Coming Over the Horizon
Quantum Communication Enters the Mainstream
Communication is the connective tissue of society, weaving individuals into groups and communities and mediating the progress and development of culture. The technology of communications evolves continuously, occasionally undergoing paradigm shifts such as those brought about by the Gutenberg press and broadcast television.
From historical examples such as the proliferation of fast merchant trading ships, to the modern telecommunications networks spread across the world via a web of cables buried under the sea floor and satellites thousands of kilometres high, the need for better communication infrastructure has driven some of our most ambitious technologies to date.
Today, emerging quantum technologies are poised to revolutionise the field of communication once again. They promise new and incredibly valuable opportunities for dependable and secure communications between people, communities, companies, and governments everywhere. Our ability to understand and control quantum systems has opened a new world of exciting possibilities. Soon we might build long-distance quantum communication links and networks, eventually leading to what is known as the quantum internet.
While some embryonic quantum communication systems are already in place, realisation of their full potential will require significant technological advances. With engineering teams around the world working at pace to deliver this promise across industrial sectors, the need to invest in expert knowledge is rising.
NASA has been a pioneer in space-based communication over many decades, and more recently has emerged as a leader in space-based quantum communication, dedicating new resources for scientists, engineers and communication systems experts to learn about the field.
Recently, NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program commissioned a booklet titled Quantum Communication 101, authored by several of our team at Quantinuum. This will be a go-to resource for the global community of scientists and experts that NASA supports, but importantly it has been written so that it requires almost no prior technical knowledge while providing a rigorous account of the emerging field of quantum communications.
What follows is a taster of what’s in Quantum Communication 101.
What is quantum communication?
For the words I am typing now to reach your computer screen, I need to rely on modern communication networks. My laptop memory, Wi-Fi router and communication channels rely on the physics of things like transistors, currents, and radio waves which obey the more familiar, “classical" laws of physics.
The field of quantum communication, however, relies on the counterintuitive rules of quantum physics. Thanks to incredible feats of engineering, in place of continuous beams of light from diodes, we can now control individual photons to send and receive quantum information. By taking advantage of the peculiar quantum phenomena that they exhibit, like superposition and entanglement, new possibilities are emerging which were previously unimaginable.
Cutting-edge applications
In the growing landscape of potential applications in quantum communication, cybersecurity is already deeply rooted. At Quantinuum, for example, quantum computers are used to generate randomness, the fundamental building block of secure encryption. Elsewhere, prototype quantum networks for secure communications already span metropolitan areas.
As our techniques in quantum communication advance, we may unlock new possibilities in quantum computing, which promises to solve problems too difficult even for supercomputers, and quantum metrology, which will enable measurements at an unprecedented precision. Quantum states of light have already been used in LIGO - a large-scale experiment operated by CalTech and MIT to detect ripples in the fabric of space-time itself.
Connecting the dots: towards a quantum internet
The end goal of quantum communication is what many refer to as the quantum internet, through which we will seamlessly send quantum signals across many quantum networks. This will be an enormous engineering challenge, requiring international collaboration and the evolution of our existing infrastructure.
Although the exact form that this network will take is yet unknown, we can say with confidence that it will need to pass through space. Much like satellites help to globally connect the Internet, the launch of quantum-capable satellites will play a vital role in a global quantum internet.
Building a quantum ecosystem
The path to a quantum internet will depend on growing a diverse and expert workforce. This is well understood by bodies such as the National Science Foundation who recently announced a $5.1M Center for Quantum Networks aimed at architecting the quantum internet. Over the last few years, we have seen growing investment worldwide, such as the $1.1B Quantum Technology Flagship in Europe and the $11B Chinese National Laboratory for Quantum Information Science. Important industrial investments are being made by large corporations such as IBM, Google, Intel, Honeywell, Cisco, Amazon, and Microsoft.
Amongst this surge in interest, NASA’s SCaN program has proposed a series of mission concepts for building and testing infrastructure for space-based quantum communication. These include launching satellites capable of sending and receiving quantum signals between ground stations and eventually other satellites. These quantum signals may be entangled photons – a feature that will play an extremely important role in future networks. One such mission concept is shown below, where a quantum-capable satellite with a source of entangled photons connects an intercontinental quantum network.
The second quantum revolution is at an exciting precipice where our ability to transmit quantum information, both on Earth and in space, will be pivotal. Whilst our evolving quantum technologies already show a great deal of promise, it is perhaps the ground-breaking applications that we are yet to discover which will ultimately determine our success.
It is more important than ever that we support education and collaboration in advancing quantum technologies. Quantum Communication 101 aims to be a starting point for a general audience looking to learn about the topic for the first time, as well as those who wish to explore in detail the technologies that will make the first quantum networks a reality.
If you would like to better understand the exciting prospects of quantum communication, you can find the Quantum Communication 101 booklet on the NASA SCaN website.
