Insider Brief
- Harvard Quantum Initiative in Science and Engineering researchers report that advances in fault tolerance have accelerated quantum computing timelines by five to ten years, bringing early forms of large-scale systems potentially within reach by the end of the decade.
- The progress has already produced commercial momentum, with startups including QuEra, LightsynQ (acquired by IonQ), and CavilinQ attracting funding and delivering early systems.
- Researchers indicate that while quantum machines are becoming more feasible, identifying their most transformative applications and learning how to use them effectively remains an open challenge.
- Image: Photo by geralt on Pixabay
Harvard researchers say progress in quantum computing is running ahead of schedule, a pace that has already spawned three startups and is drawing billions in private investment to a technology that could transform industries, such as drug discovery to cryptography, The Harvard Gazette reports.
The developments have emerged largely from labs affiliated with Harvard’s Quantum Initiative in Science and Engineering, known as HQI, which was established in 2018 with backing from industry partners including Amazon Web Services.
One of the reasons for the acceleration is a recent advance in what researchers call fault tolerance, or the ability of quantum systems to reduce calculation errors that can cascade and make results unusable. The breakthrough, reported late last year out of the lab of Mikhail Lukin, a co-director of HQI and the Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor at Harvard, has pushed timelines forward dramatically.
“People initially thought that this sort of fault-tolerant, large-scale, quantum computers would be coming some time by the end of the next decade, and I think it’s quite likely that actually they will be here — at least in some form — by the end of this decade,” Lukin said in the article. “So, we’re at least five, maybe 10 years ahead. And it’s really a lot of the work in the HQI that fueled that.”
Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can represent ones, zeros, or any combination of both, a property rooted in the sometimes contrarian physics that govern atoms and subatomic particles. A related phenomenon called quantum entanglement allows particles to influence each other across distances, opening the door to new forms of information processing that classical machines cannot replicate.
The result, researchers say, is the potential for machines of vastly greater power — capable of solving problems in chemistry, materials science, finance and national security that today’s computers cannot crack.
Startups Signal Commercial Momentum
The research has already produced commercial offshoots. Mihir Bhaskar, who earned his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 2021, co-founded LightsynQ in 2024 to commercialize his doctoral work in quantum networking — the technology that links separate quantum processors together to increase their combined power. The company was acquired by publicly traded IonQ, where Bhaskar now serves as senior vice president for research and development.
A second spinout, QuEra, was founded in 2018 by Lukin and Markus Greiner, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard, along with partners from MIT. The company recently shipped its second commercial quantum computer to Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.
A third venture, CavilinQ, launched to develop additional quantum networking technology and has announced $8.8 million in seed funding.
Bhaskar said the pace of commercialization caught even insiders off guard.
“I couldn’t have predicted this,” Bhaskar said, as reported in the Gazette. “I got into the field because I knew there was promise, but the pace of innovation, the pace of development, the pace of — honestly — capital going into the technology has far exceeded what I could have possibly imagined or dreamt of. I didn’t get into this space to be an entrepreneur, I got into this space because I was really interested in working on the fundamental computing information processing technology and the physics of it. That’s what I love to do.”
Despite the progress, researchers caution that identifying quantum computing’s most transformative uses may take time, much as it did with the transistor, invented in 1947, whose early applications in hearing aids and radios gave no hint of the computer revolution it would eventually enable.
Evelyn Hu, Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and of Electrical Engineering and co-director of HQI, drew a parallel to that for quantum’s progress.
“Where are we now compared to where we thought we’d be in 2018? We are so much farther ahead than I think any of us could have imagined,” Hu said.
Building the Ecosystem
Harvard Chief Technology Development Officer Sam Liss credited the Greater Boston region’s concentration of research institutions, industry partners and venture capital for creating what he called a “quantum hub” that accelerates the path from lab to market.
The university’s Grid Accelerator, run through its Office of Technology Development, has been providing funding, mentorship and industry connections to help research projects become viable companies. It played a direct role in the launch of CavilinQ.
Lukin said the next frontier is not just building quantum machines but learning to use them effectively.
“This is completely new technology. A quantum computer is different from any kind of classical computer that’s ever been built,” Lukin said. “There are two key challenges in this field. One is building these quantum machines, and the other is using them. While a lot of hard work remains to be done, for the first time, building useful quantum machines is in our direct line of sight.”
