Quantum Computing Digest — 2022

A concise digest compiled from reports and analyses curated by The Qubit Report (2022).Q1 2022 showed quantum computing settling into a more operational posture, with less emphasis on grand claims and more focus on concrete enabling technology, partnerships, and early procurement signals. The quarter also sharpened the security conversation, as post-quantum preparedness moved from abstract risk into planning guidance and network pilots, while workforce and infrastructure constraints, including cryogenics, tooling, and skills, became harder to ignore. Fully fault-tolerant, scalable systems remained a longer-horizon objective, but readiness advanced meaningfully across hardware platforms, software stacks, and deployment pathways.The quarter’s security narrative converged on a pragmatic message. The quantum threat to today’s cryptography is not a reason to panic, but a reason for methodical preparation. “Havest-now, decrypt-later” concerns resurfaced alongside calls for structured migration planning in enterprise environments. Discussions of the quantum threat and broader framing of a potential “quantum apocalypse” reinforced this planning-focused stance. Industry activity reinforced the move as Verizon highlighted quantum-safe VPNs, while Singapore’s intent to build a quantum-safe national network showed how PQC and quantum-secure networking are increasingly treated as critical infrastructure priorities. Technical and policy conversations also widened from practical protocol perspectives such as QUIC and quantum-safe cryptography to cross-government coordination such as the DHS–Israel cyber statement—suggesting procurement and standards alignment would define the next phase as much as raw cryptographic research.Instead of a single defining machine moment, Q1 2022 read as a quarter of component progress. Advances appeared in gate performance, control electronics, materials, and clearer pathways to repeatable fabrication. IonQ’s ecosystem activity spanned both systems-level collaboration and fundamental capability, as evidenced by the IonQ–Hyundai partnership and a reported IonQ–Duke gate result. On the instrumentation side, vendors pushed the “plumbing” forward, exemplified by Zurich Instruments’ introduction of a new qubit controller, highlighting how scaling hinges on high-performance classical control and readout as much as qubit counts. Materials and device physics remained active, from silicon-based approaches like hot-spin qubits to photonics advances, including work implying meaningful steps toward optical speedups. Taken together with coverage emphasizing manufacturability, such as reports on printing processors using atoms and precision fabrication of light-guiding microcubes, the quarter reinforced a core theme— “quantum advantage” claims will increasingly depend on supply-chain-grade engineering.Q1 2022 also reflected a more disciplined conversation about what counts as meaningful progress, especially in hybrid quantum-classical workflows.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise pointed to supercomputing research framing advantage as a systems question—algorithms, compilers, interconnects, and benchmarking—not a standalone QPU milestone. At the same time, sector commentary pushed back on inflated expectations through discussions such as quantum computing’s “hype problem” reinforcing how credibility will come from transparent metrics and reproducible results. The reality-check did not dampen ambition; instead, it clarified error rates, compilation, and integration must mature to turn promising demonstrations into effective workloads.Software and tooling activity in Q1 2022 emphasized two complementary tracks: making quantum development more practical today, and staking claims in application domains where hybrid methods can be tested. Rigetti’s own focus on full-stack throughput and fidelity aligned with industry efforts to professionalize compilation, including the Rigetti–Zapata work on a commercial hybrid compilation stack. In parallel, application-oriented announcements continued, such as Multiverse Computing’s portfolio pricing approach and its broader emphasis on intellectual property via patent activity. In life sciences, Menten AI’s collaboration with Xanadu on protein-based drug discovery highlighted how quantum machine learning remains a high-interest frontier, echoed by broader framing of ML’s quantum frontier. Toolkits also matured for developer access including Quantinuum updates to lambeq, reinforcing the concept of adoption depends on usable abstractions and workflows, not just hardware roadmaps.Governments and institutions continued to use funding and coordination to shape national positioning, creating a competitive environment defined by infrastructure and talent as much as scientific output. Israel’s reported plan to spend $60 million to build its first quantum computer fit into a broader pattern of states treating quantum capability as strategic capacity. In parallel, policy and trade discussions