08-27-2026SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

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

As investment surges and the pace of progress accelerates, leaders from Google, Microsoft, DARPA, Quantinuum, and more reveal the signals insiders are tracking to determine whether next-gen computing can live up to the hype.

[Source images: Adobe Stock]

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.

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.”

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........

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