The top companies pushing quantum computing forward

As quantum computing continues to develop and undergo research, companies are building quantum capabilities in both hardware and software. The companies in this list aredeveloping quantum capabilities in various ways, including infrastructure, algorithms and development environments for testing.

While this list is not exhaustive, here are some of the top companies building quantum computers and bringing the technology closer to reality. Companies are listed alphabetically.

1. Alice & Bob

Alice & Bob is a Paris-based quantum company founded in 2020. Though relatively new to the scene, the company has made waves due to itscat qubit technology. Cat qubits resist bit-flip errors by injecting photons, and Alice & Bob's approach might be the key to developing error-corrected quantum computers. This is significant, as performing error correction at scale is a major challenge for qubit-based quantum computers.

Alice & Bob has several quantum chips, withBoson 4 as the most recent release. The Boson 4 has a bit-flip time of 120 seconds and the world's longest bit-flip lifetime of more than 7 minutes. It is available to test throughGoogle Cloud, where these benchmarks can be reproduced.

Alice & Bob'sroadmap includes developing a useful quantum computer by 2030. This system plans to feature 100 high-fidelity logical qubits. Currently, the company is developing two multi-qubit chip generations: Hydrogen and Helium. The next chip series, Lithium, will aim to scale multi-logical-qubit systems to demonstrate an error-corrected logical gate.

Alice & Bob also offers a service calledThe Box, which pairs their quantum experts with businesses to help design quantum strategies, practical applications and real-world uses.

2. Amazon

In 2021, Amazonestablished the opening of the AWS Center for Quantum Computing in Pasadena, Calif. It has partnered with the California Institute of Technology to foster the next generation of quantum scientists and fuel their efforts to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

In 2024, AWSannounced the Quantum Embark Program, an advisory program for customers that provides context, guidance and expertise in quantum technologies. TheAmazon Quantum Solutions Lab delivers the program, specializing in projects using quantum technologies, machine learning and high-performance computing.

In 2025, Amazon announced its first-generation quantum chip,Ocelot. This prototype is the first implementation of a noise-biased gate, which is designed to be a scalable way to achieve quantum error correction.

Amazon offers a quantum computing service calledAmazonBraket. It provides developers access to quantum computers and tools from third-party partners. This service enables customers to speed up their quantum computing research, build quantum projects and run quantum algorithms.

3. D-Wave Systems

D-Wave Systems, a Canada-based company, is the world's first organization to sell acommercial quantum computer. Its latest, the D-Wave Advantage system, features a processor architecture with more than 5,000 qubits and 15-way qubit connectivity.

D-Wave's quantum computers usequantum annealing, a process specifically for optimization. When users map a problem into a search, theprocessing unit considers all possibilities simultaneously and presents calculations that correspond to the optimal configurations of qubits found. These values are the best possible outcomes, resulting in higher-quality results at scale.

D-Wave is currently developing an incremental follow-up to the Advantage system. Its latestprototype features more than 1,200 qubits and 20-way qubit connectivity, delivering better quality than the Advantage system 87% of the time.

In addition to hardware, the company launched theLeap Quantum LaunchPad program in January 2025. This program accelerates the deployment of quantum computing applications and helps customers use annealing quantum computing in practical contexts. D-Wave also offers a cloud-based full stack of systems to enable enterprises, government agencies, national laboratories and academic organizations to build quantum applications.

4. Google

Google's Quantum AI lab has been developing a programmable superconducting processor. A recent iteration is Sycamore, a 54-qubit processor composed of high-fidelityquantum logic gates.

In 2019, Google claimedSycamore had achieved quantum supremacy. Quantum supremacy is the point at which a quantum device can solve a problem exponentially faster than a classical processor. In this case, Sycamore took about 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit 1 million times -- something that would have taken a classical supercomputer nearly 10,000 years to do. Since 2019, Sycamore has run chemical simulations, wormhole simulations and more.

In 2023, Google's Quantum AI researchers achieved another milestone:quantum error correction. The team demonstrated a logical qubit prototype -- a group of physical qubits -- proving it's possible to reduce errors by increasing the number of qubits. The ability to reduce error rates and encode information across multiple physical qubits is key to enabling useful quantum algorithms and producing a large-scale quantum computer.

In 2024, this research was applied to Google's latest quantum chip,Willow. Willow can reduce errors exponentially using more qubits, and its most impressive achievement thus far is hitting a random circuit sampling benchmark. Willow could perform a computation in less than five minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years.

Google also developed a software stack of open source tools and a quantum computing service to develop novel quantum algorithms. Its research team continues to push innovation and achieve milestones in quantum computing, from hardware control systems and quantum control to physics modeling and high-fidelity gate operations.

