Useful quantum computing is inevitable—and increasingly imminent

And that means that we need quantum computers. They afford us the opportunity to shift from a world of discovery to a world of design. Today’s iterative process of guessing, synthesizing, and testing materials is comically inadequate.

In a few tantalizing cases, we have stumbled on materials, like superconductors, with near-magical properties. How many more might these new tools reveal in the coming years? We will eventually have machines with millions of qubits that, when used to simulate crystalline materials, open up a vast new design space. It will be like waking up one day and finding a million new elements with fascinating properties on the periodic table.

Of course, building a million-qubit quantum computer is not for the faint of heart. Such machines will be the size of supercomputers, and require large amounts of capital, cryoplant, electricity, concrete, and steel. They also require silicon photonics components that perform well beyond anything in industry, error correction hardware that runs fast enough to chase photons, and single-photon detectors with unprecedented sensitivity. But after years of research and development, and more than a billion dollars of investment, the challenge is now moving from science and engineering to construction.

It is impossible to fully predict how quantum computing will affect our world, but a thought exercise might offer a mental model of some of the possibilities. 

Imagine our world without metal. We could have wooden houses built with stone tools, agriculture, wooden plows, movable type, printing, poetry, and even thoughtfully edited science periodicals. But we would have no inkling of phenomena like electricity or electromagnetism—no motors, generators, radio, MRI machines, silicon, or AI. We wouldn’t miss them, as we’d be oblivious to their existence. 

Today, we are living in a world without quantum materials, oblivious to the unrealized potential and abundance that lie just out of sight. With large-scale quantum computers on the horizon and advancements in quantum algorithms, we are poised to shift from discovery to design, entering an era of unprecedented dynamism in chemistry, materials science, and medicine. It will be a new age of mastery over the physical world.

Peter Barrett is a general partner at Playground Global, which invests in early-stage deep-tech companies including several in quantum computing, quantum algorithms, and quantum sensing: PsiQuantum, Phasecraft, NVision, and Ideon.