AI is the tech world’s current rock star — commanding all the headlines, the capital and the collective bandwidth of the industry. But backstage, tuning up and ready to crash the mainstage, is another contender with equal disruptive potential: Quantum computing. For decades, the punchline has been that quantum is always “five years away” — in the same distant future where fusion power still waits for its debut.

Yet after a week at Black Hat this year, hearing developers and executives whispering that quantum might arrive sooner than expected, I’m rethinking that skepticism. Some say pre‑2030, others still claim “five years out.” But make no mistake: Harnessing quantum computing’s power will upend everything — from encryption to supply chains to AI itself. Keep your eyes on this space — it’s snowballing fast.

Here are three companies I am following in the quantum space that I think you should keep an eye on to track progress in the space:

IBM: Steady Drumbeat to Quantum Advantage

IBM continues to lead the quantum charge — and importantly, it’s translating that early-mover advantage into constant momentum:

• A new white paper from IBM and Pasqal lays out a rigorous, testable framework for declaring “quantum advantage”, emphasizing verifiable performance improvements over classical systems — a critical step toward credibility in the field.
• IBM has announced the IBM Quantum Developer Conference 2025, set for November 12–14 in Atlanta, highlighting upcoming hardware like Nighthawk and Loon processors aimed at progressing toward advantage.
• Their updated quantum roadmap commits to delivering “Starling,” a large‑scale, fault‑tolerant quantum computer by 2029, capable of 100 million gate circuits across 200 logical qubits — addressing the thorny error‑correction challenge.
• Add to that a new fastest LDPC error‑correction decoder (Relay‑BP), demonstrating IBM’s focus on the nuts‑and‑bolts of scalable, reliable quantum systems.
  

IBM’s pace isn’t hype — it’s a steady drumbeat of R&D, outreach, and roadmap execution. Watson may have failed to seize the AI throne despite being first in the arena, but with quantum, IBM appears better poised to convert early leadership into a lasting advantage.

QuSecure: Guarding Against the Quantum Threat

At Black Hat, I had an enlightening chat with Dave Krauthamer (aka Dave K), co‑founder and Field CTO of QuSecure — a company laser‑focused on quantum‑resilient cybersecurity. 

• Founded in 2019 by industry veterans, including Krauthamer, QuSecure has since raised around $28 million to fuel its efforts. They have a very impressive board of advisors, blue-chip investors and partners.
• Their flagship solution, QuProtect, is the industry’s first end‑to‑end, software-based post‑quantum orchestration platform that enables encrypted communications to transition smoothly to quantum-safe protocols.
• Their elite team — handpicked quantum security experts — supports sectors like banking, critical infrastructure and federal agencies, and even counts a Phase III SBIR federal award among its credentials.

QuSecure represents the unsung — but critical — side of the quantum revolution: Resilience. They don’t compute qubits — they protect the world from their disruptive potential.

IonQ: Public, Capitalized and Scaling Up

Then there’s IonQ — the first pure‑play quantum computing company to go public — and it’s playing for keeps.

• Founded in 2015 by Duke and UMD researchers, IonQ has built a full-stack trapped‑ion quantum offering aimed at commercial deployment.
• It went public in 2021, listing on the NYSE, and now vies to become “the NVIDIA of quantum computing.”
• Recent strategic moves include acquiring Oxford Ionics, aiming for 10,000 physical qubits with 99.99999% fidelity by 2027, and scaling to 2 million physical qubits by 2030.
• Funding is strong: A $1 billion equity offering recently bolstered IonQ’s balance sheet to $1.68B, while analysts continue to rate the company a “Buy”, forecasting as much as 20% market share by 2035.

IonQ is betting on scale and commercial execution — and telling investors it’s ready to morph into the infrastructure backbone of tomorrow’s AI-quantum hybrid world.

AI + Quantum: Singularity Incoming?

Here’s the kicker: The real escape velocity might come from quantum and AI converging. Imagine quantum-accelerated model training, optimization shortcuts, or breakthroughs in materials and pharma via molecule simulations. We may be hurtling toward a kind of superintelligence — not tomorrow, but much sooner than anyone predicts.

IBM’s roadmap is calling for hardware delivery in 2029; IonQ is promising scale even faster. When that happens — and it’s likely sooner than many expect — the tech world as we know it could be forever changed.

Bottom line: Quantum isn’t “five years away” anymore — it’s emerging as a clear, fast-moving contender. With IBM’s roadmap creeping into the late 2020s, IonQ’s bold scaling, and QuSecure building protection in parallel — we’re entering a new era. Stay sharp. The rear-view mirror is giving way to a quantum future.