It’s time to stop sleeping on quantum computing: 48 experts on what to watch for next

The media continues to sleep on quantum. No surprise, really, between the AI boom and the fact that the science behind the technology can feel inscrutable. But while most everyone slumbers, quantum computers have been making considerable progress.

Researchers are getting more qubits, the tech’s fundamental building block, to work together, correcting errors more effectively, and developing faster, more efficient quantum algorithms. These are major improvements, especially because the qubit has proved devilishly hard to control.

With some investors increasingly worried that the AI market, already flush with cash, can’t deliver a boffo return, they’re turning to quantum computing as an attractive alternative.

“While the rest of the world was consumed with generative AI,” says Callum Stewart, an investment principal at Bullhound Capital, “the conversation around quantum shifted from ‘Is this ever going to work?’ to “When and how can we apply this at scale, and integrate it into our existing classical computers?’”

The appeal is tantalizing. Quantum computers could enable scientific discoveries that are beyond the reach of classical supercomputers. Businesses could find a powerful tool for modeling and optimizing such core business systems as supply chains, manufacturing floors, and distribution networks.

Quantum computers are especially good at handling needle-in-a-haystack problems, searching enormous spaces of possibilities for useful combinations and patterns. That might mean finding a new source of energy, or identifying novel combinations of molecules for a new drug. Qubits obey the same quantum laws as atoms and molecules, making them well suited to simulating both.

The question is: What must happen in the next few years to tell us that the quantum computing companies are progressing through their roadmaps toward the clear quantum advantage investors are waiting for? That was, in effect, exactly what we asked dozens of experts in the quantum computing space: “As a leading thinker and participant in the quantum space, what are you looking to see next that would signal that quantum is advancing in its capabilities and ultimately realizing its potential?”

Their answers offer a wealth of insight—and some surprises, too.

Quantum’s vibe shift

For years, quantum’s potential remained mostly theoretical. VCs lacked a clear view of how quantum could be applied in meaningful, profitable ways. Investors placed relatively modest bets on speculative research teams and startups pursuing different engineering approaches, keeping a foot in the door in case one emerged as clearly superior.

The fundamental problem was that qubits were extraordinarily difficult to control. Tiny environmental disturbances such as heat or noise could cause them to lose their quantum state, introducing errors into calculations. Adding more qubits often made the entire system harder to manage. As a result, researchers were largely limited to short, simple calculations that showed what a technology might someday accomplish without delivering much practical business value.

But quantum companies have moved past some of the fundamental research problems, and have begun building serious, industrial-scale systems. The industry’s holy grail is a “fault-tolerant” quantum computer that automatically catches and corrects errors at large scale. 

“We have some way to go before we have real fault-tolerant quantum computers that would be truly useful,” says Michael Norman, director of the Argonne Quantum Institute. “But much progress has been made in the past few years on hardware quality, error correction, and the beginnings of scale-up, so the situation looks optimistic.” Such a computer would be a real turning point, and possibly the doorway to mainstream enterprise adoption.

By 2025, quantum companies had begun to publish more detailed product roadmaps featuring more concrete steps toward a fault-tolerant computer with real applications. By 2026, industry players were saying it out loud and making commitments.

“We strongly believe that our partners will achieve the first examples of quantum advantage this year, leveraging IBM hardware,” said IBM CEO Arvind Krishna during his company’s Q1 earnings call in April 2026. “We are on track to deliver a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029.”

Following the money

As quantum’s story became less fanciful and more practical and detailed, investors grew confident enough to fund the industry’s (incredibly expensive) build-out and scale-up, even though broad commercialization is still years away. Researchers at New Market Pitch said funding for pure-play quantum tech startups (companies whose activities concern mostly quantum) spiked from roughly $1 billion in 2024 to $5.4 billion in 2025. PitchBook, which uses a slightly different market definition, pegged the 2025 number at $3.9 billion. 

Major quantum players tapped the public markets in 2026. Quantinuum held its blockbuster initial public offering in June, raising $1.68 billion at a valuation of more than $14 billion. Xanadu Quantum Technologies, Infleqtion, IQM, and Horizon Quantum listed earlier in the year, and Pasqal, Terra Quantum, and SEEQC have all announced IPO plans of their own. The market also saw deals reminiscent of a mature segment, including PsiQuantum’s $620 million funding round and IonQ’s $1 billion-plus acquisition of trapped-ion startup Oxford Ionics. 