flagged constraints with analysts warning quantum technology is still too young for heavy-handed approaches, as reflected in debate about export controls. Other coverage pointed to geopolitical pressures shaping commercialization and supply chains, including security and sanctions. The quarter also saw notable startup formation and scaling narratives. SandboxAQ’s public launch and Quantagonia’s positioning to bring business benefits today both reflected a market searching for credible pathways from research to deployment.As hardware and software development broadened, the operational bottlenecks became clearer. Scaling depends on people, facilities, and specialized infrastructure, which are the top three recognized. Workforce discussions, for example, Symmetry’s focus on building the quantum workforce signaled the talent pipelines are now a primary risk factor, not an afterthought. On the infrastructure side, cryogenic systems gained visibility as a critical enabler, with reporting on Finland’s strength in cryostats underscoring how national ecosystem advantages can emerge from niche industrial capability. Even as public-facing explainers broadened awareness, including the conceptual bridge from bits to qubits, the quarter’s subtext pointed to quantum progress resembling other deep-tech scale-ups. Growth remained constrained by manufacturing throughput, test infrastructure, and the availability of highly trained operators.Q1 2022 ultimately reflected a transition toward tangible infrastructure and deployment readiness, with quantum efforts framed less as future promise and more as systems taking operational shape. Quantum security planning took firmer form, while hybrid compute narratives faced greater accountability tied to performance, integration, and use-case clarity. Enabling technologies, including control electronics and cryogenic support, drew sustained attention as practical constraints became central engineering concerns. The quarter’s connective thread was maturation across multiple layers of the stack. Greater emphasis fell on systems engineering discipline, more usable toolchains, and coordinated national investment structures rather than isolated demonstrations. Q2 2022 sharpened the industry’s pivot from promising science toward stack building, with clearer hardware scaling roadmaps, more structured testbeds, and broader cloud pathways making quantum and quantum-inspired work feel more operational. Scalable fault-tolerant systems remained a longer-horizon goal, but the quarter showed steady progress in near-term enabling layers, including error mitigation, manufacturable components, and application-led pilots. In parallel, post-quantum security and quantum networking shifted from abstract urgency into concrete programs, partnerships, and early service framing.Momentum in Q2 leaned heavily toward systems engineering, as IBM’s refreshed plan for a 4,000-qubit system emphasized modular scaling and integration pathways treating packaging, control, and software as primary constraints. This build-the-platform framing also appeared in public-sector infrastructure, with Argonne highlighting Intel’s plan to install a quantum test bed for Q-NEXT, positioning national labs as convergence points for devices, workflows, and users.On the manufacturability front, Silicon Quantum Computing’s report of a quantum integrated circuit reinforced a resurfacing theme portraying progress as increasingly measured by components and repeatable processes, not only by qubit counts.Quantum networking advanced from broad ambition toward more organized build efforts. AWS indicated the shift by launching the Center for Quantum Networking, explicitly orienting around the engineering challenges sitting between lab demos and usable networks. In parallel, BT and Toshiba pointed to a service trajectory via a commercial quantum-secured network rooted in QKD. This is another example of how quantum security is entering operator narratives as something offerable, not only researched. Research progress continued to widen the menu of viable network primitives as well, including demonstrations of warm-atom network nodes which reflect ongoing diversification in approaches to building practical quantum links.PQC moved another step toward programmatic urgency in Q2, with policy attention becoming harder to ignore. Rep. Mace introduced the Quantum Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, reinforcing readiness is being discussed not merely as “best practice,” but as something which may drive formal requirements and planning. At the same time, operational guidance pushed organizations to inventory and validate cryptography now—captured in calls for agencies to test post-quantum algorithms in lieu waiting for last-minute transitions. On the supplier side, PQShield’s announcement of a Microchip licensing agreement and a compliance-ready narrative illustrated how PQC is being packaged as deployable capability aligned to regulated environments. Even broader public explainers played a role in