IBM commits more than $10 billion to its quantum computing roadmap

IBM has announced plans to invest more than $10 billion in quantum computing over the next five years, in what is one of the largest single corporate commitments to the technology to date. The company says the money will be spread across research and development, capital expenditure, manufacturing scale-up, ecosystem partnerships and acquisitions, all aimed at accelerating its roadmap toward what it has promised will be the world's first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029. IBM executives expressed confidence that partners using its existing quantum systems will demonstrate practical 'quantum advantage' — cases where a quantum computer meaningfully outperforms classical machines on a real-world problem — at some point in 2026, pointing to early experiments such as a collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic and Japan's RIKEN institute to model a roughly 12,600-atom protein, alongside other joint work simulating magnetic materials and analyzing previously unstudied molecules. The announcement lands amid a broader surge of investment and competition in quantum computing, with rivals including Google also expanding their own programs — a sign that, after years of being treated as a distant, experimental technology, quantum computing is increasingly being framed by major technology companies as a near-term computing platform worth committing serious capital to today.