technology is becoming the foundation that other companies build tools and roadmaps on top of.

Who is this platform built for and what performance does it deliver?

Dan: RF GaN supports numerous emerging sectors that require efficiency and high-power wireless infrastructure. Power amplifiers and high-power RF switches alter the way satellite communications and cellular infrastructure, for example, sustain themselves. RFGaN1 runs 12 to 28V with depletion-mode devices, which yields sustained high output power and efficiency across 1 to 15 GHz applications.

“GlobalFoundries’ RFGaN1 platform provides a powerful foundation for the future of adaptive RF systems, delivering the performance and efficiency required for advanced front-ends in the critical defense, 5G/6G and satellite communications markets we serve.” - Victoria Pereira, CEO, Otava RF

What is the biggest barrier to GaN adoption?

Dan: Access and volume manufacturability are obstacles many customers come to us with. At GF, we’ve worked hard to address these pain points directly. We built early-access programs and GlobalShuttle™ MPW runs, so designers can prototype and validate cost-effectively before committing to full production. This is backed by our existing RF design infrastructure and GlobalSolutions™ partner ecosystem. Our 200mm fab in Burlington, Vermont is an Accredited Trusted Foundry, meeting the U.S. government’s requirements for manufacturing chips used in aerospace and defense systems. For many of the applications we’re talking about, it’s the reason a customer can use the platform at all. Combining GF’s high-volume 200mm manufacturing excellence with the power of GaN makes RFGaN1 the most cost-effective RF GaN in the world. This is an attractive feature for all our customers.

Read Dan’s full blog on what it takes to scale RF power and efficiency:

Smaller, smarter RF front-ends: Introducing SLATE on 9SW

GaN adds power. SLATE removes area. Together, they cover both ends of what next-gen RF systems need.

Every smartphone is fighting for physical space inside its own case. More bands, more 5G, more antennas, more sensors — they all compete for room. For years, this meant sacrificing features, battery life and performance.

This past June, GF qualified SLATE, a wafer-to-wafer bonding technology on its 9SW RF-SOI platform that challenges this notion. Instead of laying components flat and overtaking board space, 9SW SLATE allows designers to stack them vertically, bonding two wafers together and folding large transistors across both. The result is up to 45% less die area, with no loss in RF performance, giving designers more room to manage the growing complexity of modern wireless systems.

Antenna tuning is a good example that shows why space reduction matters. Every time you move your phone, your hand shifts or you walk into a building, the antenna’s performance changes. Tuners compensate for these micro-shifts in real time, switching on and off dozens of times a second so your call doesn’t drop and data doesn’t stall. It’s the underlying tech that no one notices when it’s working. Those switches must handle high voltage while staying small, and SLATE on 9SW means they can do that job in a fraction of the space they used to need.

Recommended by LinkedIn

Satellite terminals, IoT sensors, wearables and future AI infrastructure all face a version of the same challenge: delivering more capability in less space. By enabling new forms of integration across technologies, SLATE on 9SW helps designers rethink how systems are assembled rather than simply shrinking individual components. This marks an important advancement in RF front-end design, giving designers a new path to increase functionality and integration when traditional scaling approaches begin to reach their limits. 3D integration stops being a specialty project for the most space-constrained edge cases and can now turn into a routine design choice.

To learn more, join Cadence ’s upcoming webinar on October 27 where technical experts from GF and Cadence will discuss how SLATE™ advanced packaging technology on 9SW enables 3D RF integration and supports next-generation RF front-end design. Registration details coming soon.

The research-to-production pipeline: A new path for RF innovation

For decades, the semiconductor playbook was simple: shrink the transistor, get more performance.

That approach transformed computing. But in RF, engineers have been running into a different problem. As switches get smaller, parasitic effects and contact resistance increasingly offset those benefits.

So, Mohammad Nikoo , now an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University Singapore, and Hua Wang , professor of electrical engineering at ETH Zurich, tried something unexpected. The work was carried out while Nikoo was a postdoctoral researcher in Wang's IDEAS Group at ETH Zurich. They built a switch around a fundamentally different mechanism, using displacement fields and quantum tunneling currents to carry a signal.

