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■ QUANTUM · COMPUTING & PHYSICS
Quantum Tracker
Q-Day clock, the lab scoreboard, the physics wire, the network race.
Quantum Computing & Physics Monitor
The race to make the universe compute for us · Qubits, Q-Day, and the end of encryption as we know it
UPDATED: Jun 2, 2026
1,121
PHYSICAL QUBITS
IBM Condor (best)
94
LOGICAL QUBITS
Quantinuum (Mar 2026)
13,000x
QUANTUM ADVANTAGE
Google Willow
<4 yr
Q-DAY ESTIMATE
RSA-2048 at risk
$38B
GLOBAL QC SPEND
2026 (gov + private)
The Qubit Race
WHO’S BUILDING WHAT · THE HARDWARE SCOREBOARD NOBODY ASKED FOR BUT EVERYONE NEEDS
| PLAYER | CHIP / SYSTEM | QUBITS | APPROACH | STATUS | WHAT IT MEANS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USGoogle | Willow | 105 | Superconducting | ADVANTAGE PROVEN | First “below threshold” error correction. Completed in minutes what would take classical supercomputers billions of years. The benchmark is absurd but the physics is real. |
| USIBM | Nighthawk (120q) / Condor (1,121q) | 1,121 | Superconducting | ADVANTAGE BY EOY | Targeting verified quantum advantage by Dec 2026. 10x error correction speedup, one year ahead of roadmap. IBM has never met a roadmap it couldn’t revise, but credit where due. |
| USMicrosoft | Majorana 1 | 8 (topo) | Topological | PROTOTYPE | World’s first topological qubit processor. Fewer qubits but theoretically more stable. Magne (50 logical qubits) due early 2027. Microsoft is betting that everyone else is building qubits wrong. |
| USQuantinuum | H2 | 56 (physical) → 94 logical | Trapped ion | BREAK-EVEN | Mar 2026: 48 error-corrected qubits from 98 physical qubits. Error correction now improves accuracy instead of hurting it. Filed for a Nasdaq IPO (QNT) May 11 on $30.9M of 2025 revenue; tied up with Synopsys May 20 to put quantum solvers into chip-design simulation. |
| CNUSTC / Origin | Jiuzhang 3 / Zuchongzhi 3 | 255 (photonic) / 105 (SC) | Photonic + SC | DUAL ADVANTAGE | China is the only country with quantum advantage on two separate hardware platforms. The papers are real. The implications for the encryption timeline are not comforting. |
| EUIQM / Pasqal | Various | ~100 | SC + Neutral atom | SCALING | Europe’s quantum flagship: €1B+ invested. Finland, France, Germany leading. Playing catch-up but with actual industrial applications in mind rather than just bragging rights. |
The Q-Day Clock
WHEN QUANTUM BREAKS ENCRYPTION · THE TIMELINE KEEPS SHRINKING
~2030
ESTIMATED Q-DAY — WHEN RSA-2048 FALLS
Down from ~2040 estimate two years ago · Three papers in three months rewrote the math
RESOURCE ESTIMATES TO BREAK RSA-2048
2023 ESTIMATE20M physical qubits
2025 (GIDNEY)<1M physical qubits
2026 (ICEBERG/LDPC)<100K physical qubits
The number of qubits needed to crack modern encryption has dropped by an order of magnitude since May 2025. NIST says RSA-2048 is safe through 2030. NIST also deprecated it after 2030. Both of those sentences are load-bearing.
HARVEST NOW, DECRYPT LATER: State actors are already collecting encrypted traffic with plans to crack it once quantum catches up. If your data needs to stay secret past 2030, it is at risk today. NSA’s CNSA 2.0 mandates quantum-safe encryption for all national security systems by Jan 2027. Google’s internal deadline: 2029.
The Physics Wire
BREAKTHROUGHS · WEIRDNESS · THINGS THAT SHOULDN’T WORK BUT DO
- PHYSICS Stanford entangles quantum states at room temperature. A new device uses twisted light to entangle photons and electrons without deep cryogenic cooling — attacking one of the field’s biggest cost-and-size hurdles and pointing toward smaller, cheaper systems. (May 2026.)
