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IBM $IBM -6.60% announced plans to invest more than $10 billion in quantum computing over the next five years, targeting the delivery of the first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029.
According to the company, the funds will be directed toward a range of priorities including R&D, capital expenditure, manufacturing, ecosystem partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions. IBM said the 2029 system, called Starling, will be capable of executing 20,000 times more operations than current systems. A subsequent system, IBM Quantum Blue Jay, is planned to run one billion quantum operations across 2,000 qubits.
"The quantum era is no longer ahead of us, it has started," IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said in a statement. "The pace of discovery with quantum computers is accelerating rapidly and this investment powers our ability to deliver the next generation of quantum hardware, software, and manufacturing."
Globally, IBM has deployed over 90 quantum systems — a figure the company says exceeds the combined total of every other player in the industry — with more than 340 organizations running real workloads on its machines. Since 2017, the company has signed more than $1.1 billion in contracts with clients, the company said.