Built on GlobalFoundries' commercial RF-SOI platform through GF's University Partnership Program, the device demonstrated:

Sub-30 picosecond switching speeds 

More than 10x higher power handling than conventional transistor-based switches on the same platform 

Significant improvements in linearity 

Lower parasitics and higher switching frequencies overall 

Equally important, the team demonstrated the technology using a "zero-change" approach on an existing commercial process, showing a path toward manufacturability and integration with real-world systems.

The results, published this year in Nature Electronics, point toward potential applications in reconfigurable terahertz systems, next-generation wireless networks, satellite communications, advanced sensing, and the high-speed connectivity that increasingly underpins AI infrastructure.

Orange Quantum Systems: Shaping the Future of Quantum Chip Performance

To provide value to end users, quantum computers need to scale. But simply increasing the number of qubits is not enough; they also need to be tested.

Currently, this testing process takes days, which is too long for efficient industrial-scale production. This bottleneck has so far impeded the progress of the quantum industry—and this is where Orange Quantum Systems, a startup focused on the efficient and affordable testing of quantum chips, comes in.

Founded by Garrelt Alberts, Adriaan Rol, Thorsten Last, Kelvin Loh, Amber Van Hauwermeiren, Orange Quantum Systems recently secured €1.5M in pre-seed funding from QDNL Participations and the Cottonwood Technology Fund to build a full-scale system for the automated testing of qubits.

Learn more about the future of quantum chip performance from our interview with the co-founder and Director of R&D, Adriaan Rol:

Why Did You Start Orange Quantum Systems?

I have been interested in entrepreneurship for a long time, but I didn’t want to start a company just for the sake of it. During my Ph.D. in quantum physics, I specialized in getting qubits to work efficiently. However, I encountered a big challenge—doing this at scale. Optimizing a handful of qubits, no problem. Optimizing hundreds or thousands of qubits in conjunction, that’s a tough challenge.

So, I thought about founding a quantum software startup and developing software that would help with characterizing, tuning, and thus optimizing qubits. But it soon became evident that with the current state of the quantum industry, a pure software approach wouldn’t make for a viable business case.

So I shelved that idea for a year until Garrelt Alberts, one of my co-founders who at the time was leading the quantum engineering efforts at QuTech, a Dutch research institute for quantum computing, proposed the idea to start up a system integrator. Eventually, we founded Orange Quantum Systems to go full-stack—software and hardware—and build a solution for qubit inspection with our system engineering capabilities.

How Does It Work?

Quantum computers today are not powerful enough to provide economic value, which is a major challenge for the quantum industry. They need longer coherence times, better fidelity, and, of course, more qubits.

Just like microprocessors, quantum computers will need to scale to industrial-level development processes, which involves going through the cycle of design, fabrication, and multiple tests.

We focus on that last part, testing the qubits. There are a few reasons why testing is hard and fundamentally different from testing classical chips. For classical chips, you can work at room temperature and get most of the data from simple measurements such as optical inspection or resistance measurements. For quantum chips, first, you need an environment where quantum effects manifest themselves, which for most qubits means going to cryogenic temperatures. Next, before you can even test the quality of the chip (e.g., coherence times) or how close certain (Hamiltonian) parameters are to your design, you need to bring the chip to operating conditions by executing a range of tuneup protocols.

Testing qubits is still very manual, with state-of-the-art labs being able to test ~5-qubit chips. This involves cooling down the chips in a dilution refrigerator for several days, tuning them up, determining the quantities of interest, and warming up for a day. So, testing takes weeks, and only a few chips per year might be tested.

Thus, if we want to build powerful quantum computers at scale, we will have to automate qubit testing. People have tested quantum chips in the past by building a full-blown quantum computer, but that’s inefficient. One of our insights has been that building test equipment is very different from building quantum computers. The real business case is in building dedicated test equipment. Funny enough, we felt that we were both too early and too late, as the quantum industry is not yet mature, but testing is so important that people are already building inefficient solutions in-house.