de-noising the conversation. Take CoinDesk’s effort to separate facts from fiction as an example on what quantum can realistically imply for crypto systems in the near term.Q2 reinforced near-term usefulness will often come from smarter techniques working with today’s imperfect hardware. The U.S. Department of Energy highlighted a new error mitigation approach designed to raise effective performance without waiting for full error correction, another sign practical quantum progress is being pursued through layered improvements. In parallel, quantum-inspired optimization continued to serve as a credible bridge between quantum interest and deployable outcomes. Microsoft showcased wind farm energy optimization through Azure Quantum and later broadened access with Toshiba’s SQBM optimization provider. Application-driven demonstrations continued to anchor experimentation in familiar enterprise contexts, with IonQ and GE Research reporting risk aggregation results framing quantum methods as tools for complex modeling rather than headline chasing.The quarter’s build-out story was reinforced by capital and national strategy signals. Crunchbase’s look at quantum VC funding dynamics reflected sustained investor attention even as the market calibrates expectations around timelines and proof points. Governments and regions continued to frame quantum as a competitiveness lever, with Japan articulating ambitions to reach 10 million quantum users by 2030, a demand-building posture treating adoption and talent as infrastructure.Training and ecosystem formation showed up in concrete initiatives as well, including NYU Abu Dhabi hosting the region’s quantum computing hackathon and the University of Ottawa partnering with Xanadu to push quantum boundaries. Coordination narratives also broadened through discussions of international quantum partnerships and higher-level positioning in the G7 leaders’ communique, both of which demonstrate quantum is increasingly treated as a strategic technology domain requiring alignment.Q2 2022 highlighted a transition toward tangible infrastructure and readiness, with modular scaling roadmaps, structured testbeds, quantum networking programs carrying clearer operational intent, and PQC signals moving decisively into program planning and productization. The quarter did not solve fault tolerance, but it strengthened the scaffolding set to determine how quickly quantum capabilities can be delivered as dependable systems and services. For organizations shaping strategy, the through line stayed consistent. The stack is being built now, and early integration work across security, networking, and hybrid tooling will compound as the technology matures.Q3 2022 marked a decisive turn from quantum someday to concrete readiness work, as post-quantum cryptography moved from theory into named algorithms, migration pilots, and procurement signals, while vendors and labs continued to pressure-test what advantage and scale mean in practice. NIST’s initial selections created a common destination for upgrades, and enterprises began translating this direction into inventories, timelines, and hardware and software roadmaps.Across the quarter’s headlines, the ecosystem looked less like isolated lab demonstrations and more like an emerging stack, with cryptographic standards at the top, hybrid orchestration in the middle, and sector pilots in finance, telecom, space, and sensing forming early demand signals. Scalable fault-tolerant systems remained future-oriented, but readiness advanced in ways leaders could incorporate into planning.The quarter’s clearest inflection came when NIST selected four algorithms for standardization, explicitly naming approaches for public-key encryption/key establishment (CRYSTALS-Kyber) and digital signatures (CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, SPHINCS+). This gave CISOs and product teams a shared direction for planning and vendor accountability, reinforced by industry responses such as Thales’ FALCON statement and product announcements aligning offerings to the selected suite. Policy and oversight pressure grew as U.S. lawmakers pushed quantum-focused legislation to drive federal inventories and prioritized migration, while national-security guidance signaled longer-term requirements through NSA’s quantum-resistant roadmap. Sector guidance sharpened, too. DTCC’s financial-sector PQC guidance emphasized migration is an operational program (asset discovery, crypto-agility, vendor coordination, and testing) not a one-time patch. Taken together, these signals helped “harvest-now, decrypt-later” risk move from abstract concern to measurable modernization workstreams.Alongside security, Q3 reinforced the direction of travel in compute: quantum systems were increasingly framed as accelerators within heterogeneous stacks rather than standalone replacements. NVIDIA’s hybrid quantum-classical platform pushed the idea toward mainstream HPC, treating orchestration, simulation, and workflow integration as near-term battlegrounds. Meanwhile, debates