5. IBM

IBM'squantum development roadmap, which details its plans and timeline for progressing quantum computing, extends through 2033. IBM's primary quantum goal is to enhance quantum execution speed with quantum modularity and build a system capable of running 15,000 gates by 2028. Parallel to this development, the company plans to combinemultichip processors into aKookaburra processor.

IBM has a strong history in quantum development. In 2019, it launched a commercial quantum computer, the IBM Quantum System One. In 2023, theIBM Quantum System Two debuted as the company's first modular quantum computer, which serves as the foundational architecture to support future quantum processors.

In addition to hardware, IBM runs a suite of cloud-based quantum systems, providing researchers, organizations and developers access to various services and resources. This includes IBM Quantum Composer, IBM Quantum Lab and Qiskit, an open source SDK for quantum computers. This platform has public and premium tiers for users to develop, test and run quantum projects.

6. Intel

Intel Labs is working toward building a full-stack commercial quantum computing system. Its most advanced chip to date is calledTunnel Falls. It is open to research partners to experiment with and develop new techniques for working with multiple-qubit devices.

Tunnel Falls is a silicon spin qubit chip that uses Intel's transistor industrial fabrication capabilities to scale its control systems. Hot silicon spin qubits operate at higher temperatures and are much smaller than typical quantum chips. It pairs with Intel's cryogenic control chip Horse Ridge II and a cryoprober, which provide tighter integration and maintain temperatures.

In 2024, Intel introduced a millikelvin quantum research control chip namedPando Tree, which aims to solve the wiring bottleneck that limits quantum scaling. Intel's quantum machines now use the Horse Ridge II and Pando Tree to achieve a more efficient overall platform for large-scale silicon qubit control.

TheIntel Quantum SDK is available for developers who want to learn how to write code that can run on quantum hardware. It features a full quantum computing stack in simulation with a customizable development environment. Simulations can be run using the cloud or within a containerized environment.

7. IonQ

IonQ's quantum computers usetrapped-ion technology. Most quantum hardware uses synthetic quantum systems for its qubits, but IonQ uses naturally occurring individual atomic ions at the core of its processing units. These ions are trapped in a 3D space, andIonQ uses lasers to help prepare and perform the calculations.

IonQ has several quantum systems: IonQ Aria, a 25-qubit system that launched in 2022 and is universally available; IonQ Forte, a 36-qubit system that has limited commercial availability for researchers and customers; IonQ Forte Enterprise, an on-premises quantum system that can integrate into the data center to help develop production-ready applications; and IonQ Tempo, a 6464-qubit system that's expected to launch in 2025. All are based on IonQ's trapped-ion technology architecture. Aria and Forte are available through IonQ Quantum Cloud or Amazon Braket.

IonQ has two quantum data centers that provide cloud access to customers. Thenewest facility, which opened in 2024 in the U.S., houses the company's primary production engineering, R&D and manufacturing teams, as well as the team responsible for rolling out the IonQ Forte Enterprise and IonQ Tempo systems.

8. Microsoft

On Feb. 19, 2025, Microsoft introducedMajorana 1, the world's first quantum chip powered by topological qubits. The chips use a topoconductor, a superconductor that can use a new state of matter to observe and control particles to produce scalable qubits. This combination might be able to scale up to 1 million qubits on a single chip.

Microsoft'squantum roadmap spans several new milestones, including building high-quality hardware-protected qubits, developing a multi-qubit system, creating a resilient quantum system and achieving a quantum supercomputer with an error rate below one in a trillion. TheDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency chose to partner with Microsoft to help evaluate whether quantum computing technologies could develop an industrially useful, utility-scale quantum computer faster than conventional predictions.

Microsoft offers a portfolio of quantum computers from other hardware providers as part of itsAzure Quantum platform. This service provides an open development environment for researchers, businesses and developers, enabling flexibility to tune algorithms and explore today's quantum systems.

9. QCI

Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) is a full-stack quantum company thatclaims to be committed to democratizing access to quantum value. Rather than building quantum computing services for the largest of enterprises, QCI's offerings are more affordable and can be used by non-quantum experts.

To build quantum computers, QCI uses an approach calledEntropy Quantum Computing (EQC). It aims to use loss and decoherence and turn entropy into fuels for its computing engine rather than relying on pristine, isolated qubits. The implementation of EQC uses integrated photonics, leading to SWaP-C friendly devices, like regular PCs.

QCI's commercial EQC systems are known as Dirac. The most recent model in the product line is theDirac-3, a qudit-based system that can scale up to 949 qudits. Organizations can access Dirac-3 via cloud access with a computer that can access the device's network location or by purchasing an on-premises device. Cloud access is available as a trial that includes 10 minutes of free runtime and an hourly subscription after that.

QCI also offers Qatalyst, a software package that enables end users to solve problems on quantum systems without requiring complex programming knowledge.

