Things are moving steadily towards that point. The investment pouring into quantum service providers and startups shows that industry understands its significance. And a growing number of real-world use cases are emerging to demonstrate its value outside of the laboratory.

Quantum computers harness the properties of quantum mechanics to perform some tasks millions of times more quickly than classical computers. This will make them hugely transformative in fields including finance, cybersecurity, medicine and material sciences.

So, let’s take a look at what quantum computers are actually being used for today to understand how they are already pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Optimizing Transactions In Financial Services

A collaboration between IBM, Quantinuum, Banca D’Italia and several universities has produced a quantum computer system capable of tackling highly complex optimization tasks. It’s thought that this technology could save financial institutions millions of dollars by reducing delays in settling payments on the TARGET2-Securities platform used to manage stock trades.

Quantum computers are great for solving these kinds of mathematical problems, involving finding the best combinations of numerous complex variables. In this case, the optimization involves finding the most efficient methods of processing transactions as quickly as possible.

The World Economic Forum believes that applying quantum computer technology to financial services optimization problems in this way will unlock $2 trillion in economic value by 2035.

Drug Discovery

Quantum computers are especially good at simulating the real world because the real world follows the rules of quantum physics — something traditional computers, which rely on simple binary logic, struggle to replicate accurately.

In fact, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman once said, "Nature isn't classical, dammit! And if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical."

Quantum computing pioneers Qubit Pharmaceuticals leverage this ability of quantum computing to more accurately model and predict the interactions between medicinal particles and disease targets in the human body. According to their founder, 70% of these interactions are too complex to model on classical computers. This means that quantum computers are far more likely to identify potential candidates for new drugs and treatments. Google and IBM are also building quantum computing technology optimized for this task.

Quantum-Secured Networks

Network security protocols developed using quantum techniques have been rolled out in high-stakes environments, including telecommunications and government communications infrastructure. Samsung has built quantum key distribution (QKD) into its Galaxy Quantum range of smartphones, and the technology has been used by Hyundai and Toshiba to create quantum-secured networks. China Telecom is planning to launch the first quantum-secured global telecommunications network by 2027. QKD works because of the quirky quantum principle that observing a particle changes its state, meaning any attempt at snooping can instantly be detected and shut down.

Better Batteries

Batteries are usually the most expensive component of electric vehicles. The need to generate a large amount of energy from a device of the minimum size, weight and manufacturing cost creates a tough engineering challenge. A partnership between Hyundai and IonQ, however, has resulted in technology that can better model the properties of lithium compounds used in battery cathodes. This enables researchers to quickly test candidate materials via simulation and vastly speed up the discovery process. The result is batteries that hold power for longer, charge quicker and can be made from a wider range of materials.

Truly Random Numbers

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase has been a leading investor in quantum computing research for some time, and it could now be starting to pay off. The bank’s research division, working alongside academics from the University of Texas and other leading institutions, has developed methods of generating truly unpredictable numbers. Classical computers, by comparison, use deterministic methods of generating “random” numbers, so they aren’t truly random and, in theory, can always be cracked or traced back to a seed by sufficiently powerful computers. It’s believed that random numbers generated in this way will form the basis of the more secure cryptography techniques of the future.

Towards Commercial Quantum Computing

Everything covered here is happening in the real world now, even if it is all being built on bespoke architecture by companies with very deep pockets. However, Google’s head of Quantum, Hartmut Neven, believes it will be as little as five years before commercial off-the-shelf quantum applications are available.

This will be the real game-changer as the power of quantum becomes accessible to a far wider range of businesses and organizational users, further accelerating innovation.

While quantum computers won’t replace classical computers for every task, the tasks they do excel at are high-value and often business-critical. Everyone involved in fields that will be directly impacted should prepare immediately for dramatic transformations that will occur when this technological revolution fully begins.

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