We’re starting with superconducting qubits, as they’re the most established quantum hardware platform. From there, it is relatively straightforward to expand to other solid-state qubits, such as silicon spin qubits. Although the calibration and test protocols are different for different device architectures and qubit modalities, and these qubits operate in different frequency bands (e.g., microwave vs baseband), the fundamental physics of quantum computing stays the same.

The most important aspects to our customers are throughput and giving good feedback on the qubit quality to their design and fabrication teams. We provide systems on-site that are completely integrated with the development process. It starts early in the process when engineers devise the architecture of a quantum chip, and we provide feedback on whether it actually works. Then, they optimize their quantum chips for fabrication to prevent crosstalk, increase coherence times, and improve yield. The architecture is now fixed, but it’s still about the right material choices and geometry—and for that, you need statistics.

Recommended by LinkedIn

How Did You Evaluate Your Startup Idea?

You evaluate what you're doing by getting started and being critical and honest with yourself when considering what works and what doesn’t. After launching Quantum Inspire (Europe’s first quantum computer), many people expected us to become a full-stack quantum computing company, but we have decided against it as the technology is not mature enough. The core problem is improving quantum chips so we provide useful products as well as take advantage of a unique market opportunity.

It is really not just about fabricating qubits but testing them. The feedback cycle between fabrication runs is still very limited and costly. With our skill set, however, we are perfectly positioned to address this bottleneck. We could also get started immediately by going to academic labs next door and helping them. This brought us paying customers early on in the life of the company. Now, with the recent funding round and the EIC accelerator, we can develop a full-scale system and automate a lot of the qubit testing.

What Advice Would You Give Fellow Deep Tech Founders?

Start with paying customers and become financially independent as soon as possible. Contrary to conventional start-up thinking, it is not just about sketching a VC hockey stick in a cool pitch deck. You need to be able to actually deliver on this. By focusing on providing value to your customers, you can rapidly validate what works and iterate on it. The trick is to figure out how to align the long-term and short-term incentives. This will give you freedom and independence to focus on what’s really important, and that is to do something useful.

Work on the Future of Computing at Orange Quantum System

Are you passionate about pushing the boundaries of science and technology? Join the dynamic team at Orange QS as an Experimental Quantum Physics Engineer to apply your quantum physics expertise to real-world applications.

Are you an electrical or mechanical engineer with experience in the high-tech sector and eager to help unlock quantum chip testing at scale? Orange QS invites you to play a pivotal role in optimizing its supply chain, managing vendors effectively, and ensuring top-tier quality assurance.

Orange QS has many other open positions: Join them today and make a quantum leap in your career! Check out the Orange QS career page*.

Further Reading

A €1.5M investment for faster quantum chip testing – Read more on Orange Quantum Systems’ website about their latest pre-seed funding round.

Orange QS obtains EIC Accelerator grant to deliver diagnostics systems for the quantum industry – Also, more on the website about how the European Innovation Council (EIC) will support Orange Quantum Systems.

*Sponsored links – we greatly appreciate the support from Orange Quantum Systems. Learn more about sponsoring the Future of Computing blog here

WAF

Protect your applications without sacrificing performance

Cloudflare WAF inspects HTTP/S requests at the edge, using managed and custom rules to identify and block malicious payloads before they can compromise your application.

Zero-Day Protection at Scale

When a new vulnerability emerges (like Log4j), our security team writes and deploys a rule that protects our entire network in hours or minutes. Developers are often protected before they even have time to patch their own code.

Low False Positive Rate

Our Managed Rulesets are run against massive volumes of diverse traffic, allowing us to fine-tune them to be highly effective without blocking legitimate users.

Performance and Ease of Use

The WAF is deployed across our entire global network, so protection is enforced close to the user, adding virtually zero latency. Fully managed via API, fitting seamlessly into CI/CD workflows.

Edge-based security without performance impact

The WAF protects web applications and APIs from common and zero-day exploits (like SQL injection, XSS) without forcing developers to become security experts, manage complex rulesets, or sacrifice application performance. WAF allows developers to ship code faster and with confidence, knowing they have a powerful, auto-updating security layer protecting their work from a huge range of attacks.