about quantum advantage stayed lively. Wired’s advantage showdowns captured the reality of benchmarking continuing to be ill-defined, with different definitions of winning depending on workload, error models, and the chosen classical baselines. The throughline was pragmatic showing the community progress is less about a single victory and more about turning physics constraints into engineering constraints, a theme echoed in industry commentary framing today’s challenge as manufacturable systems, repeatable calibration, and scalable control.Commercial traction continued to broaden, even as the market navigated financing cycles and public-company transitions. D-Wave’s SPAC completion announcement (and related positioning around practical optimization) sat alongside Business Wire’s focus on expanding Global 2000 interest, touting the “quantum value” conversations were increasingly anchored in workflow prototypes and domain-specific pilots. In trapped-ion systems, IonQ highlighted applied collaboration via an Airbus loading project while emphasizing cloud availability as a distribution strategy. Early-stage hardware funding stayed active. Atlantic Quantum’s $9M seed round reflected continued investor appetite for engineering-heavy approaches promising to lower error rates and to provide clearer scaling paths. All of this as occurred the industry remained candid about large-scale, fault-tolerant performance as remaining future-oriented.Q3 highlighted the extent of “quantum technology” beyond computing. Q-CTRL’s quantum sensing division pointed to nearer-term markets including navigation, earth observation, and anomaly detection. These niche technologies are where quantum-enhanced measurements may reach deployable form factors sooner than fault-tolerant computing. In parallel, European space and networking ambitions advanced through SES, ESA, and the European Commission’s satellite QKD partnership. The out-of-this-world ambitions reinforced quantum-secure communications as being pursued as infrastructure, vice experiment. On the telecom side, the GSMA, IBM, and Vodafone post-quantum taskforce signaled mobile operators are treating PQC as a shared migration problem across standards bodies, vendors, and device lifecycles. This rising development complements government-led PQC timelines.National and regional strategies added momentum and shaped the demand side. In India, coverage of growing quantum appetite connected workforce development and enterprise experimentation, suggesting “quantum readiness” is increasingly being treated as a long-cycle talent and procurement program. VentureBeat’s look at Israel’s multi-technology approach emphasized platform diversity as a hedge against dead ends and as a way to build a broader supplier base. Denmark’s Novo Nordisk Foundation described a major national investment with a long runway and explicit patience for platform selection—an unusually candid stance which nonetheless aligns with the field’s reality. Meanwhile, hardware-rooted security narratives reached into silicon and IoT supply chains, with WISeKey testing PQC on secure elements—a reminder of migration ultimately having to land in constrained devices and embedded supply chains, not only in data centers.Q3 2022 ultimately reflected a transition toward tangible infrastructure and risk management, as standardized PQC targets, migration taskforces, and sector-specific guidance began turning quantum risk into measurable programs. Hybrid platforms and commercial collaborations also continued normalizing quantum access through cloud and HPC integration.The quarter’s key message centered on strategic readiness. Organizations were encouraged to begin crypto-agility work, integration planning, and sector pilots early, since these foundations will shape who can adopt quantum capabilities responsibly later. Though Q3 did not solve fault tolerance, it made the near-term agenda harder to ignore.Q4 2022 marked a practical turn in the quantum ecosystem, with progress increasingly framed as work plugging into real compute stacks and security programs rather than demonstrations of physics in isolation. Across the quarter’s announcements, the same themes repeated, including quantum processors anchored at supercomputing sites, networking pilots described in service terms, and post-quantum cryptography moving from future-threat language into near-term migration work. Fully fault-tolerant systems remained a longer-horizon goal, but readiness advanced in enabling layers set to determine whether future capability can be adopted quickly when it arrives.European silicon-spin work reached a concrete milestone as QuTech reported full control of a six-qubit quantum processor in silicon. The announcement emphasized end-to-end control elements (preparation, coherent control, and readout) paired with demonstrations of logic operations and on-demand entanglement within a small register. In Q4’s broader context, this mattered less as a qubit-count headline and more as evidence engineering discipline