Despite all that activity, many investors and experts still don’t believe quantum’s ChatGPT moment is close at hand. “We’re still in the premarket phase of quantum,” says Eclipse Capital partner Seth Winterroth. “Until a quantum computer solves a commercially useful problem that classical computing can’t, there isn’t really a market; just competing bets on how to get there.”

Speaking to 48 experts, we sought a fuller picture of quantum computing’s progress and prospects. Categorizing our experts by topic, we’ll cover:

• Redefining the metric: from qubit counts to logical qubits and system performance
• The milestone of fault tolerance: error correction at scale
• Practical/commercial quantum advantage
• System integration and the rise of heterogeneous (quantum + classical + AI) computing
• Scaling hardware: manufacturability, qubit counts, and modular architectures
• Enterprise adoption: from pilot projects to production ROI
• Standardization, integration, and abstraction across the stack
• Algorithm and software development: closing the gap
• Democratization: bringing domain experts beyond quantum physicists into the field
• Geopolitics, economic power, and national competition
• The pace of quantum adoption

Redefining the metric: from qubit counts to logical qubits and system performance

“Quantum computing is shifting from science experiments to systems engineering. Over the next few years, orders of magnitude improvements in quantity and quality—not just the most qubits, but the fastest, highest-performing logical qubits—will enable a garden of quantum applications. It’ll be big, but not all at once—you’ll see a sprout here and there before things really start to bloom.” —Charina Chou, COO, Google Quantum AI 

“We’ll be looking for the first scientifically relevant applications that require fault-tolerant quantum computers, such as the projects in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry program. The DOE is providing $37 million to fund research to develop advanced superconducting transmission lines, upgraded batteries, rare-earth-free magnets, and new catalysts for producing fertilizers and fuels.” —Juliette Peyronnet, U.S. general manager, Alice & Bob

“The signal we are watching for next is predictability, meaning teams hitting their stated technical milestones on schedule. On the commercial front, we want to see customers across the industry consistently coming back for repeat deployments where the quantum approach outperforms the classical alternative on a problem they were already paying to solve.” —Dr. Kris Naudts, founding and managing partner, Firgun Ventures

“The field has chased a new metric every few years, from physical qubit count to two-qubit fidelity, and now logical qubit count. What I’m watching for isn’t the next number on that list. It’s the point where quantum enters its scale era where we evaluate the whole system instead: scale up, scale out, performance, cost, and resource requirements, all together. The real signal of progress won’t be another record-setting component. It will be demonstrating a credible path from individual building blocks to large-scale quantum systems that can deliver commercial value.” —Stephanie Simmons, founder and chief quantum officer, Photonic

“While some practical use cases for quantum computing have been achieved, wide-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing may be more than three years away from fruition. To achieve quantum advantage, many believe four things need to exist, including: 1) a minimum of 1,000 physical qubits; 2) a minimum of 99.9% two-qubit gate fidelity; 3) a maximum of 40 nanosecond gate speed to be able to talk to CPUs and GPUs; and 4) some form of error mitigation or error control.” —Gary Mobley, equity research, semiconductors, Benchmark, a StoneX company

The milestone of fault tolerance: error correction at scale

“I’m watching two things: logical, error-corrected qubits, and the maturity of hybrid workflows that put HPC (high-performance computers, or supercomputers) and quantum processors in the same pipeline. That has to advance on the software side as much as the hardware side. Which is why quantum-inspired and quantum-native aren’t two different bets; they’re one continuum. Quantum-inspired solvers are already compressing simulation and optimization cycles on hardware our customers own, and in doing so they’re building the knowledge that actually gates adoption.” —Abhishek Chopra, CEO, BQP

“There has been steady improvement in quantum computers in the last few years. However, we will need to see leaps in error correction and in numbers of logical qubits to get to the point where we can use these devices for significant work in the real world of chemistry, drug discovery, and risk analysis.” —Jack Hidary, CEO, SandboxAQ

“Advancements will come as noise gets eradicated through error correction on the way to full fault tolerance. It’s a gradual transition, and I believe the blurry middle is where we’ll begin to see quantum computing deliver meaningful scientific and practical value. An example would be algorithms that can cut the operations needed to model a new material or medicine by factors of millions, without waiting for fault-tolerant hardware. What I’m watching for now is more of that.” —Ian Hogarth, partner, Plural

