Every generation inherits problems it didn’t create, alongside tools it didn’t build. Ours are significant: diseases like cancer that we still can’t reliably cure, managing financial portfolios with countless variables in today’s financial markets, or trusting communications about our most sensitive information without having to worry whether security safeguards will hold.
For most of my career, I’ve watched brilliant people attack these complex problems with computers that were never built for them. Classical computers are remarkable machines. They’re also a ceiling because, in spite of continued improvements, some problems still can’t be addressed as chips get faster. No amount of “faster” will ever help them catch up with the processing burdens we increasingly place on them.
That’s the real promise of quantum computing. It’s not a faster version of the computer already on your desk or in your hand, but a different way of computing altogether. It can be used to model a cancer drug’s interaction with 10,000 biological variables instead of scientists guessing at those interactions. Financial systems holding people’s savings and pensions can finally be built for the complexity of the markets they run on. And we can have confidence in the safety and security of our communications.
None of that is guaranteed by quantum computing. But all of it becomes possible because of it.
QUANTUM COMPUTING NOW
That distinction matters because it’s honest. Quantum gives the people working on cancer, in financial markets, within telecommunications networks, and on other complex issues a set of tools equal to the size of the problem.
I say this as someone building one piece of this industry. I want to be careful not to make this about any single company, including my own. What’s happening in quantum computing right now is bigger than any one lab or business. Physicists are coaxing qubits out of superconducting circuits colder than deep space. Others are trapping single ions with lasers, or holding neutral atoms in place with tweezers made of light. My own team has bet on light itself, the same physical medium the world already trusts to carry its most sensitive information billions of times a day without anyone needing to think twice about it.
I happen to believe that light gets us to practical, real-world quantum computing soonest, without the extreme conditions other approaches require. But I could be wrong about the fastest road while still being right about the destination.
QUANTUM COMPUTING MOVES FORWARD
That’s the part of this story I most want to change. For decades, quantum computing has been sold as a single, distant finish line. It’s always a “10 to 20 years away” technology, always someone else’s problem to solve. I don’t think that’s true anymore, and I don’t think we can afford to keep pretending it is.
Real, working quantum systems exist today. Some are more capable than others. None of them are wholly finished. But every one of them is a brick in a road that’s being built right now, in labs and businesses and universities around the world.
I understand if skepticism runs deep. Quantum computing has been “around the corner” for so long that the phrase has become a punchline, and plenty of bold claims in this industry have outrun what the hardware can deliver. That reputation is earned, and I don’t think it’s fair to ask anyone to take our word that this time is different.
What’s different, however, is that some of these systems are no longer confined to physics departments. We’re running real workloads today, outside of labs, that solve real problems that matter to real people who need them solved. That’s a smaller claim than “quantum will change everything,” and I think it’s an important claim worth making right now. Everything larger gets built from claims like this one, proven one step at a time.
DON’T WAIT
We don’t have to wait for the perfect quantum solution to start benefiting from a sometimes imperfect one. We didn’t wait for a perfect internet before we started using it, or a perfect airplane before we started flying. Progress always arrives in pieces, and each piece is worth using while the next one is built.
So, here’s what I’d ask of those reading this who work in this field or hope to benefit from it one day: Don’t wait for quantum computing to arrive. It already has, in enough places, doing enough real work. The question is no longer when but how. How fast can we build on it and realize the benefits in our world today?
Yuping Huang is CEO of Quantum Computing Inc.
