IBM Progresses to Advanced DARPA Quantum Milestone IBM has advanced to Stage C of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), achieving the third milestone in which the company’s technology moves into the independent verification and validation phase. With this latest milestone, IBM advances beyond verification of technical concept, research, and development plan, and risk-mitigation plan to demonstration of hardware technology systems engineering, and architectures. DARPA introduced QBI in 2024, to assess if an industrially relevant, fault-tolerant quantum computer can be achieved by 2033, with utility-scale operation meaning a system that outputs more computational value than its cost. In Stage C, DARPA’s independent evaluation team will work with selected companies to test hardware and determine whether their proposed systems can ultimately be constructed and operated as designed.
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“Advancing to the third stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative validates the strength of IBM’s path to building a fault-tolerant quantum computer,” said Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow. “IBM expects to deliver the first fault-tolerant system in 2029, and we plan to scale the value of quantum computing well beyond that timeline. We look forward to working with DARPA’s team of experts as they advance their review of approaches to fault-tolerant quantum computing into the testing phase.” IBM said its roadmap includes IBM Quantum Starling, a planned fault-tolerant quantum computer targeted for 2029, combining advances in error correction, processor design, and systems engineering. The company has also demonstrated core hardware components for fault tolerance and developed advances in error-correction decoding. Its quantum systems are currently used by more than 340 organizations across sectors including financial services, healthcare, materials science, academia, and government, reinforcing IBM’s broader effort to move quantum computing toward practical industrial applications.