“The promise of topological qubits is that they can provide hardware-level protection against errors while enabling digital control, making large-scale quantum systems far more practical to build and operate. As we continue to see progress in topological qubits . . . it will strengthen the case for a quantum computing platform that can eventually scale to the millions of qubits needed to tackle problems beyond the reach of classical computers.” —Matthias Troyer, technical fellow and corporate vice president, Microsoft Quantum

“The industry is now at a critical inflection point where this achievement is beginning to separate leaders from followers. While many organizations continue to promote ambitious roadmaps and proof-of-concept results, the most meaningful measure of progress is whether they have demonstrated scalable, end-to-end quantum error correction and a credible path to utility-scale quantum computing.” —Justin Ging, chief product officer, Atom Computing

“We’ve known since the 1990s that computation on physical qubits couldn’t be fully scaled up, and that the long-term future is in what’s called fault-tolerant quantum computing. We’ve been beginning to hit the limits of physical qubit computation over the last few years and, excitingly, there have been huge leaps forward in fault-tolerant quantum computing. . . . I think we’re approaching the point at which fault-tolerant quantum computers start to clearly outperform their physical qubit counterparts.” —Tim Proctor, quantum physicist, Sandia National Laboratories, and co-lead, Sandia Quantum Performance Laboratory

“[One milestone] that would signal that quantum computing has entered a new phase is an end-to-end demonstration of fault-tolerant quantum computing below threshold, in which increasing the size of the underlying error-correction code decreases the probability of error in the encoded quantum program. This would imply that there was a clear path to reliable quantum computing.” —Joe Fitzsimons, CEO, Horizon Quantum

“A key indicator will be open-access validations of fault-tolerant operations and their associated logical error rates. I expect these demonstrations will represent progressively more complex calculations across a broad range of use cases, including modeling and simulation, optimization, and data processing.” —Travis Humble, director, Quantum Science Center

Practical/commercial quantum advantage

“The more important signal will be the scientific and economic value these systems create. Quantum should become a routine part of the discovery toolkit, working alongside AI, simulation, and supercomputing in areas such as chemistry, materials science, and physics. When researchers can use it to explore questions that are too complex for today’s methods—and turn those insights into better products, processes, and discoveries—we’ll know the technology is beginning to realize its full potential.” —Rajeeb Hazra, president and CEO, Quantinuum

“The signal I want to see isn’t a bigger qubit count, it’s a mixture of three things: one, a fault-tolerant, utility-scale machine actually doing useful work in materials science or drug discovery at commercial scale; two, the kind of sustaining capital and manufacturing commitment that the Department of Commerce is championing to build these machines wholly in the U.S.; and, three, a robust and diverse quantum computing software ecosystem analogous to what emerged in AI starting in 2025.” —Matt Ocko, cofounder and managing partner, DCVC

“While the community has made a lot of progress in understanding the use cases for quantum computers, we still don’t really know what the first computations are that the government or any industry player should run. I expect new applications and algorithms to be developed that will truly showcase the potential value of future machines, and near-term systems with hundreds of qubits capable of performing billions of operations without error will validate that value by allowing people to demonstrate small proof-of-concept computations.” —Micah Stoutimore, managing director, Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, DARPA

“What’s next? For me, the clearest signal that quantum computing is realizing its potential will be practical quantum advantage—the point where quantum computing does a better job than standard computing for commercial purposes. This moment is sooner than many think, and advances in algorithms and software will enable a tipping point in the next couple of years.” —Ashley Montanaro, cofounder, Phasecraft, and professor of quantum computation, University of Bristol

“What we need to start considering more in public discourse is that to get to this point, we will need to look beyond the single-modality hero story. The future will likely be heterogeneous, with different types of quantum computers used for the problems they are best suited to address. The real milestone will be when the conversation moves beyond comparing modalities and toward measurable outcomes, such as new discoveries, better materials, and more efficient processes.” —Izhar Medalsy, cofounder and CEO, Quantum Elements

“Quantum computing capabilities are advancing quickly, and there are near-term technical milestones that excite me as a researcher in this field. But what would excite me most is the next step beyond them: genuine quantum advantage, a result a quantum computer can achieve that no classical computer can match. That could take two forms: solving a problem of real practical significance, not just a toy benchmark, or delivering a genuine scientific discovery.” —Kai-Mei Fu, professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering, University of Washington, and member, National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee

