Global technology giant IBM, has announced plans to invest more than US$ 10 billion in quantum computing over the next five years. The investment will span research and development, capital expenditure, manufacturing scaling, ecosystem partnerships, and M&A.
This is part of IBM’s plans to not only deliver the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer in 2029, but also advance “quantum leadership anchored in the United States”. In a statement, IBM said that this investment funds the next stage of that foundation, “carrying IBM’s lead from today’s commercial quantum computers towards fault-tolerant scale systems.”
“The quantum era is no longer ahead of us, it has started. Our clients, partners and users around the world are tapping into IBM quantum computers to do work that was impossible a few years ago,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman & CEO, IBM. “The pace of discovery with quantum computers is accelerating rapidly and this investment powers our ability to deliver the next generation of quantum hardware, software, and manufacturing.”
The company has deployed over 90 quantum systems across the world via cloud and dedicated on-site deployments. This fleet includes quantum computers operating at IBM quantum centers in New York and Germany; at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, PINQ in Quebec, The University of Tokyo and RIKEN in Japan, Yonsei University in South Korea, and BasQ in Spain, with additional systems coming soon in Chicago, and at Amaravati Quantum Valley in India.
IBM plans to deliver IBM Quantum Starling in 2029. This will be a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer which, the company says ,will be capable of executing 20,000 times more operations than today’s existing systems. Starling will lay the foundation for IBM Quantum Blue Jay, which will run one billion quantum operations across 2,000 qubits. These systems will deliver the transformative scale needed for quantum to take on the most challenging and currently intractable problems across science and industries.
