A report released on January 30 by IQM, OpenOcean, and Lakestar suggests that there won't be a "quantum winter" in 2024, despite a 50% drop in quantum computing investments in 2023. The report, titled "IQM-OpenOcean-Lakestar State of Quantum 2024," emphasizes that the quantum computing industry is expected to remain resilient due to broad government support and ongoing advancements.
The key insight from the report is that the quantum computing sector is likely to withstand a slowdown in private investments, with government-backed financing commitments and contracts helping alleviate investor concerns. The study analyzes Europe's position in the quantum space and gathers insights from experts across enterprise end-users, suppliers, and research institutions, including HSBC, Dell, the Federal Reserve, Citi, and Moderna.
While there are concerns that negative investment trends from 2023 might persist into 2024, the report suggests that government support is increasingly mitigating the decline in private investment. The quantum technology landscape in Europe differs slightly from other regions, as the overall global investment in the industry is expected to decrease by 50%, and in the United States, by 80%. However, the Europe, Middle East, and Africa sector still experienced a 3% growth in investment.
Despite the positive outlook for quantum computing, uncertainties remain, potentially causing some investors to hesitate. The report notes that artificial intelligence is diverting attention, investment, and interest from quantum computing, while others express concerns that it might take years for quantum computing to move beyond its infancy. In the absence of a clear timeline for the industry's maturity, experts anticipate that government investments and partnerships will support the sector through a general slowdown in the tech industry.
Several leading quantum computing companies have updated their roadmaps, hinting at a potential technological inflection point by the end of the decade. IBM projects a quantum computing inflection point by 2029, QuEra anticipates having a 10,000-qubit error-correcting quantum computer by 2026, and Quantinuum, a Cambridge/Honeywell spinout, recently raised $500 million to develop its error-correcting quantum system.
