How close are we to quantum computing?

Hello! Welcome to today’s edition of The Daily Grind, tech’s morning newsletter.

This post is coming in a little late today. The most interesting headline of the weekend happened to be about quantum mechanics, one of science’s great mysteries. Naturally, I went down a few rabbit holes.

Here’s what we’ll cover today:

1. The still-uncertain state of quantum mechanics

2. The pace of quantum commercialization

3. How close we are to commercial quantum viability.

The source material for today’s post is fascinating, especially Charlie Wood’s article on Helgoland 2025 Quantum Conference.

Let’s get into it:

📰 One Headline: Could we have functioning quantum computers before we fully understand quantum mechanics?

I woke up this morning and checked HackerNews. The top story at the time had as many upvotes as minutes it was live: 37.

HackerNews: OpenSSH Post-Quantum Cryptography (openssh.com)

It was a story I’d normally scroll by; I’m on the lookout for startup stories, and this post seemed purely technical. But “post-quantum” caught my interest. How could anything be post-quantum when even the most promising quantum technologies are experimental at best?

I’ll answer that question shortly. First, let’s talk about the state of quantum.

100 Years of Quantum Mechanics: More Questions Than Answers

2025 marks the 100-year anniversary of quantum mechanics. In June, 300+ quantum physicists sailed to the island Helgoland, Germany—the site where Werner Heisenberg first wrote down the calculations that proposed quantum theory.

Their mission for the week-long conference: to try to make sense of it all.

Their conclusion: “It’s a mess.”

Charlie Wood of Quanta Magazine was at the Helgoland Conference and released his reporting on Friday.

In short, physicists still can’t decide what quantum mechanics mean—only that something strange is going on beneath the surface of reality.

Here is what everyone agrees on: quantum-size particles like electrons can be everywhere—and nowhere—all at once. They live in a state of superposition, meaning all the potential positions are alive and viable. Only when one attempts to observe the particle does it “collapse” into a single position, thus forming our observed reality.

But massive questions remain about this theory. Namely, is superposition just a mathematical theory, or is it reality? In other words, are we simply calculating potential positions of particles, or do they actually hold all positions at the same time?

(To grasp this conundrum, imagine the famous quantum thought experiment, Shrodinger’s Cat. There’s a cat inside an impenetrable box. If you open the box, a poison pill will be released and the cat will die. Therefore, to an outside observer, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. The question for the physicists at Helgoland is whether the cat is literally both dead and alive, or just theoretically.)

To underscore the level of uncertainty among quantum’s leading minds, Wood split the entire conference into two camps: “Those Who Know” and “Those Who Don’t Know.” “Those Who Know” are the physicists who think they understand the nature of quantum. “Those Who Don’t Know” believe we are still missing fundamental knowledge to truly understand.

Quantum’s Commercialization: Are we there yet??

While physicists grapple with the nature of reality and the quantum realm, billions of dollars are being invested into quantum computing ventures.

Just a few months prior to the Helgoland conference, Google made one of the most promising commercial breakthroughs in quantum computing yet: The Willow quantum chip. 

Willow showed the enormous computational capabilities of quantum while also proving it could minimize the technology’s downsides. According to Google:

PhysicsWorld calls error correction “the defining challenge” of quantum computing. The same features that make quantum computing powerful—specifically, the ability of qubits to maintain superposition (i.e., all positions at once)—also make them susceptible to errors. Qubits are easily disturbed by environnmental factors like light, noise, atmosphere, and vibration—any of which can cause it to collapse into a defined state.

This is why Willow’s scalable error-correction breakthrough is so important. Without it, quantum computing would have no chance of becoming commercially viable.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a public-private partnership aims to build the world’s largest quantum computing campus on the city’s Southside. The site’s anchor tenant will be PsyQuantum, a Palo Alto-based startup that is working on the world’s first Billion-Qubit computer.

Google’s Willow chip, by comparison, has just 105 Qubits.

But how close are we to real quantum commercial viability?

Again, it’s a bit of a mess.

Some major technology companies seem to think it’s right around the corner. During Microsoft’s Q4 conference call, CEO Satya Nadella called quantum “the next big accelerator in the cloud.”