“The inevitable day on which quantum computers outperform classical computers in solving commercially valuable problems is still many years away. A profoundly important milestone along the way will be the availability of quantum computers so reliable that ‘software’ can be written without regard for the physical constraints and deficiencies.” —David Cowan, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners

“Quantum has so far turned out to be a tough place to make financial returns, but the tide appears to be changing. My focus has been funding the picks and shovels (enabling technologies like control systems or cryogenic systems) of the coming wave of quantum innovation, as I believe costs—thanks to these new picks and shovels—are on the precipice of collapse.” —Michael Fertik, founder and managing director, Verdict Capital 

System integration and the rise of heterogeneous (quantum + classical + AI) computing

“The next advance in quantum computing will come through deeper integration with AI. AI can make quantum systems more capable and reliable. Quantum, in turn, could extend AI’s reach, accelerating the discovery of new algorithms and helping train AI models more efficiently. With JPMorganChase and AMD, we are collaborating to develop a secure, scalable Quantum-AI platform. The breakthrough will come when Quantum-AI delivers results neither could achieve alone: securely, at scale, and on problems that matter.” —Gerald Mullally, CEO, Oxford Quantum Circuits

“As software platforms mature and workflow orchestration advances, organizations will no longer need to decide whether a problem belongs on a CPU, GPU, QPU, or another accelerator. Instead, quantum will become another resource within a heterogeneous computing environment, allowing organizations to focus on solving business and scientific problems rather than managing the underlying computing architecture. The value of quantum computing won’t necessarily come from exponential speedups across every application. It will come from consistently and reliably enabling organizations to solve optimization, simulation, partial differential equations, and quantum machine learning problems faster, more accurately, or more efficiently than with classical computing alone.” —Heather West, global quantum research lead, enterprise infrastructure team, IDC

“Quantum machine learning is a legitimate research discipline, but there is no proven production method showing that quantum can materially improve training or inference economics of today’s AI systems, which keep getting better. Many of the proposed advantages depend on fault-tolerant [hardware], efficient data loading, and algorithms that preserve their advantage across compute workflows. None of these conditions exist even remotely, at the required scale today.” —Chirag Dekate, VP analyst, Gartner

Scaling hardware: manufacturability, qubit counts, and modular architectures

“For quantum computing to become genuine infrastructure—serving millions of workloads at once—it has to outgrow the lab. That means the devices need to be simple enough to run outside carefully controlled environments, and they must be built at the scale, yield, and cost that real infrastructure demands. Qubit counts make headlines, but manufacturability is what will actually put quantum to work.” —Marius Grundmann, cofounder and CEO, Saxon Q

“Today’s quantum platforms all have physical limits that hinder their ability to scale to large sizes. To get past those limits, researchers are pursuing modular quantum architectures, in which many smaller quantum processors are interconnected to form larger systems. There are myriad challenges associated with modular systems, spanning hardware, error correction, software, and architecture. Demonstrations of interconnected modules operating together will be a major milestone on the pathway toward scalable quantum systems.” —Chuck Black, Center for Quantum Advantage, Brookhaven National Laboratory

“There are still many challenges remaining to network quantum machines successfully, because almost all of the quantum systems today just consist of a single processor. If the networking is accomplished by sending photons over a fiber-optic cable, there may be a requirement to develop transduction technology that transforms the native qubit of the system into a photon for transmission over the cable. Reducing photon losses and achieving high-fidelity transmission are also required. In addition, there are software considerations including how [to] split up a large quantum program to have it execute on multiple processors. Specialized quantum compilers will be required to ensure this happens effectively.” —Doug Finke, chief content officer, Global Quantum Intelligence

“What would truly make a difference in the field is a breakthrough in scaling the qubit count to a meaningful number—10,000 or more—with a pathway to 100,000 or more. To convince me that quantum computing will fulfill its potential, I’d need to see an example of true commercial advantage. Not a ‘toy problem’ without any commercial value, as we have seen in recent claims of ‘advantage,’ but solving a commercially valuable computational problem, like simulating a molecule too complex for any classical computer to unlock treatment for a disease we can’t cure.” —Nick Farina, cofounder and CEO, EeroQ

Enterprise adoption: from pilot projects to production ROI

“Right now, there is a quantum applications gap that reflects the disconnect between the growing capabilities of quantum hardware and the ability of business leaders to identify where quantum computing can be applied to the right use cases. Enterprises will only realize quantum’s potential once they understand what hard problems are the best fit for this new compute power and how to apply it to their workflows. Hardware alone will create little value unless leaders can use it to solve relevant and meaningful business problems.” —Sumit Kapur, CEO, Zapata Quantum