OWASP Top 10 Protection

Virtual Patching for CVEs

Inline Malware Gateway

Automated Security Updates

Carrefour

Retail giant Carrefour replaced five separate security tools, put 400 e-commerce sites behind Cloudflare, and cut incident-resolution time by 75% after deploying the WAF (plus Bot Management).

Powerful primitives, seamlessly integrated

Built on systems powering 20% of the Internet, WAF runs on the same infrastructure Cloudflare uses to build Cloudflare. Enterprise-grade reliability, security, and performance are standard.

Build without boundaries

Join thousands of developers who've eliminated infrastructure complexity and deployed globally with Cloudflare. Start building for free — no credit card required.

SASE (CLOUDFLARE ONE)

Cloudflare Access

Replace legacy VPNs with zero trust network access (ZTNA)

Provide identity-first, quantum-safe access to private applications and infrastructure. Govern connections between your workforce, AI agents, and internal data.

Benefits of Cloudflare Access

Improve team productivity

Make on-premises applications as easy to use as SaaS apps. ZTNA reduces remote access support tickets by 80% compared to a VPN.

Simplify management

Simplify the setup and operation of ZTNA with one-time integrations, composable software connectors, and unified Zero Trust policies.

Eliminate lateral movement

Shrink your attack surface by enforcing context-based, least-privilege access policies for every resource.

Scale zero trust effortlessly

Shield critical applications and high-risk user groups first — then expand cloud-native ZTNA to protect your infrastructure and MCP servers.

How it works

Manage access across your internal environment

Cloudflare Access verifies and secures employee and third-party access across all of your self-hosted, SaaS, and non-web applications, including AI tools, helping mitigate risk and ensure a smooth user experience.

It checks granular context like identity and device posture for every request to provide fast, reliable access across your business.

Learn how Access works within Cloudflare’s SASE platform

ANALYST RECOGNITION

What top analysts say

Cloudflare named a Visionary in 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SASE Platforms

Scored 2nd highest in ‘Strategy’ category in The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Platforms, Q3 2025

What our customers are saying

“Cloudflare Access was a game-changer for Bitso. It made zero trust much easier. We now manage access to internal resources more efficiently, ensuring the right people have the right level of access to the right resources, regardless of their location device, or network.”

Cybersecurity Lead, Bitso

TOP ACCESS USE CASES

Cloudflare Access provides simple, secure user access to your internal resources — without a VPN

Augment / replace your VPN

Offload critical applications for better security and an improved user experience.

Manage third-party access

Authenticate third-party users (like contractors) with clientless options, social identity providers, and more.

Empower developers

Ensure privileged technical users can access critical infrastructure — without performance trade-offs.

Helping organizations worldwide advance toward zero trust

Pricing

Cloudflare Access control features available across the full zero trust platform

Free Plan

$0

forever

Best for teams under 50 users or enterprise proof-of-concept tests.

Pay-as-you-go

$7

per user/month (paid annually)

Best for teams over 50 users solving narrow SSE use cases and that do not require enterprise support services.

Contract Plan

Custom price

per user/month (paid annually)

Best for organizations building toward a full-featured SSE or SASE deployment that also desire maximum support.

Free Plan

Pay-as-you-go

Contract Plan

Free Plan

Pay-as-you-go

Contract Plan

Access controls (included in zero trust platform)

Customizable access policies

Custom application and private network policies, plus policy tester. Supports temporary authentication, purpose justification, and any IdP-provided auth method.

Protect access to all your apps and private networks

Protect self-hosted, SaaS, and non-web (SSH, VNC, RDP) apps, internal IPs and hostnames, or any arbitrary L4–7 TCP or UDP traffic.

Authentication via identity providers (IdPs)

Authenticate via enterprise and social IdPs, including multiple IdPs concurrently. Can also use generic SAML and OIDC connectors.

Identity-based context

Configure contextual access based on IdP groups, geolocation, device posture, session duration, external APIs, etc.

Device posture integration

Verify device posture using third-party endpoint protection provider integrations.

Clientless access option

Clientless access for web apps and browser-based SSH or VNC.

