Though quantum technology may seem like science fiction, researchers and tech companies are getting closer every day to making this powerful method of computing a reality. With significant hurdles ahead, will the costs be worth the benefit?
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AI may be the current darling of the tech industry, but many firms may already have their sights on what could be the next big thing: Quantum computing.
While this revolutionary approach to computation based on the principles of quantum physics is often dismissed as theoretical and far off, scientists are actually getting closer to making quantum computers that blow away traditional ones. Though adoption faces significant roadblocks, as these devices must be kept in a delicate state to work properly, the payoff could be huge for a variety of industries, experts told The Daily Upside.
“Once we deploy it, in terms of the benefits it’s going to provide, I have no qualms about the ROI,” said Karthee Madasamy, founder and managing partner at deep tech venture fund MFV Partners. “It’s not just a pure science project, let’s put it that way. We’re beyond that.”
The Brass Tacks
If you’re confused about what exactly quantum computing is, these are devices that are potentially capable of performing incredibly complex calculations at a rate far faster than that of an everyday, classical computer. Rather than the typical ones and zeros that make a normal computer run, a quantum computer uses qubits capable of existing as both one and zero at once, a phenomenon known as superposition. Those qubits become entangled, meaning they can influence one another, enabling faster problem-solving.
“Think of a road that has cars that can go one direction or the other, and all of a sudden, you can have cars go in any direction at the same time, instantaneously,” said Karl Holmqvist, Founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Lastwall. This creates “massive parallelization potential, and it allows you to solve problems that currently are extremely difficult in almost negligible amounts of time.”
Superposition is a state of being that, while extremely delicate to maintain, has the potential to completely transform a number of industries – and has already proven itself useful in research: A quantum computer built by Google, a leader in the nascent market, was able to instantly execute a task in July that would have taken a supercomputer 47 years to process.
Besides Google, other Big Tech companies and startups are also making leaps in quantum computing. Microsoft announced in November plans to launch a commercial quantum computer in 2025 in partnership with Atom Computing. IBM launched its most advanced quantum computer yet last month, performing at “record levels of scale, speed, and accuracy.” Amazon AWS announced Quantum Embark, a program aimed at helping customers figure out how to prepare for and utilize quantum technology.
In the startup world, PsiQuantum announced plans in July to build a campus in Chicago to create and operate the first “US-based, utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer,” bringing $1 billion in investments to the city. Honeywell is reportedly considering a 2025 IPO for its own quantum unit, Quantinuum, at a valuation of $10 billion.
Quantum computing’s most powerful asset is its ability to optimize, said Ashley Manraj, chief technology officer at Pvotal Technologies. This means it can be applied to practically anything, including industries like finance, logistics, and medicine, as well as applications on the “civil side, the military side, and the governmental side,” he said.
That broad scope means that this tech has some “very high dollar-value applications,” said Holmqvist, including industries like drug discovery, disease research, climate and agricultural modelling, portfolio management, and risk modeling.
One of the best immediate use cases is going to be “basic science,” said Sebastian Hassinger, host of The New Quantum Era podcast and business development specialist for quantum technology at AWS. For example, material science, small-molecule chemistry, and chemicals research can benefit from these devices’ capability to quickly calculate and simulate outcomes.
“We’re sure it’s going to be very, very powerful in terms of science … investing in and accelerating science is definitely worth it,” said Hassinger.
The Barriers
Quantum computers are still quite finicky, which complicates their adoption in the marketplace. These devices are deeply impacted by their surrounding environments and can easily get knocked out of superposition, rendering their computations invalid. They need to be kept entirely isolated and only work at temperatures close to absolute zero, or nearly -460 degrees Fahrenheit. They’re also extremely sensitive to noise, such as vibrations or electrical interference.
Because of this delicate nature, quantum error correction is essential. This is done using a large number of physical qubits to make a “logical” one, or one that’s reliable and resistant to error, said Manraj. It’s estimated that a quantum device needs roughly 1,000 physical qubits per logical qubit.
“There are currently very hard limits that we know of to the stabilization of a qubit,” said Manraj. And to solve major computation problems, these devices will need “another two to three to 10 to 100 times more qubits.”
But several different paths are being researched to solve these problems, Holmqvist noted. For example, startups like IonQ are working on the “trapped ion” approach, which uses charged atoms caught in electromagnetic traps as qubits. Others, like Psiquantum, are working on what’s called the “photonic” approach, which uses particles of lights as qubits, making them more resilient to noise. Some, like Quantum Brilliance, are using diamonds as a means of stabilizing qubits, allowing them to exist at room temperature.
The research doesn’t come cheap: According to Forbes, governments globally have invested more than $55 billion in this technology. Quantum computing startups have raised $1.5 billion in VC funding so far in 2024, Crunchbase reported, more than double investments made in 2023.
“We’re in this noisy, intermediate phase of quantum computing, because we haven’t hit fault tolerance yet, but we’re making breakthroughs in stability,” he said.
Questions Unanswered
The question on the industry’s mind isn’t whether quantum will bring value, but when that value will manifest, Holmqvist said. Quantum development has been happening for years, he said. As a result, breakthroughs in scaling these devices have been “10 years away for the last 30 years,” he added.
While the industry is confident that quantum computers will show returns in some capacity, it’s impossible to tell what, exactly, that value may turn out to be without having a quantum computer powerful enough to do something that classical computers can’t, Hassinger said. “It’s very chicken and egg.”
But with the sheer amount of computing power being gobbled up by tech developments like AI, the tech industry may have no choice but to forge ahead with quantum as we’re “getting to the end of Moore’s Law with the classical [computing],” said Madasamy. “We don’t have the fundamental technologies to be able to keep up with [our computation needs]. So what is the next step?”
Despite the lingering unknowns, Holmqvist said, the payoff may be an “almost incalculably large prize at the far end of making these things work.”
“We probably couldn’t have anticipated how the internet would change our business world,” Holmqvist added. “In the same way, it’s difficult to understand how quantum computers will change those things at scale.”
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