Google: commercial quantum computing applications five years away

Google’s head of quantum research said on Wednesday that the company is on course to release commercial quantum computing applications within five years, challenging Nvidia's previous 20-year prediction.

"We’re optimistic that within five years we’ll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers," founder and lead of Google Quantum AI Hartmut Neven said in a statement.

For decades, scientists have been discussing quantum computing, which promises to deliver machines that are thousands of times more powerful than traditional computers.

Traditional computers process information one number at a time, whereas quantum computers use "qubits" that can represent several numbers at once.

Real-world applications Google has discussed are related to materials science - applications such as building superior batteries for electric cars - creating new drugs and potentially new energy alternatives.

The announcement comes alongside another milestone achieved by Google's quantum computing scientists toward the path to real-world applications.

In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature on Wednesday, the scientists said they had discovered a new approach to quantum simulation, which is a step on the path to achieving Google's objective within five years.

I'm very excited to share our results on studying thermalization and criticality on an analog–digital quantum simulator here at @GoogleQuantumAI!https://t.co/Gaw2vFRHQo

undefined Amir Karamlou (@karamlouMIT) February 5, 2025

Nvidia's CEO: two decades out

Even so, Google's prediction arrives amid wider uncertainty about when such a breakthrough will occur.

Predictions from investors and experts range from several years to at least two decades, while governments and businesses have kept a close eye on quantum computing's potential to disrupt modern cybersecurity and other fields such as finance and healthcare.

Nvidia's Jensen Huang, who joined forces with Google for quantum simulation research, has also said that quantum computing is much farther away than five years.

At an analyst event at the CES trade show in Las Vegas in January, Huang predicted practical uses for quantum computers are about 20 years away.

"If you kind of said 15 years... that'd probably be on the early side," Huang said, "If you said 30, it's probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it," he said.

Huang's comments ripped about $8 billion in market value from a handful of quantum computing stocks.

Still, the sector was given a boost at the end of 2024 when Google announced it had cracked a key challenge in the field with its new chips.

Google has been working on its quantum computing program since 2012 and has designed and built several quantum chips.

In December, Google’s Quantum AI team announced they had figured out a way to string together Willow chip's qubits to exponentially reduce errors in quantum computing even when the number of qubits goes up, a practice proven elusive before Google’s findings.

Using state-of-the-art quantum processors and the Willow chip, Google said it now has the ability to solve a computing problem in under five minutes. That's compared to what Google said would take today’s fastest supercomputers about 10 septillion years (10²⁵) or equal to "more time than the history of the universe."

Similar to the advances in AI, before ChatGPT's launch in 2022, AI was understood primarily by scientists quietly producing breakthroughs to accelerate the field. Yet, there was no firm understanding of when AI would be commercially useful.