was moving into the control stack for qubit modalities aiming to benefit from semiconductor-style fabrication pathways.Europe’s quantum‑HPC convergence moved from planning toward placement when EuroHPC JU announced the selection of six sites to host the first European quantum computing systems. The direction was explicit: quantum systems are being positioned as accelerators inside supercomputing centers, where co-location, scheduling, middleware, and user access models will shape real adoption. IBM’s Quantum Summit reinforced the same direction with the unveiling of a 400+ qubit processor (“Osprey”) and updated details for IBM Quantum System Two, described as a modular system intended to combine multiple processors with communication links as a building block for quantum‑centric supercomputing.In networking, the quarter’s story shifted toward infrastructure narratives rather than one-off demonstrations. EPB and Qubitekk described Chattanooga’s deployment as a commercial quantum network with subscriber-oriented access, explicitly tying the network to accelerating product development and adoption. Additionally, Amazon Web Services published an overview of how repeaters and entanglement swapping extend range in quantum networks. The piece framed the field around practical mechanics of distribution, storage, and verification in an illustrated introduction. It also reinforced how much quantum internet success will hinge on systems engineering, not only photonics.PQC momentum gained sharper edges in Q4. Cloudflare’s move to enable post‑quantum TLS via hybrid key agreement, described as on by default for sites and APIs served through its network when clients support it, illustrated a high-leverage adoption mechanism. Major platforms can ship quantum-resistant primitives at internet scale, reducing the burden on individual enterprises to design migrations from scratch. In the U.S. government, the shift from interest to action was visible in FedScoop’s reporting the Senate passed the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, which described OMB prioritizing agency migration toward PQC and setting expectations for guidance and reporting tied to NIST standardization timelines.Use-case traction this quarter leaned into optimization and materials science, domains where quantum and quantum-inspired methods could be inserted into established decision pipelines. Fujitsu and Toyota Systems detailed a production instruction system leveraging the Quantum‑Inspired Digital Annealer to streamline vehicle production sequencing at Toyota’s Tsutsumi plant, describing the value in fast solution searching under complex constraints and operational responsiveness. On the R&D side, IBM highlighted applied collaboration with Bosch on materials science, noting foundations for workflows and algorithms in a materials engagement which targets industry-relevant problems while acknowledging the need to scale models and manage noise.Distribution and enablement mattered as much as raw capability. D‑Wave’s availability via the AWS Marketplace highlighted a model where quantum services can be procured and integrated like other cloud offerings, lowering friction for evaluation and pilot deployment. Organizations also treated skills as an immediate blocker. Q‑CTRL released Black Opal Enterprise, describing enterprise features including cohort management and analytics and naming early customers spanning vendors, consultancies, and government users. On capital formation, Swinburne described Breakthrough Victoria’s A$29 million commitment to establish the ColdQuanta–Swinburne Quantum Technology Centre, linking investment not only to R&D but also to workforce development and advanced manufacturing capability.Q4 2022 reflected a transition toward tangible infrastructure and security urgency, with quantum systems framed as deployable accelerators in HPC and cloud environments, networking pilots nearing service models, and PQC hardening into procurement and migration requirements. The quarter did not resolve the long road to fault tolerance, but it clarified near-term work. Organizations needed to integrate, operationalize, educate, and secure the stack so future quantum capability can be adopted with less friction once hardware and error management reach necessary thresholds.By 2021, quantum computing was no longer defined solely by experimental promise, but by growing demands for operational readiness. Across hardware, software, networking, and security, 2020 reflected a year of consolidation and readiness rather than breakthrough scale. Cloud platforms widened access, governments committed long-term funding, and enterprises began treating quantum Throughout 2019, quantum computing advanced from experimental promise toward structured deployment. Commercial platforms, cloud access, and national strategies emerged alongside urgent post-quantum security planning.

While Our MissionPrivacy PolicyWebsite Terms of UseContact UsPosts | The Qubit ReportCopyright 2017-2026 | The Qubit Report | All Rights Reserved