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.
Quantum computing companies are poised to exceed $1 billion in revenues by the close of 2025, according to McKinsey & Company, underscoring how today’s quantum computers are already delivering customer value in their current phase of development.
This figure is projected to reach upwards of $37 billion by 2030, rising in parallel with escalating demand, as well as with the scale of the machines and the complexity of problem sets of which they will be able to address.
Several systems on the market today are fault-tolerant by design, meaning they are capable of suppressing error-causing noise to yield reliable calculations. However, the full potential of quantum computing to tackle problems of true industrial relevance, in areas like medicine, energy, and finance, remains contingent on an architecture that supports a fully fault-tolerant universal gate set with repeatable error correction—a capability that, until now, has eluded the industry.
Quantinuum is the first—and only—company to achieve this critical technical breakthrough, universally recognized as the essential precursor to scalable, industrial-scale quantum computing. This milestone provides us with the most de-risked development roadmap in the industry and positions us to fulfill our promise to deliver our universal, fully fault-tolerant quantum computer, Apollo, by 2029.
In this regard, Quantinuum is the first company to step from the so-called “NISQ” (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) era towards utility-scale quantum computers.
Unpacking our achievement: first, a ‘full’ primer
A quantum computer uses operations called gates to process information in ways that even today’s fastest supercomputers cannot. The industry typically refers to two types of gates for quantum computers:
- Clifford gates, which can be easily simulated by classical computers, and are relatively easy to implement; and
- Non-Clifford gates, which are usually harder to implement, but are required to enable true quantum computation (when combined with their siblings).
A system that can run both gates is classified as universal and has the machinery to tackle the widest range of problems. Without non-Clifford gates, a quantum computer is non-universal and restricted to smaller, easier sets of tasks - and it can always be simulated by classical computers. This is like painting with a full palette of primary colors, versus only having one or two to work with. Simply put, a quantum computer that cannot implement ‘non-Clifford’ gates is not really a quantum computer.
A fault-tolerant, or error-corrected, quantum computer detects and corrects its own errors (or faults) to produce reliable results. Quantinuum has the best and brightest scientists dedicated to keeping our systems’ error rates the lowest in the world.
For a quantum computer to be fully fault-tolerant, every operation must be error-resilient, across Clifford gates and non-Clifford gates, and thus, performing “a full gate set” with error correction. While some groups have performed fully fault-tolerant gate sets in academic settings, these demonstrations were done with only a few qubits and error rates near 10%—too high for any practical use.
Today, we have published two papers that establishes Quantinuum as the first company to develop a complete solution for a universal fully fault-tolerant quantum computer with repeatable error correction, and error rates low enough for real-world applications.
This is where the magic happens
The first paper describes how scientists at Quantinuum used our System Model H1-1 to perfect magic state production, a crucial technique for achieving a fully fault-tolerant universal gate set. In doing so, they set a record magic state infidelity (7x10-5), 10x better than any previously published result.
Our simulations show that our system could reach a magic state infidelity of 10^-10, or about one error per 10 billion operations, on a larger-scale computer with our current physical error rate. We anticipate reaching 10^-14, or about one error per 100 trillion operations, as we continue to advance our hardware. This means that our roadmap is now derisked.
Setting a record magic state infidelity was just the beginning. The paper also presents the first break-even two-qubit non-Clifford gate, demonstrating a logical error rate below the physical one. In doing so, the team set another record for two-qubit non-Clifford gate infidelity (2x10-4, almost 10x better than our physical error rate). Putting everything together, the team ran the first circuit that used a fully fault-tolerant universal gate set, a critical moment for our industry.
Flipping the switch
In the second paper, co-authored with researchers at the University of California at Davis, we demonstrated an important technique for universal fault-tolerance called “code switching”.
Code switching describes switching between different error correcting codes. The team then used the technique to demonstrate the key ingredients for universal computation, this time using a code where we’ve previously demonstrated full error correction and the other ingredients for universality.
In the process, the team set a new record for magic states in a distance-3 error correcting code, over 10x better than the best previous attempt with error correction. Notably, this process only cost 28 qubits instead of hundreds. This completes, for the first time, the ingredient list for a universal gate setin a system that also has real-time and repeatable QEC.
Fully equipped for fault-tolerance
Innovations like those described in these two papers can reduce estimates for qubit requirements by an order of magnitude, or more, bringing powerful quantum applications within reach far sooner.
With all of the required pieces now, finally, in place, we are ‘fully’ equipped to become the first company to perform universal fully fault-tolerant computing—just in time for the arrival of Helios, our next generation system launching this year, and what is very likely to remain as the most powerful quantum computer on the market until the launch of its successor, Sol, arriving in 2027.
If we are to create ‘next-gen’ AI that takes full advantage of the power of quantum computers, we need to start with quantum native transformers. Today we announce yet again that Quantinuum continues to lead by demonstrating concrete progress — advancing from theoretical models to real quantum deployment.
