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■ COMPUTING & PHYSICS · Q-DAY & LAB RACE
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: Aug 31, 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
$40B+
GLOBAL QC SPEND
2026 (gov + private, incl CHIPS $2B)
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 — the latest data shows logical errors falling ~2.14× per step up in code size, the scaling theorists predicted. 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 | Committed $10B+ over five years on Jun 2 toward fault-tolerant machines by 2029; says partners demonstrate advantage in 2026. IBM has never met a roadmap it couldn’t revise, but $10B is a serious way to hold yourself to one. |
| USMicrosoft | Majorana 2 (Jun 2) | 8 (topo) | Topological | PROTOTYPE | Majorana 2 unveiled Jun 2 — second-generation topological chip, still drawing both industry interest and demands for independent evidence. Magne (50 logical qubits) due early 2027. Microsoft is betting that everyone else is building qubits wrong. |
| USQuantinuum | H2 | 98 (physical) → 94 detected / 48 corrected | 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
- MONEY Washington funds institutes, not machines. The NSF put Princeton at the head of a new federal quantum institute, backed a Cornell-cofounded centre on processor fabrication, and renewed $37.5M for Duke’s simulation institute. (Sutor, Aug 28.)
- SCIENCE QuEra hands the dials to software. The neutral-atom builder says it has automated critical subsystems with AI — calibration is the hidden tax on uptime, and cutting it is what moves a machine from lab to service. (Sutor, Aug 28.)
- SCIENCE IBM ships the plumbing. Qiskit Fermions v0.1.0 puts a Rust core under the compilation of fermionic operators onto qubit hardware — the unglamorous layer that decides whether a chemistry problem fits on a machine at all. (Quantum Computing Report, Aug 29.)
- MONEY Two states write their own cheques. California put $9.74M into Southern California’s quantum cluster; New Mexico opened its grant programme to DARPA QBI Stage C entrants at $1M and up. Subnational money is new here. (Quantum Computing Report, Aug 28.)
- MONEY Pasqal takes the public route. The French neutral-atom builder closed its SPAC combination and trades on Nasdaq as PSQL with roughly $360M in cash, seven processors deployed and three systems in production. (Quantum Computing Report, Aug 28.)
- MONEY Ottawa buys a building, not a stake. Canada committed CAD $195M to Xanadu’s Project OPTIMISM, a CAD $893M photonic programme anchored on a 158,000-square-foot Toronto facility. (Quantum Computing Report, Aug 28.)
- SCIENCE IonQ decodes while the machine runs. Real-time error-correction decoding across up to 408 logical qubits and more than a million T gates — the decoder keeping pace with the processor is the piece that has been missing. (Quantum Computing Report, Aug 27.)
- SCIENCE Bitcoin tries on a quantum-safe suit. A StarkWare researcher demonstrated a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction — an early test of moving a chain off the elliptic-curve signatures it was built on. (The Quantum Insider, Aug 27.)
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 $40B+ being spent, the receipts are here. We’re tracking them.