In 2024, QCI secured acontract with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to apply the Dirac-3 to support advanced imaging and data processing demands. This could pave the way for similar applications in other fields where quantum solutions can produce faster and higher-quality results thanalgorithms running on classical computers.

10. Quantinuum

In 2021, Honeywell Quantum Solutions, which builds quantum hardware based on trapped-ion technologies, and Cambridge Quantum, a quantum software developer, merged to formQuantinuum.

Quantinuum has two quantum computers: theSystem Model H1, the company's first-generation computer with a linear architecture, and theSystem Model H2, its latest-generation quantum computer with a racetrack architecture. The H2 features 56 fully connected qubits, a quantum volume of 2,097,152 (2²¹), 99.997% single-qubit gate fidelity and 99.87% two-qubit gate fidelity.

The H-Series hardware pairs with a software package that applies quantum computing to solve complex problems across industries, from pharmaceuticals to specialty chemicals.Helios, a hardware-as-a-service, will be available using cloud access in 2025.

Quantinuum'shardware roadmap aims to build a universal, fully fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2030. This device will be Quantinuum's fifth-generation quantum computer, Apollo. In 2025, Quantinuum announced a new framework forgenerative quantum AI. With this framework, the H2 can train AI systems, explore data complexities and enable commercial applications at scale.

11. Rigetti Computing

Rigetti Computing is an integrated systems company that builds quantum computers and superconducting quantum processors. Its quantum processors are universal, gate-model machines.

Rigetti has built various processors, from the Aspen series to the Ankaa series, its latest line. In December 2024, Rigetti deployed its most recent processor, theAnkaa-3, which features 82 qubits. Its single-qubit and two-qubit gates have achieved a median fidelity of 99.9% and 99%, respectively.

The company has a smaller 9-qubit quantum processor called theNovera system, which runs on the same architecture as the Ankaa series. It is designed to lower the barrier to entry for quantum computing.

Rigetti's roadmap for the future includes expanding its multichip designs and multicore architecture to increase processing power and building an even larger machine, the Lyra system, a 336-qubit quantum processor.

Users can access Rigetti's quantum computing systems through its Quantum Cloud Services platform, Amazon Braket or Microsoft Azure. The cloud platform enables coders to write quantum algorithms for simulations of quantum chips.

12. Xanadu

Xanadu Quantum Technologies is a Canada-based company taking aphotonic approach to building quantum computers.

Xanadu's hardware is known as theX-Series. The X-Series devices are the first photonic quantum computers deployed to the cloud. They use nanophotonics and quantum light sources that emit squeezed-light pulses alongside fully programmable quantum gates and photon-number resolving detectors. The X-Series is particularly adept at solvingGaussian boson sampling problems, which would take classical computers thousands of years to perform.

Xanadu also leads the development of PennyLane, an open source software library for quantum computing and application development. Xanadu offers a freePennyLane Codebook that features a variety of educational modules to help users understand the basics of quantum computing programming and gain experience with hands-on exercises.

Why quantum computing is a space worth watching

Quantum computing is poised to become a trillion-dollar industry in the next 10 years. The technology will likely grow like AI,rapidly spreading throughout every industry. It has the potential to affect every sector of the economy and change how humans think about and solve problems at scale.Quantum technology could help with the following:

• Significantly boost processing performance.
• Solve complex problems much faster.
• Enhance modeling and computational precision.
• Accelerate and enrich AI model training.
• Improve data analysis and increase accuracy.
• Deliver higher-quality optimizations at scale.
• Transform R&D initiatives.

For these reasons and more, quantum computing isattracting investors, business owners and technology leaders worldwide. The presence of many obstacles, however, might affect potential value.

The current state of quantum computing

Quantum computing has its skeptics. Many challenges lie ahead for quantum computing, including barriers related to data bandwidth, accuracy, rare material sourcing, wide-scale manufacturing and production, andcybersecurity. In addition, there's a lack of quantum literacy in the workforce and understanding in the wider population.

That said, great strides have been made in quantum computing since 2019. Milestones include Microsoft's Majorana, the first quantum chip powered by a topological core, and Google's demonstration of quantum error correction. Commercial quantum computers are also becoming more common. Practical applications of quantum technologies are in use, including quantum sensors, communication devices and research labs.

In short,quantum computing is in an interesting place. It hasn't hit its big breakout moment like AI with ChatGPT's introduction in 2022, and it's unclear if the technology can deliver enough practical uses to drive profitability. Quantum is a space worth watching as more innovations and discoveries are made and more quantum companies emerge. Organizations that want to be on the cutting edge should consider being early adopters to get ahead of the curve, even if that is another 10 years away.

Jacob Roundy is a freelance writer and editor specializing in a variety of technology topics, including data centers and sustainability.