# Quantum & materials: the global hardware race to fault-tolerant computing
> The race to build quantum computers that work reliably at scale, tracked through hardware milestones and the materials science that will determine which approach wins.

**Meta:** type: reference · date: 2026-07-03 · heads:  · 4 takes · 3 lenses · 2 regions

## What it is

This beat tracks quantum computing hardware and the materials science that determines whether any qubit technology can scale to practical use. Quantum computers replace binary bits with qubits, which can exist in superposition and become entangled, letting them attack problems in chemistry, cryptography, and combinatorial optimization that classical machines cannot solve in any useful timeframe. The beat matters to world-news readers because quantum capability has become a geopolitical metric: national governments are committing tens of billions of US dollars to it, and fault-tolerant quantum advantage, when it arrives, will shift leverage in drug discovery, materials design, financial modeling, and military cryptography.

The hardware race is inseparable from materials. Every qubit modality depends on a physical substrate: superconducting transmon qubits require ultra-pure aluminum resonators cooled to around 15 millikelvin; trapped-ion systems need precision vacuum chambers and laser optics; topological qubits, still contested, require exotic heterostructures pairing semiconductors with superconductors.

## History

Richard Feynman proposed quantum simulation in 1981. Peter Shor's 1994 factoring algorithm gave the field a concrete, consequential target: breaking RSA encryption. IBM and Google built the first programmable superconducting qubit systems in the 2010s. In October 2019, Google's 53-qubit Sycamore processor completed a sampling task in 200 seconds that Google claimed would take a classical supercomputer 10,000 years, a claim IBM disputed.

In December 2024, Google's Willow chip achieved below-threshold error correction, meaning the logical error rate fell as more physical qubits were added, the first confirmed demonstration of this key scaling property. In February 2025, Microsoft unveiled Majorana 1, a processor it claimed used indium arsenide-aluminum heterostructures to host topologically protected Majorana zero modes. Independent physicists challenged the evidence, and the Nature editorial board found the underlying manuscript did not prove the presence of Majorana zero modes, a dispute that remains open.

## Current state

As of mid-2026, four hardware modalities compete. Superconducting qubits lead in raw physical qubit count. IBM's Kookaburra, targeted for 2026, is designed to be the first module encoding information in a qLDPC error-correcting code and processing it with an attached logical processing unit, cutting physical qubit overhead by up to 90 percent relative to surface codes. Trapped-ion systems lead on gate fidelity: [Trapped-ion quantum pulls ahead on logical qubits; Quantinuum bets on 2030](/ja/n/trapped-ion-logical-qubits-2026) showed that Quantinuum's Helios processor yielded 94 logical qubits from 98 physical qubits in June 2026. Microsoft remains committed to topological qubits despite the controversy. Neutral-atom arrays, developed by French startup Pasqal and US-based QuEra, offer high connectivity but are earlier in the scaling curve.

A 2025 study in Materials for Quantum Technology documented van der Waals capacitors using niobium diselenide and hexagonal boron nitride in superconducting qubits, achieving 1,400 times smaller capacitor footprint while maintaining coherence times of one to two microseconds. Researchers at University College Cork, UC Berkeley, and Washington University published new screening tools for topological superconductors in 2025, and UTe2 was confirmed as an intrinsic topological superconductor. [Quantinuum raises $1.68bn in Nasdaq IPO at $14bn, quantum computing's first major public listing](/ja/n/quantinuum-ipo-2026) In June 2026, Quantinuum raised US$1.68 billion on the Nasdaq at a US$14 billion valuation, the first major public-market pricing of the sector.

## Relationships

No single roster subject anchors this beat yet. It connects to semiconductors (TSMC and Intel both run quantum-adjacent fabrication programs), to the AI labs sub-beat (IBM Quantum and Microsoft Azure Quantum are corporate siblings to their respective AI cloud divisions), and to AI data centers, where quantum co-processors are a candidate adjunct to GPU clusters for chemistry and optimization workloads by the 2030s. US export controls on quantum hardware and cryogenic components also draw this beat into the wider technology-decoupling story.

## What to watch

IBM's delivery of Kookaburra in 2026 is the next concrete test of whether qLDPC fault-tolerance moves from roadmap to hardware. Quantinuum's stated target of universal fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2030 is the industry's most public near-term benchmark. The Majorana dispute will close only through independent replication or a sustained demonstration of topological qubit stability. UTe2 and other candidate topological superconductors are entering experimental programs that will validate or rule out the approach within two to three years. National programs in the US (National Quantum Initiative), China (15th Five-Year Plan), the EU (Quantum Flagship), and Japan (Q-STAR initiative) are all scaling government commitments, making this a beat for both science and diplomatic correspondents.

## Regional takes (batched by bias / lens)

### research record
- **Materials for Quantum Technology (IOP Publishing)** (Taiwan, en) — 2025 peer-reviewed review documenting integration of quantum materials including InAs nanowires, graphene, and NbSe2-hBN van der Waals heterostructures into superconducting qubits, with quantified coherence and miniaturisation benchmarks.
  Source: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2633-4356/add830

### official record
- **IBM Quantum (roadmap)** (United States, en) — IBM's live quantum roadmap detailing Kookaburra in 2026 as the first fault-tolerant module using qLDPC codes, Cockatoo in 2027 for inter-module entanglement, and Starling in 2028-29 targeting 200 logical qubits at 100 million gates.
  Source: https://www.ibm.com/roadmaps/quantum/
- **Microsoft Azure Quantum Blog** (United States, en) — Microsoft's February 2025 announcement of Majorana 1, the first processor it claims uses topological qubits via indium arsenide-aluminum heterostructures hosting Majorana zero modes.
  Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/quantum/2025/02/19/microsoft-unveils-majorana-1-the-worlds-first-quantum-processor-powered-by-topological-qubits/

### institutional explainer
- **IBM Quantum Blog** (United States, en) — IBM's technical post on its path to large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing, covering qLDPC code architecture, modular chip design, and the progression from Kookaburra to Starling.
  Source: https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/large-scale-ftqc

## Across the graph
- Related: [[trapped-ion-logical-qubits-2026]], [[quantinuum-ipo-2026]]

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Canonical: https://rbtfl.xyz/ja/n/compute-frontier-quantum-materials-backgrounder