KPMG and Microsoft join Quantinuum in simplifying quantum algorithm development via the cloud
The QIR Alliance, an international effort to enhance platform interoperability and enhance the work of quantum computing developers, has announced a milestone in the industry-wide effort to accelerate adoption
In 1952, facing opposition from scientists who disbelieved her thesis that computer programming could be made more useful by using English words, the mathematician and computer scientist Grace Hopper published her first paper on compilers and wrote a precursor to the modern compiler, the A-0, while working at Remington Rand.
Over subsequent decades, the principles of compilers, whose task it is to translate between high level programming languages and machine code, took shape and new methods were introduced to support their optimization. One such innovation was the intermediate representation (IR), which was introduced to manage the complexity of the compilation process, enabling compilers to represent the program without loss of information, and to be broken up into modular phases and components.
This developmental path spawned the modern computer industry, with languages that work across hardware systems, middleware, firmware, operating systems, and software applications. It has also supported the emergence of the huge numbers of small businesses and professionals who make a living collaborating to solve problems using code that depends on compilers to control the underlying computing hardware.
Now, a similar story is unfolding in quantum computing. There are efforts around the world to make it simpler for engineers and developers across many sectors to take advantage of quantum computers by translating between high level coding languages and tools, and quantum circuits — the combinations of gates that run on quantum computers to generate solutions. Many of these efforts focus on hybrid quantum-classical workflows, which allow a problem to be solved by taking advantage of the strengths of different modes of computation, accessing central processing units (CPUs), graphical processing units (GPUs) and quantum processing units (QPUs) as needed.
Microsoft is a significant contributor to this burgeoning quantum ecosystem, providing access to multiple quantum computing systems through Azure Quantum, and a founding member of the QIR Alliance, a cross-industry effort to make quantum computing source code portable across different hardware systems and modalities and to make quantum computing more useful to engineers and developers. QIR offers an interoperable specification for quantum programs, including a hardware profile designed for Quantinuum’s H-Series quantum computers, and has the capacity to support cross-compiling quantum and classical workflows, encouraging hybrid use-cases.
As one of the largest integrated quantum computing companies in the world, Quantinuum was excited to become a QIR steering member alongside partners including Nvidia, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Quantum Circuits Inc., and Rigetti Computing. Quantinuum supports multiple open-source eco-system tools including its own family of open-source software development kits and compilers, such as TKET for general purpose quantum computation and lambeq for quantum natural language processing.
Rapid progress with KPMG and Microsoft
As founding members of QIR, Quantinuum recently worked with Microsoft Azure Quantum alongside KPMG on a project that involved Microsoft’s Q#, a stand-alone language offering a high level of abstraction and Quantinuum’s System Model H1, Powered by Honeywell. The Q# language has been designed for the specific needs of quantum computing and provides a high-level of abstraction enabling developers to seamlessly blend classical and quantum operations, significantly simplifying the design of hybrid algorithms.
KPMG’s quantum team wanted to translate an existing algorithm into Q#, and to take advantage of the unique and differentiating capabilities of Quantinuum’s H-Series, particularly qubit reuse, mid-circuit measurement and all-to-all connectivity. System Model H1 is the first generation trapped-ion based quantum computer built using the quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) architecture. KPMG accessed the H1-1 QPU with 20 fully connected qubits. H1-1 recently achieved a Quantum Volume of 32,768, demonstrating a new high-water mark for the industry in terms of computation power as measured by quantum volume.
Q# and QIR offered an abstraction from hardware specific instructions, allowing the KPMG team, led by Michael Egan, to make best use of the H-Series and take advantage of runtime support for measurement-conditioned program flow control, and classical calculations within runtime.
Nathan Rhodes of the KPMG team wrote a tutorial about the project to demonstrate how an algorithm writer would use the KPMG code step-by-step as well as the particular features of QIR, Q# and the H-Series. It is the first time that code from a third party will be available for end users on Microsoft’s Azure portal.
Microsoft recently announced the roll-out of integrated quantum computing on Azure Quantum, an important milestone in Microsoft’s Hybrid Quantum Computing Architecture, which provides tighter integration between quantum and classical processing.
Fabrice Frachon, Principal PM Lead, Azure Quantum, described this new Azure Quantum capability as a key milestone to unlock a new generation of hybrid algorithms on the path to scaled quantum computing.
The demonstration
The team ran an algorithm designed to solve an estimation problem, a promising use case for quantum computing, with potential application in fields including traffic flow, network optimization, energy generation, storage, and distribution, and to solve other infrastructure challenges. The iterative phase estimation algorithm1 was compiled into quantum circuits from code written in a Q# environment with the QIR toolset, producing a circuit with approximately 500 gates, including 111 2-Qubit gates, running across three qubits with one reused three times, and achieving a fidelity of 0.92. This is possible because of the high gate fidelity and the low SPAM error which enables qubit reuse.
