Quantum computing market picks up steam – News

Enterprise tech is already preparing for “Q-day” — when quantum computing will be able to break today’s public-key cryptography. Although that date is still years away, staying ahead of the curve is a necessity if companies want to secure their infrastructure and incorporate quantum into the existing artificial intelligence and high-performance computing stack.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. has become a key player in readying the industry for quantum, leading initiatives that accelerate quantum computing innovation while also navigating how quantum can work alongside HPE’s traditional supercomputers.

“The company’s strategy is to advance supercomputer/quantum computer coexistence, understanding that quantum technology is unlikely to be used in many standalone instances in the foreseeable future,” said Paul Gillin, analyst for theCUBE. “In short, HPE believes that the growth of quantum technology will have a direct and positive impact on its supercomputer sales.”

At the upcoming HPE World Quantum Day event on April 14, viewers can gain insight into HPE’s strategy for a quantum-based future from industry experts. The event will serve as a broader reflection of the emerging quantum market, which is moving from theoretical frameworks to ground-level startups.

This feature is part of News Media’s exploration of the convergence of quantum, AI and high-performance computing. Be sure to check out News’s extensive coverage of HPE World Quantum Day, including interviews with HPE executives, quantum computing experts from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other leading industry leaders. (* Disclosure below.)

The state of the quantum computing market

Quantum is predicted to become a major industry when the tech catches up with the theory. The three pillars of quantum technology — quantum communication, quantum sensing and quantum compute — could generate up to $97 billion in revenue worldwide by 2035, according to McKinsey & Co. Quantum computing would represent the bulk of that revenue, growing from $4 billion in revenue in 2024 to as much as $72 billion in 2035.

Quantum computing uses quantum bits, called qubits, as basic units of information, which, unlike classical computing, can exist as both a 0 and 1 at the same time. The biggest obstacle in the development of quantum computers has been the relatively high error rate caused by the delicate nature of qubits, which must be kept at very cold temperatures. Quantum experts are still working on a solution.

Because quantum computers and traditional computers are fundamentally different machines, the process of making them work in tandem will take years of planning.

“For decades, these technologies have largely evolved in parallel,” said Masoud Mohseni from HPE Labs, the applied research arm of HPE. “Now, a fundamentally different architecture is emerging in which distributed quantum processors operate alongside classical supercomputing infrastructure and AI-driven control systems as a tightly coupled system.”

What makes quantum computing a potentially transformative technology is its ability to solve certain types of complex problems that traditional computers cannot. That might include simulating biological phenomena, discovering new drugs or enhancing current AI capabilities by speeding up deep-learning training.

“Quantum computers are useful for a class of problems that do not lend themselves well to traditional serial computing,” Gillin explained. “These are problems with a great many variables and possible outcomes. Because quantum architectures can process many factors in parallel, they can solve problems like route optimization, molecular modeling and weather forecasting much faster than their traditional cousins. The most common use for quantum technology in the immediate future will be to offload these complex problems from conventional computers.”

Industry experts do not foresee quantum computing replacing traditional computers, but rather working alongside them. Quantum technology is better suited to tasks such as climate forecasting, while traditional computers are the more cost-effective and reliable option for everyday software and sequential operations.

“Quantum’s going to help solve these highly dimensional, super complex data-intensive workloads, because you need that compute power,” said Scott Hebner, principal analyst for AI at theCUBE Research. “We’re just going to optimize it through our pre-built models and agents and services around your industry.”

HPE leads quantum research efforts

HPE recently took part in the launch of the Quantum Scaling Alliance, a collaboration created for the purpose of making quantum computing scalable, practical and transformative across industries. The alliance is co-led by Mohseni and John Martinis, a 2025 Nobel Laureate recognized for pioneering advances in quantum computing and currently serving as co-founder and CTO at Qolab.

“For quantum to succeed as a viable long-term computing paradigm, it must scale by integrating with classical supercomputing systems,” Mohseni said. “The Quantum Scaling Alliance is offering a full-stack solution — a large partnership with horizontal integration that unlocks compute potential that is otherwise unachievable through a vertical approach.”

HPE has also partnered on an initiative with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Nvidia Corp., with the aim of integrating quantum, AI and HPC when the technologies come to fruition. The project will run on an Nvidia system built by HPE at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility data center, also home to Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer.

“Maintaining America’s leadership in high-performance computing requires us to build the bridge to the next era of computing: accelerated quantum supercomputing,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “The deep collaboration between our national laboratories, startups and industry partners like Nvidia is central to this mission — and Nvidia NVQLink provides the critical technology to unite world-class GPU supercomputers with emerging quantum processors, creating the powerful systems we need to solve the scientific challenges of our time.”

Researchers will leverage Nvidia NVQLink to integrate classical computing clusters with quantum processors for tasks such as quantum error correction and running hybrid quantum-classical algorithms. Nvidia’s CUDA-Q programming tools will also enable users to simulate quantum hardware with GPUs.

“We’ll be able to run operations that help us leverage these platforms and look for strategies to make the best possible use of quantum and classical technology,” said Amir Shehata, an ORNL software engineer and lead author of a recent study on quantum-HPC convergence. “The results from an actual quantum computer and the quantum emulator or from Frontier can be studied and we can make modifications, such as introducing artificial noise on the quantum emulator.”

Quantum investments signal where the industry is moving

HPE is not the only company that senses where quantum could be taking the industry. Quantum startups are getting a significant amount of investment, with China and the U.S. having filed the most QT patent applications. The U.S. has invested the most — $6.6 billion — according to a recent article from CNBC.

“The first demonstrations of practical quantum advantage are expected at around 100 logical qubits — a threshold the industry is approaching by 2028-2029,” said Velu Sinha, partner at Bain & Co., in the CNBC article. “But for commercially impactful applications like drug discovery or large-scale logistics optimization, you need 1,000 to 10,000 logical qubits, which is more likely mid-2030s.”

As enterprise tech prepares for the innovation that quantum computing will bring — HPE leading the Quantum Scaling Alliance, Nvidia investing in quantum sensing — cybersecurity companies are safeguarding against quantum computing’s threat on traditional security architecture. Quantum computers will be able to break modern RSA encryption, and they could even be used to steal cryptocurrency.

While Q-day may not arrive until the 2030s, enterprise tech’s investment in quantum research and quantum security measures reflects an industry-wide understanding that the time to begin preparing is now.

“Keep an eye on developments in the field,” Gillin said. “The experts I interviewed all agreed that off-the-shelf quantum computers are unlikely to be viable for several years. However, early commercial use cases are emerging in areas like modeling complex drug interactions and optimizing supply chains. Large enterprises that spend heavily in these areas could find that the quantum processors have tangible benefits even today.”

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