Google ‘Optimistic’ About Seeing Quantum Computer-Powered Applications in 5 Years

Google is reportedly optimistic that it will release commercial quantum computing applications within five years.

That achievement would be sooner than the several years to two decades often predicted by investors and experts, Reuters reported Wednesday (Feb. 5).

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

Quantum computing is expected to deliver computers that are thousands of times more powerful than traditional ones, according to the report.

Google has said quantum computing applications could be used in building superior batteries, creating new drugs and developing new energy sources, per the report.

Google has been working on quantum computing since 2012, the report said.

The company said in December that its new chips solved a key challenge in the field and said Wednesday that its discovery of a new approach to quantum simulation moved it another step closer to real-world applications of the technology, according to the report.

Quantum computers will be able to efficiently solve mathematical problems that would have previously taken billions of years of computing time, PYMNTS reported in April.

With this capability, quantum computers could break widely used encryption algorithms that underpin the security of online transactions and communications.

Quantum computing could also turbocharge the processing power of artificial intelligence (AI) systems by leveraging quantum bits (qubits) properties like superposition and entanglement to tackle computationally intensive tasks that are beyond the reach of traditional computers.

In March, Google Quantum AI and Google.org joined XPRIZE and the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) to launch XPRIZE Quantum Applications, a three-year, $5 million global competition to apply quantum computing to solve real-world challenges and prove quantum computing’s potential for practical utility.

“While there are many reasons to be optimistic about the potential of quantum computing, we’re still somewhat in the dark about the full scope of how, when, and for which real-world problems this technology will prove most transformative,” Google said at the time. “We hope launching this prize will help to shed light on these questions — by incentivizing the community to advance and more thoroughly anticipate the positive impact of quantum computing on society.”