by Doug Finke
We are starting to hear more and more press releases that claim “Quantum Advantage”. It is great to hear that researchers are making progress in successfully completing more and more complex calculations with a quantum computer. And even better to hear that some of these applications might be applicable to real world problems. But it is important to distinguish between Proof-of-Concept (POC) experiments that result in a Nature paper that never go any further versus something that will be used to provide real economic value. So here is the question we always ask when we hear a new claim: When is this application going into regularly scheduled production?
And by production we mean doing something that provides real operational benefits to the organization, such as optimizing delivery routing, increasing machine utilization in a factory, helping in material design or drug development to create new compounds, speeding up the training on a production machine-learning model, etc. Our expectation is that these applications require regular runs on a daily or possibly, weekly basis on a quantum computer.
Moving a quantum application from a POC to regular production is not as easy as one might think. A number of issues can come up including integration with the rest of the IT infrastructure, meeting performance and cost requirements, rigorous testing, training of the users, potential government certifications, etc. One of the challenges one has in introducing a new application is a “good enough” mindset. For quantum, this can mean situations where although the quantum solution can theoretically outperform the classical alternative, management feels that the existing classical solution is “good enough” and doesn’t warrant the disruption of introducing something new. Many of these issues are also present when someone wants to introduce a new classical application into production.
It is important to remember that governments and investors are pouring billions of dollars into quantum companies and applications, and they expect to ultimately receive a return on their investment. Although many quantum companies are reporting some revenue from their activities almost all of this is a result of spending on research, proof-of-concept trials, training, and other items. It is great to see that these companies are achieving some revenue, but the quantum market will be quite limited if it never goes beyond those uses. Full production as we define it above is required for quantum to achieve the revenue forecasts that many people are making.
At this time, the only use cases that we are aware of that meets our “regularly scheduled production” definition are with the Pattison Food Group, NTT Docomo, and Ford Otosan who are all using the D-Wave quantum annealer. We welcome hearing from anyone else who has other applications to add to this list.
October 3, 2025