Browser-based SSH and VNC

Privileged SSH and VNC access through in-browser terminal.

Split tunneling

Split tunneling for local or VPN connectivity.

Application launcher

Customizable app launcher for all apps, including bookmarks to apps outside of Access.

Token authentication

Service token support for automated services.

Internal DNS support

Configure local domain fallback. Define an internal DNS resolver to resolve private network requests.

Infrastructure-as-code automation (via Terraform)

Automate deployment of Cloudflare resources and connections.

mTLS authentication

Certificate-based auth for IoT and other mTLS use cases.

Core capabilities

Uptime

Dependable service level agreements (SLA) for paid plans with 100% uptime and reliable service you can trust.

Learn more >

Standard log retention

Zero Trust logs are stored for a varying period of time based on the plan type and service used. Contract users can export logs via Logpush.

See tech docs >

Application connector software

Securely connects resources to Cloudflare without a publicly routable IP address. Does not require VM infrastructure and has no throughput limitations.

See tech docs >

Device client (agent) software

Securely and privately sends traffic from end user devices to Cloudflare’s global network. Enables capabilities like building device posture rules or enforcing filtering policies anywhere. Self-enroll or deploy via MDM.

See tech docs >

Zero trust network access (ZTNA)

ZTNA provides granular identity- and context-based access to all your internal self-hosted, SaaS, and non-web (e.g., SSH) resources.

See tech docs >

Secure web gateway (SWG)

SWG protects against ransomware, phishing, and other threats using L4–7 network, DNS, and HTTP filtering policies for faster, safer Internet browsing.

See tech docs >

Digital experience monitoring (DEX)

Provides user-centric visibility into device, network, and application performance across your zero trust organization.

See tech docs >

Network flow monitoring

Provides network traffic visibility and real-time alerts for unified insights into network activity. Available for free to everyone.

See tech docs >

Cloud access security broker (CASB)

CASB continuously monitors SaaS apps at rest to detect potential data exposure due to misconfigurations or weak posture findings.

See tech docs >

Data loss prevention (DLP)

DLP detects sensitive data in transit and at rest across web, SaaS and private apps with controls or remediation guides to stop leakage or exposure.

See tech docs >

Log Explorer

Free and pay-as-you-go plan: Free for the first 10 GB, $1 per GB per month after

Enterprise: Custom pricing

Remote browser isolation (RBI)

RBI layers additional threat defense and data protection controls across browsing activities by running all browser code on Cloudflare's global network.

See tech docs >

Email security

Email security helps block and isolate multi-channel phishing threats, including malware and business email compromise.

See tech docs >

Network services for SASE

Cloudflare One is our single-vendor SASE platform that converges zero trust security services from the plans above with network services — including Magic WAN and Firewall.

See tech docs >

Access controls

Customizable access policies

Custom application and private network policies, plus policy tester. Supports temporary authentication, purpose justification, and any IdP-provided auth method.

Protect access to all your apps and private networks

Protect self-hosted, SaaS, and non-web (SSH, VNC, RDP) apps, internal IPs and hostnames, or any arbitrary L4-7 TCP or UDP traffic.

Authentication via identity providers (IdPs)

Authenticate via enterprise and social IdPs, including multiple IdPs concurrently. Can also use generic SAML and OIDC connectors.

Identity-based context

Configure contextual access based on IdP groups, geolocation, device posture, session duration, external APIs, etc.

Device posture integration

Verify device posture using third-party endpoint protection provider integrations.

Clientless access option

Clientless access for web apps and browser-based SSH or VNC

Browser-based SSH and VNC

Privileged SSH and VNC access through in-browser terminal

Split tunneling

Split tunneling for local or VPN connectivity

Application launcher

Customizable app launcher for all apps, including bookmarks to apps outside of Access

Token authentication

Service token support for automated services

Internal DNS support

Configure local domain fallback. Define an internal DNS resolver to resolve private network requests.

Infrastructure-as-code automation (via Terraform)

Automate deployment of Cloudflare resources and connections.

mTLS authentication

Certificate-based auth for IoT and other mTLS use cases

Threat protection

Comprehensive security categories

Block by ransomware, phishing, DGA domains, DNS tunneling, C2 & botnet, and more.