The future of AI won't be built on yesterday’s tech. If we're serious about creating next-generation AI that unlocks the full promise of quantum computing, then we must build quantum-native models—designed for quantum, from the ground up.
Around this time last year, we introduced Quixer, a state-of-the-art quantum-native transformer. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a major milestone: one year on, Quixer is now running natively on quantum hardware.
Why this matters: Quantum AI, born native
This marks a turning point for the industry: realizing quantum-native AI opens a world of possibilities.
Classical transformers revolutionized AI. They power everything from ChatGPT to real-time translation, computer vision, drug discovery, and algorithmic trading. Now, Quixer sets the stage for a similar leap — but for quantum-native computation. Because quantum computers differ fundamentally from classical computers, we expect a whole new host of valuable applications to emerge.
Achieving that future requires models that are efficient, scalable, and actually run on today’s quantum hardware.
That’s what we’ve built.
What makes Quixer different?
Until Quixer, quantum transformers were the result of a brute force “copy-paste” approach: taking the math from a classical model and putting it onto a quantum circuit. However, this approach does not account for the considerable differences between quantum and classical architectures, leading to substantial resource requirements.
Quixer is different: it’s not a translation – it's an innovation.
With Quixer, our team introduced an explicitly quantum transformer, built from the ground up using quantum algorithmic primitives. Because Quixer is tailored for quantum circuits, it's more resource efficient than most competing approaches.
As quantum computing advances toward fault tolerance, Quixer is built to scale with it.
What’s next for Quixer?
We’ve already deployed Quixer on real-world data: genomic sequence analysis, a high-impact classification task in biotech. We're happy to report that its performance is already approaching that of classical models, even in this first implementation.
This is just the beginning.
Looking ahead, we’ll explore using Quixer anywhere classical transformers have proven to be useful; such as language modeling, image classification, quantum chemistry, and beyond. More excitingly, we expect use cases to emerge that are quantum-specific, impossible on classical hardware.
This milestone isn’t just about one model. It’s a signal that the quantum AI era has begun, and that Quantinuum is leading the charge with real results, not empty hype.
Stay tuned. The revolution is only getting started.
Our team is participating in ISC High Performance 2025 (ISC 2025) from June 10-13 in Hamburg, Germany!
As quantum computing accelerates, so does the urgency to integrate its capabilities into today’s high-performance computing (HPC) and AI environments. At ISC 2025, meet the Quantinuum team to learn how the highest performing quantum systems on the market, combined with advanced software and powerful collaborations, are helping organizations take the next step in their compute strategy.
Quantinuum is leading the industry across every major vector: performance, hybrid integration, scientific innovation, global collaboration and ease of access.
- Our industry-leading quantum computer holds the record for performance with a Quantum Volume of 2²³ = 8,388,608 and the highest fidelity on a commercially available QPU available to our users every time they access our systems.
- Our systems have been validated by a #1 ranking against competitors in a recent benchmarking study by Jülich Research Centre.
- We’ve laid out a clear roadmap to reach universal, fully fault-tolerant quantum computing by the end of the decade and will launch our next-generation system, Helios, later this year.
- We are advancing real-world hybrid compute with partners such as RIKEN, NVIDIA, SoftBank, STFC Hartree Center and are pioneering applications such as our own GenQAI framework.
Exhibit Hall
From June 10–13, in Hamburg, Germany, visit us at Booth B40 in the Exhibition Hall or attend one of our technical talks to explore how our quantum technologies are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible across HPC.
Presentations & Demos
Throughout ISC, our team will present on the most important topics in HPC and quantum computing integration—from near-term hybrid use cases to hardware innovations and future roadmaps.
Multicore World Networking Event
- Monday, June 9 | 7:00pm – 9:00 PM at Hofbräu Wirtshaus Esplanade
In partnership with Multicore World, join us for a Quantinuum-sponsored Happy Hour to explore the present and future of quantum computing with Quantinuum CCO, Dr. Nash Palaniswamy, and network with our team.
Register here
H1 x CUDA-Q Demonstration
- All Week at Booth B40
We’re showcasing a live demonstration of NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q platform running on Quantinuum’s industry-leading quantum hardware. This new integration paves the way for hybrid compute solutions in optimization, AI, and chemistry.
Register for a demo
HPC Solutions Forum
- Wednesday, June 11 | 2:20 – 2:40 PM
“Enabling Scientific Discovery with Generative Quantum AI” – Presented by Maud Einhorn, Technical Account Executive at Quantinuum, discover how hybrid quantum-classical workflows are powering novel use cases in scientific discovery.
See You There!
Whether you're exploring hybrid solutions today or planning for large-scale quantum deployment tomorrow, ISC 2025 is the place to begin the conversation.
We look forward to seeing you in Hamburg!