“We’ve already seen multiple demonstrations that quantum computers can outperform the best classical alternatives in niche but economically relevant computations, and we’ve seen early exploratory interest from enterprise end users. Next we need to see a transition from corporate R&D or innovation budgets to production-level adoption as end users identify that there is real near-term ROI to be achieved.” —Michael Biercuk, founder and CEO, Q-CTRL

“What is the demand signal from potential industry users? It gives me confidence in the progress being made when I see end-user companies asking the right questions, running pilot studies, and budgeting for the technology because they see a genuine path to value. I’m most excited, though, to see those three pieces converge.” —Harley Johnson, CEO, Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park

“Quantum progress will be evident in two ways. With annealing quantum computing (which specializes in hard optimization problems), it will be reflected in the growth of production application deployments delivering significant, measurable ROI. With gate-model quantum computing, it will come from efficient error correction that enables millions of operations across roughly 100 logical qubits. Together, those advances will show that quantum is moving from technical promise to practical, scalable impact.” —Alan Baratz, CEO, D-Wave

“I believe quantum will have its ChatGPT moment in the next few years that will spark this race (probably after some significant commercial quantum advantage moment), and that exponential function will permeate across all the useful problem sets of quantum. This is why we are looking to back those who are actively deploying their systems into ring-fenced, colocated data centers where these enterprises operate; those who are starting to think about mundane things like cost per tile of floor space and optimizing for it. When the wave comes . . . the winners will be the most usable and useful system, which will truly cement their leadership.” —Callum Stewart, investment principal, Bullhound Capital

Standardization, integration, and abstraction across the stack

“Whether it is realizing its potential is a question of where the machines end up. For me, the biggest signal will be finding quantum computers inside enterprise environments, reached through the cloud and data center infrastructure companies already rely on, and increasingly through industrial settings like gigafactories. Those conversations with cloud providers and data centers are only just beginning, but they already see quantum as part of a hybrid design, running alongside classical computing and AI rather than replacing it. When the first commercial data center offers quantum hardware to its enterprise customers, that will be the real signal it is ready to be part of a broader corporate strategy.” —Marta P. Estarellas, CEO, Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech

“We need simultaneous advances across the entire stack, from secure semiconductor roots and post-quantum security to control electronics, processors, photonic interconnects, and networks. The early internet offers a comparison. Its individual technologies were impressive, but the real breakthrough came when common standards allowed computers and networks to connect and work together. . . . Quantum will reach a similar turning point when its layers operate through common standards and interoperable architectures.” —Carlos Moreira, chairman and CEO, SealSQ

Algorithm and software development: closing the gap

“An area that we see as underfunded with enormous potential to advance the quantum industry is algorithm development. You could have the world’s most advanced quantum computer, but without algorithms that can be successfully executed, the hardware is not that useful. Once we see serious investment in the companies developing quantum algorithms—in the experts with deep knowledge of the underlying hardware that will be leveraged—we believe that we’ll be much closer to practical quantum computing.” —Subodh Kulkarni, president and CEO, Rigetti Computing

“We should hope that our understanding of the space of quantum computing applications is currently as primitive as it was for classical computing several decades ago. The problem is more interesting and subtle, for two reasons. First, the design of good quantum algorithms is rather less intuitive. Second, we need applications for which the quantum solution is in some way better than any classical alternative. Scientific applications, particularly but not exclusively to intrinsically quantum mechanical systems, are a natural target and historically they were a great driver of classical high-performance computing.” —Patrick Draper, associate professor of physics, Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois

“Quantum-based sensors of various types are being developed for applications in navigation, biomedical imaging, detection of underground structures, etc. Widespread adoption of quantum sensors depends on demonstration of capabilities and advantage over existing sensors and in some use cases, such as certain biomedical applications, also requires regulatory approval. Quantum networks that enable distribution of quantum information over various distances have applications for secure communication and for connecting quantum computers to scale capability beyond that of a single machine. —Celia Merzbacher, executive director, Quantum Economic Development Consortium

