Forward-looking: Quantum computing is still a highly experimental field but IBM believes continued advances could eventually lead to things like improved financial models to make wiser investments, the discovery of new medicines and improvements in the optimization of supply chains.

IBM on Wednesday said it will soon make a 53-qubit quantum computer available for broad use. When it goes online next month, it'll be the single largest universal quantum system available outside of experimental lab environments.

The 53-qubit machine will be one of 14 at IBM's new Quantum Computation Center in New York State. The facility, IBM said, will support the growing needs of a community of over 150,000 individuals and close to 80 academic institutes, research labs and commercial clients including J.P. Morgan Chase, Mitsubishi Chemical and the Mizuho Financial Group.

More than 14 million experiments have been run on IBM's cloud-based quantum computers since they were first made available in 2016. Furthermore, some 200+ scientific papers have been published based on research conducted on the machines.

IBM said the 53-qubit machine offers a larger lattice, giving users the ability to run even more complex entanglement and connectivity experiments. It's powered by the next family of processors on IBM's roadmap, we're told.