- COMPUTE Q-CTRL and IBM clock a 3,000x speedup. Runtime error suppression on a 120-qubit Fermi-Hubbard simulation outpaced the best classical baseline by three orders of magnitude — a quietly load-bearing demo for practical advantage, not parlor tricks. (May 2026.)
- HARDWARE Quantinuum and Microsoft post 12 logical qubits. The updated 56-qubit System Model H2 carried a dozen error-corrected logical qubits, triple the four shown in April, and ran a chemistry calculation to chemical accuracy on reliable logical qubits. Progress here is now measured in quarters, not years. (May 2026.)
- INDUSTRY Quantinuum points qubits at oil. A new tie-up with bp aims quantum solvers at seismic imaging, days after a Synopsys deal folded them into chip design. The hardware lead is being sold as a tool before it is finished as a machine. (May 2026.)
- MARKET Quantinuum files to go public. The Honeywell-backed full-stack outfit filed its S-1 on May 8 to list on Nasdaq as QNT, posting $30.9M in 2025 revenue against a $192.6M net loss. It is the first pure-play trapped-ion name to put a public price on the hardware lead. (May 2026.)
- COMPUTE Energy Dept. shops for 150 logical qubits. The DOE issued a request for information seeking a fault-tolerant machine of 150–250 logical qubits sited at a national lab by 2028, dangling non-recurring engineering funds to whoever can build it. Washington is buying capability rather than waiting for it. (May 2026.)
- HARDWARE IonQ plants a flag in Boulder. A 22,000-sq-ft ion-trap design and test lab opened in Colorado, with IonQ aiming for its next system by late 2026. The trapped-ion camp is industrializing, not just publishing. (May 2026.)
- COMPUTE JUPITER simulates 50 qubits. The Jülich Supercomputing Centre, with NVIDIA, fully simulated a universal 50-qubit quantum computer — a new world record, past the 48-qubit mark Jülich itself set in 2019. Classical hardware is still chasing the thing quantum hardware is trying to become. (May 2026.)
- PHYSICS Instant detection of “W states.” Researchers in Japan built a way to identify elusive three-particle “W” entangled states on the spot — a building block for quantum teleportation, secure communication, and more robust computing. (May 2026.)
- COMPUTE Largest quantum protein simulation yet. Cleveland Clinic, RIKEN, and IBM modeled a protein-ligand complex spanning 12,635 atoms — a 210x accuracy gain over the prior state of the art, and the biggest biologically meaningful molecule run on quantum hardware. IBM separately marked ten years of cloud-accessible quantum machines. (May 2026.)
- COMPUTE Q-CTRL + IBM clock 3,000x speedup. A 120-qubit Fermi-Hubbard simulation on IBM hardware, sped up by Q-CTRL’s runtime error suppression layer. Materials-science workloads moved from research curiosity to practical lever inside the IBM Quantum Platform. (May 2026.)
- COMPUTE Quantinuum hits break-even. 48 error-corrected logical qubits from 98 physical qubits. Error correction finally makes things better instead of worse. Thirty years of theory just became engineering.
- COMPUTE Google’s Quantum Echoes algorithm. First verifiable quantum advantage on a practical algorithm — 13,000x faster than classical on out-of-order time correlators. The benchmark is narrow but the gap is a canyon.
- PHYSICS Quantum teleportation across different quantum dots. Researchers transferred quantum states between photons from separate quantum dot sources over fiber — one of the hardest problems in building a quantum internet. The photons don’t need to be related anymore. Networking implications are enormous.
The Quantum Internet Race
SECURE COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE · WHO CAN TALK WITHOUT BEING HEARD
🇨🇳
🇪🇺
🇺🇸
A quantum internet doesn’t make the regular internet faster. It makes eavesdropping physically impossible. That’s a different kind of valuable.
Four Fingers note: Quantum computing coverage tends toward two poles: breathless hype (“it will change everything!”) and dismissive skepticism (“it’s always ten years away”). The reality in 2026 is more specific and more interesting than either. Error correction just crossed break-even. The encryption timeline just lurched forward. China has a functioning quantum network longer than the US interstate highway system. Now the lead labs are filing IPOs and governments are placing build orders. These are engineering milestones, not press releases. Whether you care because of the science, the security implications, or the $38B being spent, the receipts are here. We’re tracking them.