How close are we to a quantum future?
The promise of quantum computing is huge. Such machines could, in the words of physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, “tackle the last frontier of complexity”.
That could mean a solution for some of the biggest challenges facing the world, from climate change to personalised medicine and more efficient ways to grow food and provide energy.
But how far away are we from that being a reality? Every week seems to bring a quantum announcement from either Google, IBM, or Amazon about how powerful their machines are getting in the race towards quantum supremacy, but what does this really mean?
The truth is that, for many, quantum remains a complete mystery. A technology they may have heard of but almost certainly would not be able to explain.
To help unpick what quantum is and where it is going, we spoke to Ilyas Khan, Founder and Chief Product Officer of Quantinuum, the world’s largest integrated quantum company.
A quantum computer is built not from bits that make up digital code but by harnessing the principles of quantum mechanics and the strange properties of sub-atomic and atomic particles.
“A quantum computer is computing in a natural way. All of the machines that we use right now are contrived. They are based on ‘first-order logic,’ which doesn’t exist in nature,” Khan told TFD.
Or, as Google’s head of quantum puts it, quantum is “the operating system of nature”.
While binary code stores information as either a one or a zero, sub-atomic particles can do either or both. This translates into machines capable of doing calculations that would take a classical machine many millions of years in mere minutes.
And right now, we are at a major tipping point, Khan told TFD.
If somebody somewhere can generate a topological qubit at scale, then that is game over for everyone.
Transforming biology
“For a quantum computer to have an impact, it has to be incapable of being simulated classically,” he said.
In early 2025, Quantinuum announced that data generated from quantum computers can now be used to train AI systems, while US start-up D-Wave Quantum demonstrated how its new quantum machine can outperform one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
“A quantum computer on its own will be useful in high-energy particle physics and condensed matter, which are the building blocks for many, many things we do,” said Khan.
But the real breakthrough will come when AI and quantum can be combined, he explained.
“A large language model with a quantum computer will have an enormous impact on the things that matter, such as biology, gene therapy, drug delivery and material discovery. There’s nothing bigger than biology. If we could live longer with dignity, if we could treat disease at the source rather than symptoms, if your medicine was different from mine. Then that affects society at a fundamental level.”
He envisages data centres that have both a supercomputer and a quantum machine using powerful AI working side by side, and he predicts this will be a reality in less than two years.
What a quantum computer will not do is replace the desktop machines that we all use in our daily lives because, as Khan puts it, “they are perfectly good for Zoom and YouTube and Excel spreadsheets and email and many, many other things”.
Size matters, but what you do with it matters more
Google, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and a range of start-ups are all engaged in a race to build the most powerful quantum computer. In December 2024, Google unveiled a quantum chip called Willow, which it said could solve a problem in five minutes that would take the world’s fastest supercomputer ten septillion years. But that does not mean it is ready for the commercial world.
While the big tech firms may boast about developing machines with more and more qubits, the key to commercial success will only come when those qubits can be controlled and are error-free.
“There are many different methods of generating a qubit and manipulating it. It could be an atom, it could be an electron, it could be a photon,” said Khan.
“The announcements you will have seen from Microsoft, Google and more recently AWS, say ‘If we were to have a qubit, here’s how we would control it’.”
Noise from the environment is “the biggest enemy of a qubit”, said Khan. But there could be one breakthrough in the next decade that could solve this specific problem and turn the industry on its head: a topological qubit.
“If somebody somewhere can generate a topological qubit at scale, then that is game over for everyone,” he said.
“A topological qubit is born deaf. It is impervious to noise. If you collected 100 quantum computing experts and forced them to go through an honesty machine, everyone would agree that a topological qubit is perfect. The challenge is that it is very hard to create.”
Pharmaceuticals will be at the forefront, and then energy companies would be next, and then finance. These are the three areas where there is strong consensus that quantum will be almost existentially important to them.
Switching to quantum
Despite the challenges associated with the technology, huge progress has already been made.
“90% of quantum machines are outside of the lab and within commercial organisations. Four years ago, we could not have said that, but it is certainly the case now,” he told TFD.
The appetite for investors has also grown. What used to be the preserve of government and university funding is now seeing much more private capital flow in.
All of which means that the big tech firms may need to reassess where they are putting their money, thinks Khan.
“When we listen to Sam Altman and Elon Musk, they point to the things that AI will impact, and it ends up making our climate and our planet better and making us healthier. And those can’t be done with classical computers,” he said.
“They’re investing so much in AI that they will get to the point at which they will have to switch to quantum.”
A new era of security
One of the biggest concerns about quantum is how it will affect the security of computer systems and critical infrastructure because a quantum machine would be able to break traditional encryption methods that currently keep much of our digital world safe.
Already, start-ups specialising in cybersecurity have begun integrating quantum-safe algorithms into their existing platforms, and back in 2022, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began standardising post-quantum cryptographic algorithms.
Businesses are being urged to assess their encrypted assets and consider how to make them quantum-safe.
Khan sees no reason to panic.
“There will be algorithmic methodologies that are impervious to a quantum machine, although I pause on that because how many times have we heard that new code is impervious and five years later someone cracks it. So I think that cycle will continue. But I am less worried about it, and I think we have enough time to be able to prepare ourselves.”
Plus, he said, the bigger picture for quantum outweighs any near-term fears.
“I actually think that this is overblown. In 100 years' time, no one is going to say a quantum machine could break RSA-2048 (an infamous cryptographic algorithm), but they will say – oh wow, we are able to edit and manipulate our genetic code so we can solve oncologies or senility.”
An industry in preparation
In the near term, the quantum industry is in preparation mode.
“The analogy I always use is that of the mobile telephone. The car phone made a sudden appearance, and it was pretty much overnight in late 1988, early 1989. You could go along and have it installed in your car. But the fact of the matter is, however, that for a couple of years prior to that, the relay signals, the transmission towers, the handsets, the mechanics, the battery, someone somewhere was developing and making them. Suddenly, within a year, you had this industry which didn’t exist before.”
When the quantum industry is ready for that leap, where does he see it impacting first?
“Pharmaceuticals will be at the forefront, and then energy companies would be next, and then finance. These are the three areas where there is strong consensus that quantum will be almost existentially important to them.”
Explore TFD’s Quantum Collective and discover valuable insights for quantum communications: https://www.wearetfd.com/collectives/quantum-collective
