TL;DR: In 2025, quantum computing moved from theory toward tangible impact. From government programs to startup projects, the industry demonstrated that usefulness is no longer hypothetical. Progress is now measured by real performance milestones, signaling that practical quantum applications are becoming a visible, achievable goal.
Fully functional quantum computers remain out of reach, but optimism across the field is rising. At the Q2B Silicon Valley conference in December, researchers and executives pointed to a year marked by tangible progress – particularly in hardware performance and scaling – and a growing belief that quantum advantage for real-world problems may be achievable sooner than expected.
"More people are getting access to quantum computers than ever before, and I have a suspicion that they'll do things with them that we could never even think of," said Jamie Garcia at IBM.
DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) rigorously evaluates competing approaches to building practical quantum machines capable of self-correcting their errors. Program Manager Joe Altepeter expressed his surprise at how much progress researchers have made – much of it within the last year.
"On balance, we think it is more likely than not that someone, or maybe multiple someones, are going to be able to make a really industrially useful quantum computer, which is not something I thought I'd be concluding at the end of 2025," Altepeter said during his presentation at Q2B.
The multi-year QBI program brings together hundreds of evaluators from academia, industry, and government research. Six months in, Altepeter said the assessment revealed "huge obstacles" for every architecture under study – but none that ruled out the possibility of success.
For many attending the conference, the year's most notable developments came from the hardware side. Scott Aaronson, a computer science professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told New Scientist that advancements in hardware design had a significant impact on the industry.
"In late 2025, it feels to me like all of the key hardware building blocks seem to be more or less in place, at roughly the required fidelity, maybe for the first time, leaving only these enormous questions about … the engineering challenges," he said.
Aaronson, long known for his critical analysis of claims in quantum computing, described the progress in qubit fidelity and control systems as "spectacular." However, he cautioned that new algorithms remain essential for converting that hardware performance into practical value.
While technical strides have been impressive, translating those advances into applications remains difficult. Ryan Babbush of Google Quantum AI said hardware continues to outpace software in usefulness. To help stimulate real-world experimentation, Google and its partners used the conference to announce the seven finalists in the $5 million XPRIZE Quantum Applications competition, which seeks practical use cases for quantum computing. Finalist projects include biomolecular simulations relevant to human health, quantum-enhanced modeling of materials for clean energy, and algorithms designed to support complex disease research and diagnosis.
In addition, several research groups this year used quantum processors for calculations in materials physics and high-energy particle theory – areas where hybrid quantum-classical methods might soon outperform conventional supercomputers. Beyond scientific simulation, cryptography remains a proving ground for quantum algorithms. Pranav Gokhale of Infleqtion presented the company's demonstration of Shor's algorithm implemented on logical qubits – quantum bits encoded with built-in error protection. The experiment marks a technical milestone, showing a functionally error-corrected algorithm on hardware, though still far from the scale needed to break real-world encryption.
Dutch startup QuantWare introduced an architecture aimed at solving one of the industry's most significant hardware limitations: scaling up without losing reliability. The company's superconducting quantum processor design targets 10,000 qubits, roughly 100 times more than today's leading devices. QuantWare's Matt Rijlaarsdam said the first systems of this size could be operational within 2.5 years.
That timeline puts the company in direct competition with efforts from IBM and Quantinuum, which plan large-scale systems on similar schedules. QuEra, meanwhile, expects to reach a comparable qubit count with ultracold atoms within a year. The acceleration across multiple hardware platforms suggests the coming years will determine which design path yields the first practical quantum machine.