Ignore the 25% loss in market value of the company. Look over here at this shiny bauble.
https://www.wsj.com/cio-journal/ibm-claims-new-era-of-quantum-advantage-92e3d5d4
Big Blue is racing to show that its quantum computing business can be profitable following a historic stock tumble
By: Belle Lin | July 30, 2026 6:00 am ET
International Business Machines said Thursday its research shows “quantum advantage”—a point at which quantum computers perform computations beyond conventional ones—and that these results can be rigorously validated.
The findings, which mark a step toward practical application of the nascent technology, were published in a trio of papers by IBM and its research partners. These include the University of Chicago, Japan’s RIKEN national research institute, and the quantum computing software firms Qedma, BlueQubit and Algorithmiq.
“We’re in the quantum advantage era,” said Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research. “Scientists can trust it. Now it’s moving from people benchmarking the systems to using these for science to look at applications.”
The news comes as Big Blue races to show that its quantum computing business can be profitable.
Earlier this month, the company suffered its biggest share drop in history after it issued a profit warning citing a shift in customer spending from software to AI hardware and memory chips. IBM said the performance of its software and infrastructure business fell short of expectations in the second quarter.
Since then, IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has offered an optimistic take on the company’s future, arguing quantum computing will begin to power its growth in a matter of years. The company’s first-mover advantage in quantum could boost its fortunes the way being a first mover in GPUs did for Nvidia, he recently told The Wall Street Journal.
IBM is going up against tech giants like Microsoft and Google, but also a host of startups in the quantum space.
While IBM is hardly the first to claim quantum advantage—the quantum computing company D-Wave made the claim last year, and Google said it showed “verifiable quantum advantage” in October—Gambetta said IBM’s latest papers are notable for demonstrating that its results are provable.
“They have methods that make sure that what is running on the quantum computer is giving you correct results,” he said.
In the Qedma and IBM paper, for instance, the companies said they showed how quantum computers can be used to explore the physics of materials, and that the results were confirmed using various methods, including on a Quantinuum quantum computer. “Think of this as a new physics that is being demonstrated on a quantum computer where classical methods fail,” Gambetta said.
Unlike traditional computers, where outputs can be validated by running the same problem on other computers, some quantum computer outputs push beyond the limits of what classical computers can verify.
That’s partly why IBM’s latest announcement is significant: The ability to replicate a quantum computer’s results shows that the systems are becoming more reliable and consistent, according to Heather West, an analyst focused on quantum computing at research firm International Data Corp.
Thursday’s news also helps put IBM further along the path to a fault-tolerant quantum computer, a milestone it has promised to achieve by 2029.
For businesses, though, the most significant takeaway is whether practical applications—from solving optimization problems to making breakthroughs in areas like materials science and medicine—will be possible with quantum computers.
Gambetta says IBM’s latest findings are a step in that direction.
“Having a trusted foundation allows you to start to do the application research, and as we inject more capable machines, it will allow us to scale those applications to ones that matter for business,” he said.
IDC’s West described IBM’s results as “another milestone in the way towards being able to use quantum systems to solve complex problems that are beyond the limits of classical compute,” and help solidify the company’s position as a strong player in the quantum market.
But reaching quantum advantage won’t be a singular moment—and certainly not in the way that the release of ChatGPT set off the artificial-intelligence bo-m, West said.
“We’re going to see future announcements that build on top of these,” she added. “Maybe in a month from now, or six months or a year, these particular findings will be overcome by findings that are a little bit more advanced, and that’s the way it should be.”
IBM said it encourages debate over quantum advantage, and Gambetta said he anticipates scientists will come up with newer classical methods and compare them against IBM’s findings. “I’m not going to say they’re bulletproof,” he said.
“What has changed is that we’re in a point where we can get trusted outcomes so that scientific debate can happen,” he added. “Over the next couple years, it will predominantly be a scientific debate, exactly like AI was debated in the universities using GPUs to look at neural networks.”