The results compare favorably with the more standard Quantum Phase Estimation version described in “Quantum computation and quantum information,” by Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac Chuang.
Quantinuum’s H1 had five capabilities that were crucial to this project:
- Qubit reuse
- Mid-circuit measurement
- Bound loop (a restriction on how many times the system will do the iterative circuit)
- Classical computation
- Nested functions
The project emphasized the importance of companies experimenting with quantum computing, so they can identify any possible IT issues early on, understanding the development environment and how quantum computing integrates with current workflows and processes.
As the global quantum ecosystem continues to advance, collaborative efforts like QIR will play a crucial role in bringing together industrial partners seeking novel solutions to challenging problems, talented developers, engineers, and researchers, and quantum hardware and software companies, which will continue to add deep scientific and engineering knowledge and expertise.
About Quantinuum
Quantinuum, the world’s largest integrated quantum company, pioneers powerful quantum computers and advanced software solutions. Quantinuum’s technology drives breakthroughs in materials discovery, cybersecurity, and next-gen quantum AI. With over 500 employees, including 370+ scientists and engineers, Quantinuum leads the quantum computing revolution across continents.
Quantinuum is pleased to announce that applications are now open for the Quantinuum SG Grand Challenge 2026, a global innovation challenge designed to bring together researchers, developers, scientists and innovators to explore practical applications of quantum computing.
Organized by Quantinuum and supported by Singapore's National Quantum Office and Aqora, the three-month program aims to foster collaboration across academia, industry and the quantum developer community while supporting the continued growth of Singapore's quantum ecosystem.
A Platform for Quantum Computing Innovation
Participants will work in teams to develop solutions across a range of challenge areas, including chemistry and molecular simulation, optimization, AI for quantum systems, quantum error correction, condensed matter and materials science, and open innovation. Throughout the program, participants will have access to mentoring, technical enablement and Quantinuum quantum computing resources.
Singapore Grand Finale
Selected finalist teams will be invited to present their work at the Grand Finale hosted in Singapore before representatives from academia, and industry. The event will celebrate innovative applications of quantum computing while providing an opportunity for participants to engage with Singapore's growing quantum community.
Join the Challenge
The Quantinuum SG Grand Challenge welcomes participants from around the world. Whether you are an experienced quantum researcher or beginning your quantum computing journey, the program offers an opportunity to collaborate, learn and contribute to the development of practical quantum applications.
Applications are now open. Spaces are limited and subject to review and approval.
- Researchers from Quantinuum, Caltech, the University of Chicago, and Harvard created a rare topologically ordered state of matter on Quantinuum's System Model H2 and used it to perform protected universal quantum gates with non-Abelian anyons.
- The work explores an alternative approach to fault tolerance by using topological properties to protect quantum information. This could reduce the need for magic state distillation, which can (in some circumstances) be resource-intensive.
- Quantinuum continues to show leadership in fault tolerance, with successful demonstrations spanning world record error rates to exotic approaches like topological computing
Quantum computing is all about putting the exotic properties of physics to work. Qubits can exist in two states at once, like the famous cat that is both alive and dead. Qubits can also be entangled, where the state of one will instantaneously affect the state of another - even when they have no way to “talk” to each other. Qubits can even be teleported, moving a quantum state from one place to another without physically moving it through space.
These features give quantum computing its power. But the ‘spooky’ nature of quantum computing doesn’t stop there: our quantum computers are potent enough to make exotic states of matter out of our qubits, and to perform calculations that would warp the mind of more traditional thinkers.
A new approach
In a recent paper published in Nature, researchers at Quantinuum teamed up with Caltech, the University of Chicago, and Harvard to create a rare ‘topologically ordered’ state of matter from our qubits.
When the qubits become ‘topologically ordered’, they become more than individual particles, now ‘related’ to each other in a specific way. This is like how hydrogen and oxygen act as individual gas particles alone, but you can put them together in a certain way so that they become water, a liquid, and an entirely different creature.
When the qubits become topologically ordered, the quantum information that they carried individually gets spread out over the whole system, which acts as a sort of protection from noise. This is like how a net makes a stronger barrier than a bunch of un-knotted ropes.
Once the researchers had topologically ordered qubits, they used the exotic particles that resulted (called non-Abelian anyons) to compute, performing error-protected gates and measurements.
To perform gates, the researchers 'braided' the anyons, which is like changing the shape of the “net”. This is something like the children’s game ‘cats cradle’. Through a sequence of changes to the “net”, the quantum computer can perform full calculations, one day helping scientists to understand the secrets hidden in the world around us.
Why go to such trouble? Well, for the love of discovery of course - but the team had an additional, specific motivation. One of the biggest challenges in building practical quantum computers is protecting them from errors while still being able to perform every operation needed for computation (this is referred to as universality).
This work takes a fresh approach to this challenge. Unlike traditional quantum error correction, the special properties of topological matter enable a universal set of fault tolerant gates without relying on expensive magic state distillation.