“We already see the real impact of quantum sensing in the world, with wild new capabilities to see the unseen and tackle our most difficult diseases. We have new insights into the nature of nature from quantum algorithms that are on the threshold of creating super-classical results in materials and optimization. And yes, machines capable of making our current private key cryptography obsolete are now no longer a question of if, but when. But the unambiguous prize is to be able to simulate the highly correlated systems that underpin industry, health, commerce, chemistry, life. That’s when the real industrial revolution takes hold. And it’s years, not decades, away.” —Peter Barrett, cofounder and general partner, Playground Global

Democratization: bringing domain experts beyond quantum physicists into the field

“The signal to watch for is when the quantum computing user base transitions from quantum experts to AI developers, chemists, engineers, and materials scientists. Put another way, it’s when quantum becomes a tool that experts in other fields choose to use without reorganizing their entire work around the machine.” —Pranav Gokhale, CTO, Infleqtion

“Quantum computing will really benefit people like computational chemists, materials scientists, mathematicians, and foundational model researchers. For them to enter the field, we will need the new category of more accessible tooling that is starting to emerge. This includes AI-based coding platforms and programming languages that are understandable and usable by non-quantum experts.” —Ton van ‘t Noordende, founder and general partner, Ground State Ventures

“One thing I’m looking for is when scientists who study systems using state-of-the-art computational methods start incorporating quantum computation into their work in a meaningful way. This research pushes the limits of current supercomputers, and these researchers should be the earliest adopters of quantum-enabled computation, just as they have been at the forefront as users of so many past advances in computing. We are starting to see this in academic and other institutions, but mostly as a side project where people are looking into how and whether future quantum computers will be useful for them.” —Elizabeth Goldschmidt, director, Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center, Grainger College of Engineering

“The quantum industry attracts exceptionally talented people who are developing brilliant ideas at a breathtaking pace. Many of these ideas are grounded in a deep understanding of the physics and supported by impressive laboratory results, which is what makes the field’s potential so compelling. At the same time, every approach faces significant challenges in reaching the required scale and performance. To me, the clearest sign of progress will be seeing these long-standing barriers genuinely lowered, and seeing companies speak openly about what remains difficult and how they intend to address it.” —Michael Slutsky, chief technology officer, Quantum Source

Geopolitics, economic power, and national competition

“Everyone is waiting for quantum to become commercially useful. I think the bigger story is what happens the day after. Once practical quantum advantage is proven, the race won’t be between startups; it’ll be between nations. That’s when quantum stops being a science experiment and starts becoming a pillar of economic and geopolitical power. . . . Once practical quantum advantage is demonstrated, I don’t think we’ll view quantum as another computing advance; we’ll view it as a strategic capability that reshapes economics, security, and geopolitics.” —Seth Winterroth, partner, Eclipse Capital

“It’s important to remember that quantum isn’t a single technology; it comprises many different capabilities, each maturing at parallel paces. It is difficult to guess quantum’s eventual ultimate potential, but generally, the real signals that the sector is advancing involve the emergence of resilient, international supply chains; nations establishing new industrial bases; and the broad adoption into both commercial and defense applications. For many quantum and enabling technologies, we are seeing these things begin to happen right now, in real time—and now is the time that ecosystems must take the bold steps needed to enable the transition into this new technological era.” —Philip LaFrance, manager, sector development and operations, Quantum Industry Canada

“For years I’ve argued that energy must eventually cost nothing, and that compute must follow—not as demands, but as consequences of the technologies arriving now. Compute is this century’s second infrastructure, and quantum is what releases it from scarcity. I’m watching for the moment quantum leaves the cryogenic lab and becomes infrastructure like roads or clean water: built once, and there for everyone. Whoever keeps compute scarce keeps the future scarce.” —Anders Indset, frontier-tech investor, philosopher, and chairman, Tomorrowmensch

The pace of quantum adoption

“There’s a common misconception that quantum computing will arrive in a light-switch moment where suddenly classical cryptography is invalidated and there’s universal deployment of QPUs in production environments across sectors. The clearest signals of progress will be the increasing number of problems where workloads that include a quantum processor in the mix deliver superior results. Excitingly, they are high-stakes problems: things like network anomaly, attack detection, and adversarial training-sample generation.” —Matthew Bradley, VP of corporate development, Silicon Quantum Computing

“Quantum computing will be judged by the problems that get solved, not the promises it makes. One problem at a time. And one day we’ll look up and quantum won’t be the future anymore. It’ll just be how things get done.” —Jan Goetz, cofounder and CEO, IQM Quantum Computers