Ten years ago, the first quantum devices were put on the cloud. A milestone moment in the history of the then-nascent quantum industry, it signaled that a new era was being born. Quantum was becoming accessible, adoptable, and actionable. Fast-forwarding to today, and coming off the heels of the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, the question of “What comes next?” naturally arises. After a decade’s worth of effort, progress, and maturation of quantum, we’re approaching an inflection point.
The arrival of an imminent inflection point is becoming increasingly clear. That fledgling quantum computing industry? It’s matured to the point where credible and realistic projections on advancements and milestones can be given. Ten years ago, speculating on quantum’s future was more akin to gazing into a crystal ball than laying out a Gantt chart. Today, making projections is much more akin to project management than prophecy. That this is the case is clear when considering how companies in the quantum computing industry have, over the past several years, laid out their forward-looking roadmaps. A practice started by IBM back in 2020, roadmaps have proliferated in recent years, across all qubit modalities.
To see that another inflection point is on the horizon, we can look to the industry’s own projections. I have collated the latest roadmaps from across the field into a single reference document. This is intended not as a leaderboard of who is ‘winning,’ but as a mosaic of industry-wide conviction. While hardware approaches differ, the convergence of their timelines tells a remarkable story.