Recursive DNS filtering

Filter by security or content category. Deploy via our device client or via routers for locations.

HTTP(S) filtering

Control traffic based on source, destination country, domains, hosts, HTTP methods, URLs, and more. Unlimited TLS 1.3 inspection.

L4 firewall filtering

Allow or block traffic based on ports, IPs, and TCP/UDP protocols.

Antivirus inspection

Scan uploaded / downloaded files across types (PDFs, ZIP, RAR, etc.)

Integrated threat intelligence

Detection via our own machine learning algorithms and third-party threat feeds.

IPv6-only and dual stack support

All functionality available for IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity.

SSH proxying and command logging

Create network policies to manage and monitor SSH access to your applications

Network-level policies for physical locations

Secure connectivity for DNS filtering directly from offices.

Remote browser isolation (natively integrated)

Render all browser code at the edge, instead of locally, to mitigate threats. Deploy with or without a device client. Selectively control what activity to isolate and when.

Email Security

Stop phishing and business email compromise.

If you are an organization working in human rights, civil society, journalism, or democracy, you can apply for Project Galileo to get free cyber security protection from Cloudflare.

Founded in 2014, Project Galileo is our response to devastating cyber attacks launched against important yet vulnerable targets, like humanitarian organizations, civil society, and human rights defenders.

Through Project Galileo, Cloudflare provides free, robust security to 2,900+ vulnerable Internet properties that are the targets of DDoS and other cyber attacks.

The Internet is a powerful tool for spreading and expanding ideas. When journalists, social activists, and minority groups are flooded with malicious traffic in an attempt to knock them offline, the Internet stops fulfilling its promise.

Such organizations often face attacks from powerful and entrenched opponents, yet operate on limited budgets. To help keep participants safe from potential backlash, Cloudflare will not reveal sites involved in Project Galileo without explicit permission.

We offer services through Project Galileo to any proposed recipient if brought to us by or approved by any one of our trusted partners. Such inclusion does not require and should not be understood as endorsement by all our diverse partner organizations.

Check out Cloudflare’s first report on the cyberattacks targeting civil society organizations protected under Project Galileo.

Cloudflare partners with respected free speech, public interest, and civil society organizations to identify at-risk websites eligible for participation in Project Galileo. By relying on these informed decision-makers, we ensure the program benefits from civil society expertise and is not influenced by our biases.

Once a partner approves an applicant, Cloudflare extends its security benefits to ensure the organization stays online, protecting their voice from being silenced.

Learn more about some of our partners below.

Participants in Project Galileo receive the benefits of our Business plan, including:

For more information about taking advantage of Project Galileo features, check out our Impact Portal.

Threat actors are deploying agentic AI in more sophisticated ways to automate aspects of their hacking campaigns, according to CrowdStrike.

“In 2026, CrowdStrike Intelligence has documented several incidents in which threat actors used AI not only to create tooling or artifacts, but to conduct agentic campaigns in which AI agents make decisions and execute commands,” the security firm said in a report published on Wednesday.

The report details the activities of four threat actors, two using sophisticated AI harnesses — the software connecting a large language model to external resources, giving it agentic capabilities — and two using simpler harnesses.

The two groups that used simple harnesses were still able to hack into “numerous organizations,” CrowdStrike said, “demonstrating that the primary barrier to scaling an AI-orchestrated intrusion campaign is not engineering complexity but token budgets.”

Security experts have spent years predicting that hackers would eventually weaponize AI capabilities in sophisticated ways, moving beyond improved phishing emails to automated activities that used to be too complex for humans to hand off to machines. CrowdStrike’s report provides fresh evidence of that evolution in AI hacking techniques — and serves as a warning to businesses about the need to rapidly modernize defenses to stay ahead of increasingly relentless adversaries.

“This delegation allows Al to operate at potentially faster speeds, and for longer durations, than some human actors,” CrowdStrike said in its report. And beyond improving the speed of attacks, “Al also solved problems not explicitly covered in playbook guidance provided by threat actors.”