Why this matters
Quantum error correction is essential for large-scale quantum computing. While it protects fragile quantum information from noise by turning delicate physical qubits into robust logical qubits, it also introduces a significant constraint: not every quantum gate can be performed directly on logical qubits.
For decades, the standard solution has been to supplement error-corrected operations with magic states. These specially prepared quantum resources enable universal computation but can come at a steep cost - in many estimates of future fault-tolerant quantum computers, magic state preparation dominates both the physical qubit count and the runtime of useful algorithms.
Reducing this overhead has therefore become an important goal in quantum computing. This new approach may significantly reduce the cost by enabling the ‘topological preparation’ of magic states, eliding expensive protocols like distillation. If universal computation can be performed without large-scale magic state distillation, quantum computers could require significantly fewer physical qubits and spend much less time generating computational resources before running useful algorithms.
We will never stop exploring
While there is still considerable work ahead to understand the practical implementation and scalability of these ideas, this result expands the landscape of what's possible in quantum fault tolerance.
Of course, this impressive demonstration describes just one approach we are taking to fault tolerance at scale. We will continue to push forward with topological computing alongside more traditional approaches to quantum error correction, as well as exploring everything we can imagine in between. We are looking at a number of ways to reduce the resource cost of magic states in particular, and are making strides in multiple dimensions. With machines that are both flexible and accurate enough to do it all, who can resist?
- Quantinuum continues its progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computing, with a series of peer-reviewed breakthroughs in fault-tolerant operations.
- Our progress is not only scientific; it is commercial. By improving logical-qubit reliability and encoding efficiency, Quantinuum is reducing the resource overhead required to scale its quantum computers toward commercially useful workloads.
- These results were achieved on commercial Quantinuum hardware, reinforcing that our architecture is not just setting new standards, but building a practical foundation for customers, partners, and researchers preparing for the fault-tolerant era.
Fault-tolerant quantum computing is the threshold the industry must cross before quantum computers can solve the hardest, highest-value problems with confidence. To be commercially useful at scale, the question is not simply who can build more qubits. It is who can build reliable, efficient, scalable systems that reduce technical risk and accelerate the path to commercial usefulness.
Quantinuum is progressing on that path.
Last year, in partnership with Microsoft, we published a breakthrough in logical computing, demonstrating logical qubits that outperformed their physical counterparts by a factor of 800. We are proud to announce that this work is now being published in Nature, one of the most highly regarded scientific journals in the world.
This work highlights our leading fidelities, as shown in Table 1:
Since then, we’ve accelerated our efforts to reach large-scale fault tolerance and advanced what we believe to be the core building blocks of fault-tolerant quantum computing, from logical-qubit teleportation and multiple error-correction breakthroughs to one of the first meaningful computations using logical qubits. Importantly, these results were achieved on commercial Quantinuum hardware, demonstrating not just scientific progress, but a practical and efficient path toward scalable, customer-ready fault tolerance.
A Recap of Our Recent Technical Progress
Since the work with Microsoft, we achieved a milestone years ahead of schedule, demonstrating high-fidelity teleportation of a logical qubit, which was published in Science, one of the world’s most prestigious journals. Later, we beat our own record in this crucial fault tolerance milestone, thanks to continued improvements to our System Model H2’s fidelity.
Then, a series of results demonstrating more error-correcting milestones (and codes):
- Better than physical results in a high-rate non-local code,
- First-ever demonstration of a single-shot error correcting code (which significantly reduces resource requirements) in 4 dimensions
- Extending qubit lifetimes by 10x with a concatenated code
- Observed fault-tolerance thresholds with concatenated codes
- High fidelity magic states and a fully fault tolerant universal gate set in two different papers
Recently, we topped ourselves yet again by performing one of the first meaningful computations with logical qubits – exploring key questions in materials and magnetism, using logical qubits with better error rates than their physical counterparts. This result also includes a leading “encoding rate” squeezing 48 logical qubits out of just 98 physical qubits, emphasizing how our architecture helps to support large scale fault tolerance without enormous resource costs.
It is worth noting that all these results were achieved on our commercial hardware, not on one-off laboratory test-stands – reflecting the performance that we are able to deliver to our customers.
We also did crucial theoretical work, exploring new options for error correction that can reduce resource requirements, time to solution, and shorten the timeline to large scale fault tolerance.
Commercial Implications and the Road Ahead
We believe the commercial implication is clear: Quantinuum is reducing the uncertainty around the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing. Our architecture, hardware fidelity, full-stack control, and error-correction progress are converging into a practical roadmap for systems that can support valuable scientific and commercial workloads.
For those evaluating when quantum computing will become strategically relevant, we believe the signal is also increasingly clear: the fault-tolerant era is no longer a distant concept. It is becoming an engineering reality, and Quantinuum is leading the way.