Google is setting an ambitious goal to bring commercial quantum computing applications to market within five years, challenging Nvidia’s more conservative estimate of a 20-year timeline.
Governments and corporations are closely tracking quantum computing’s potential to transform cybersecurity, finance, and healthcare.
Google is setting an ambitious goal to bring commercial quantum computing applications to market within five years, challenging Nvidia’s more conservative estimate of a 20-year timeline.
“We’re optimistic that within five years we’ll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers,” founder and lead of Google Quantum AI Hartmut Neven said in a statement to Reuters.
The tech giant anticipates breakthroughs in quantum computing that could revolutionize materials science, particularly in enhancing battery technology for electric vehicles, as well as advancing drug discovery and exploring new energy solutions.
The timeline for quantum computing’s mainstream adoption remains a topic of debate, with projections ranging from a few years to several decades. The technology, which has been researched for years, is expected to vastly outperform classical computing by utilizing qubits—units capable of representing multiple values simultaneously, unlike traditional bits that process information sequentially.
Governments and corporations are closely tracking quantum computing’s potential to transform cybersecurity, finance, and healthcare.
However, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a more cautious outlook, stating at a CES event in January that practical quantum computing applications are unlikely before 15 years, with 20 years being a more widely accepted estimate.
“If you kind of said 15 years... that'd probably be on the early side," Huang said, "If you said 30, it's probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.”
Huang’s remarks led to an $8 billion dip in the market value of several quantum computing companies. However, the industry saw renewed momentum in December when Google revealed a major breakthrough in its quantum chip technology.
Since launching its quantum computing initiative in 2012, Google has developed several quantum chips and demonstrated their capabilities. One of its quantum processors previously solved a complex problem in minutes, a task that would take classical computers longer than the age of the universe to complete.
On Wednesday, Google’s quantum research team announced another step toward real-world applications within the next five years. A paper published in Nature outlined a novel method for quantum simulation, further pushing Google’s efforts to make quantum computing a practical reality.