The US government is putting up to $215 million behind a more concrete test of quantum computing: build a fault-tolerant machine capable of doing scientifically useful work.
The Department of Energy announced the Quantum Genesis Q Competition on Sept. 17, inviting private companies to propose quantum systems with at least 100 logical qubits capable of performing hundreds of millions of fault-tolerant operations. The program is designed to accelerate development of what DOE calls scientifically relevant quantum computers, or SRQCs.
The competition marks a shift from simply advancing individual pieces of quantum technology toward testing whether companies can assemble those advances into systems capable of tackling problems in areas such as chemistry, materials science, physics, and applied mathematics.
Government push for Quantum leadership
In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to position the US at the forefront of quantum technology.
As part of the executive order, Trump directed the Secretary of Energy, among other government officials, to update the National Quantum Strategy with policies intended to support the maturing Quantum Information Science and Technology (QIST) ecosystem within 180 days of the order.
This week, the DOE has unveiled such a measure, which is directly targeted toward practical quantum technologies.
However, the Quantum Genesis Q Competition is not the first government initiative to advance this new science. In 2024, the DOE funded 38 projects covering quantum software, control systems, algorithms, error mitigation/correction, and scalable quantum-computing toolchains.
This 2024 funding and other previous efforts were mainly focused on research, unlike this recent funding, which is aimed at deployable tech. Earlier programs were largely about building the ecosystem and capabilities needed for quantum computing. These efforts built research centers, fundamental science, hardware, algorithms, and testbeds.
Quantum Genesis takes that accumulated infrastructure and sets a much more concrete systems-level objective: producing and deploying fault-tolerant scientifically relevant quantum computers (SRQCs).
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What Quantum Genesis could mean for enterprises
For most businesses, Quantum Genesis is less an immediate funding opportunity than a marker of how quickly the quantum industry is moving toward measurable, systems-level performance.
The competition establishes concrete thresholds for fault-tolerant machines, starting with a minimum of 100 logical qubits. If participating companies can meet those requirements and demonstrate useful scientific applications, enterprises will have more evidence for judging when quantum computing is moving beyond experimental hardware toward practical workloads.
That development also runs alongside a separate challenge for IT leaders: preparing existing systems for a future in which sufficiently powerful quantum computers could threaten widely used public-key cryptography. A June executive order accelerated the federal government’s transition toward post-quantum cryptography, while technology companies including Microsoft are also moving ahead with quantum-safe security programs.
The immediate question for most organizations is therefore not whether to buy a fault-tolerant quantum computer. It is where quantum technology could eventually affect their industry, which workloads could benefit, and whether their long-lived sensitive data is being protected against future cryptographic threats.
For the companies actually building these systems, the timeline is much shorter. DOE has scheduled an informational webinar for Sept. 25, with applications for Quantum Genesis Q due Oct. 19.
For more on how quantum technology is already moving toward enterprise use, see how IBM Ventures is backing BQP’s quantum-inspired computing push.