Elaborate procedures for automated hacking

In one case, CrowdStrike observed a Spanish- and English-speaking threat actor using a penetration-testing harness to target Argentine healthcare organizations. The campaign successfully breached at least 15 organizations and led to the theft of passwords, as well as medical records and other sensitive data from at least one of those targets.

To carry out the attacks, the hackers instructed one Anthropic Claude Code agent to act as a supervisor and assign tasks to a second agent. The hackers modified an open-source framework, PentestGPT, with additional hacking scripts and capabilities. CrowdStrike said it observed the activity between mid-May and mid-August.

The report describes the threat actor’s AI agents automatically pivoting from one victim’s network to another, as well as switching from one technique (an attempt to reuse a stolen hashed password) to another (using a Windows feature to silently open a connection from the victim’s domain controller to the hackers’ infrastructure, which resulted in the theft of five passwords).

Another threat actor used Claude Code to orchestrate a penetration-testing framework, but in a wider range of cyberattacks. The threat actor, which CrowdStrike said spoke Chinese, used two AI harnesses for different tasks. One harness automatically conducted reconnaissance on potential targets and assigned hacking tasks to other agents.

The harness offered different approaches to different hacking operations depending on the circumstances — in some cases, CrowdStrike said, Claude Code could follow “an elaborate standard operating procedure” to hack a target on its own. In other situations, that agent could “delegate actions” to other “specialist agents.” Claude was the primary tool, but the hackers also built infrastructure to use OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other services.

The second threat actor’s attacks targeted Brazilian and Colombian government agencies and Brazilian and American firms in multiple sectors, including technology, biotech and retail.

‘Don’t rely on my help’

Even the two threat actors using basic agentic AI capabilities were successful.

One of those actors, an Indonesian-speaking entity, used more than 800 AI skills largely collected from public GitHub repositories to task Claude Code with hacking operations. Unlike the more sophisticated actors, this group did not apply any custom orchestration to the setup, relying solely on pre-crafted skills. “You find the bypass yourself, don’t rely on my help,” the hacker told Claude, according to CrowdStrike’s report.

That hands-off approach occasionally led to problems. The threat actor assumed the skills would successfully guide the agent through every intrusion, CrowdStrike said, but they sometimes had to step in to circumvent safety guardrails or push the agent to “overcome a particular barrier.”

Even so, the campaign resulted in the compromise of government agencies in Indonesia and Bangladesh, as well as private companies that CrowdStrike did not describe.

The other threat actor using simplistic agentic capabilities spoke Russian and gave Claude Code a seven-part to-do list for conducting attacks. The hackers gave the agent “near-total autonomy” to select the intrusion methods it thought best, and they gave it only high-level instructions for what to do after gaining remote-code-execution capabilities. Like the Indonesian-speaking actor, the Russian-speaking actor did not apply additional orchestration steps.

CrowdStrike said the Russian-speaking actor was likely part of the cybercrime ecosystem, given that their agentic workflow instructed Claude Code to send activity notifications to three people, all of whom are associated with cybercrime activity.

The Russian-speaking actor’s attacks resulted in the theft of “corporate client data” from a U.S. help-desk platform and the breach of several other entities, including a Ukrainian government agency and software-as-a-service firms in multiple countries.

Warning to defenders

Agentic AI–powered cyberattacks “will almost certainly increase in volume and sophistication” over the next year, CrowdStrike warned businesses.

“As inference costs decline and model context windows expand, token budget constraints will likewise diminish, enabling more threat actors to scale up operations,” CrowdStrike analysts wrote in the report.

The security firm said its data pointed to a threefold increase in agentic intrusions in the second half of 2026 compared with the first half of the year.

“August 2026 saw more than twice as many likely agentic incidents as July 2026, and September 2026 saw twice as many likely agentic incidents as August 2026,” CrowdStrike said.

In the next 12 months, agentic AI will also help unskilled hackers match the capabilities of sophisticated cybercrime groups and nation-state teams, according to the report. The resulting campaigns will continue to be riddled with amateur mistakes, analysts wrote, but “their sheer scale” will still make the threat environment more dangerous.