It was a big week for quantum computing news, but the press missed a key story: Darío Gil, undersecretary for science at the US Department of Energy, set a goal for private industry to build a working quantum computer by 2028.
It’s not quite JFK setting the moon landing goal. It’s leaving it up to the private sector, rather than a federal program like NASA. But Gil also announced $625 million of funding for quantum efforts at the national labs, which will help increase the chances of companies racing to build the technology. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how something like an Apollo Mission for quantum would be a good idea, and this may be as close as we’re going to get.
This week also saw big news from the quantum startup Quantinuum, and DARPA announced eleven companies advanced to the second stage of its quantum benchmarking initiative, which aims to either validate or invalidate the approaches taken by companies in the program.
The moon landing was a big deal, but quantum could have a bigger impact on our lives. It’s a complementary technology to AI, especially for scientific use cases. It’s surprising how little attention it’s getting.