BOLTS Technologies founder Yoon Auh discusses IBM’s reported quantum investment.
With “quantum” appearing in more headlines, it is useful to ask a more precise question: what part of the quantum stack is actually moving?
I generally organize quantum developments into six buckets:
Hardware — the physical systems needed to build quantum computers, including chips, qubits, control systems, fabrication capacity, and supporting infrastructure.
Software that works around hardware limitations — techniques that help imperfect quantum machines perform more reliably, including error correction, error mitigation, and other methods that reduce the burden on physical hardware.
Quantum algorithms — algorithms designed to run on quantum computers, including Shor’s algorithm, which is the best-known example because of its potential to break widely used public-key cryptography.
Optimization of quantum algorithms — improvements that reduce the resources required to run those algorithms, such as lowering the number of logical qubits, gates, or runtime needed for practical attacks.
Quantum-resilient cryptography — the defensive response, including post-quantum cryptography (PQC), which aims to replace cryptographic systems that could become vulnerable to sufficiently powerful quantum computers.
Network-scale and sensory quantum technologies — applications that look beyond pure computing, including Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), quantum-based communication networks, and hyper-precise quantum sensing.
Viewed through this framework, IBM’s reported quantum investment and its work with the U.S. Department of Commerce to establish Anderon—a proposed U.S.-based quantum chip foundry supported by CHIPS Act incentives—are primarily a Bucket 1 story: hardware and manufacturing. That matters because scalable quantum computing is no longer just a laboratory science problem; it is an industrial manufacturing and supply-chain problem. A dedicated quantum wafer foundry would strengthen the industrial base needed to build more advanced quantum systems at scale.
The announcement may also touch Bucket 2 if it helps advance error correction or other software techniques that make limited quantum hardware more useful. IBM’s own roadmap points to a fault-tolerant quantum system, Starling, targeted for 2029, capable of running large quantum circuits using logical qubits.
But this progress should not be confused with Bucket 3 or Bucket 4. The announcement does not mean that Shor’s algorithm can suddenly break RSA or ECC at a real-world scale. Doing so requires a massive convergence of scalable hardware, fault tolerance, error correction, and sufficient logical-qubit capacity.
Furthermore, we shouldn’t conflate this news with Bucket 6. A chip foundry announcement is fundamentally distinct from breakthroughs in network-scale systems like unhackable quantum communication lines or subatomic quantum sensors. These are the seemingly science-fiction-like technologies that may reshape our physical reality—from un-interceptable data grids to medical imaging that tracks individual molecules—but they rely on entirely different architectural leaps.
Instead, the immediate ripple effect of IBM’s hardware push lands squarely back on Bucket 5. Post-quantum cryptography is our active defensive track: replacing vulnerable cryptographic systems before a cryptographically relevant quantum computer exists, not after. So the key question is not simply, “Is quantum getting closer?” The better question is: which quantum bucket just moved? In this case, the answer is clear: the hardware race has intensified. And when the hardware race accelerates, the timeline for cryptographic resilience becomes impossible to ignore.