Nadella also discussed Microsoft’s new Level 2 Quantum computer, which aims to build a resilient quantum system built on “logical” qubits rather than “noisy,” error-prone physical qubits. “The longer the logical qubit is stable, the more complex an application it can run,” says Microsoft on their quantum blog.

Willow, Google’s Quantum Chip, is currently the leading logical qubit computing system.

But despite massive investments, Willow and Microsoft’s Level 2 Quantum computer are still in the R&D phase of the technology curve. For Microsoft, the third and final level is called “Scale,” in which the computers “can solve impactful problems even the most powerful classical supercomputers cannot.”

We are still an indeterminate distance from the Scaling phase of quantum computing. Scientists and engineers aren’t even sure what advantages quantum computing will eventually prove to hold over classical computing. A new research paper in arXiv claims that it is impossible to know the full advantages of quantum computing until we have built a large scale quantum computer. "

The danger with not understanding quantum’s advantages is guiding the technology towards an end where its results are usurped by classical computing, such as, perhaps, raw computation.

“Advances in classical algorithms and hardware continue to chip away at the gap, making the contest between the two paradigms a moving target rather than a fixed threshold,” according to the paper.

What Does “Post-Quantum” Mean?

Now that we know the state of play for quantum, we can return to the question I posed at the beginning of this article: What does post-quantum mean?

The HackerNews post that caught my attention was the announcement of the latest “post-quantum” cryptography standard from OpenSSH, a leading connectivity tool for remote login with the SSH protocol.

“[OpenSSH] encrypts all traffic to eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. In addition, OpenSSH provides a large suite of secure tunneling capabilities, several authentication methods, and sophisticated configuration options.”

OpenSSH promises to help protect against quantum computing attacks, which, in theory, will be capable at breaking classical encryption with ease.

But why do we have protection against quantum computing attacks when we scarcely have a working quantum computer?

According to SSH, the “post-” in Post-Quantum refers to “store now, decrypt later” attacks:

So as physicists race to make sense of quantum theory, and technology titans fight to win the next great computing shift, hackers are the ones leading the way on quantum.

They are forcing us to live with one foot in the future and one in the present—our own superposition in the quantum realm.

🔗 A Few Good Links

• TechCrunch: Sam Altman addresses ‘bumpy’ GPT-5 rollout, bringing 4o back, and the ‘chart crime’

• WSJ: Billions Flow to New Hedge Funds Focused on AI-Related Bets

• CNBC: AI is creating new billionaires at a record pace

• Bloomberg: Trump Bid for Cut of Chip Revenue Risks ‘Dangerous World’

📚 One Page: Reality is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli

I find Quantum Mechanics extremely difficult to penetrate, and I’m not alone. Even the world’s smartest physicists struggle to grasp it, as illustrated by Charlie Wood’s article on the Helgoland conferece.

Carlo Rovelli can help. He’s one of the world’s leading modern quantum physicists and a subject of Wood’s reporting from Helgoland. Rovelli falls into the “Those Who Know” camp of phycisist who believe they know the nature of quantum mechanics.

Rovelli’s confidence comes across in his writing. He has some of the clearest descriptions of quantum theory. After reading one of his books, you too might think you understand quantum mechanics. Or maybe, like me, you’ll only be left with more question.

Either way, Reality is Not What It Seems is an excellent book for anyone trying to grasp quantum mechanics:

Pick up the book or any one of Rovelli’s titles:

❓ One Question: Are you holding your plans in superposition?

While reading about quantum today, I couldn’t help but think about our love for “potentialities.” We love keeping all potential options and future paths open. But like Shrodinger’s cat, when you hold your life in superposition, you’re stuck in a box: not dying, but not living either.

So my highly theoretical question for you today is this: “Are you holding your plans in superposition?”

In other words, where are you refusing to commit to a single path?

And is it finally time to collapse those potential futures and get on with living in the present?

🗳️ Wrap Up and Feedback:

That’s it for today! I’ll come back tomorrow with a much earlier edition, but hope you enjoyed today’s exploration of quantum.

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated: