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FORTUNE.COM // JUNE.1.19
Even in the absence of that confirmation, there’s a land grab un-
derway. IBM is jockeying with Google, Intel, Microsoft, and a host
of other tech giants and upstarts to dominate the territory. If these
companies can convince people that they have the right approach,
they will win over more developers, more prospective customers,
and more market share. Not coincidentally, many of these com-
panies rent out or host software and services “in the cloud” for
other computer users: A quantum breakthrough would give them
another potentially profitable service to offer.
“I get a lot of questions from customers about when is quantum
coming and when is this applicable to my business,” says Julie
Love, Microsoft’s quantum business development leader. “Increas-
ingly, we’re saying ‘Today.’ ”
T
HE POTENTIAL IS SO ENTICING because a quantum computer
is not just another ultrafast computer: It’s a new beast
entirely. Instead of computing one thing after another,
plodding along brute-force style as regular computers do,
quantum computers could potentially consider all scenarios simulta-
neously, like a monk who has attained nirvana through meditation.
To understand the kinds of problems quantum computers
are theoretically suited to solving, imagine standing in the Alps,
looking at the mountaintops. Ask yourself: Which one has the
highest peak? A simple scan of the horizon yields the answer (and
centuries-old trigonometry can confirm it). Now try to imagine a
universe with thousands of dimensions—or better yet, hundreds
of thousands—rather than the standard three with which we’re
familiar. Discovering any given minimum or maximum point in this
kaleidoscopic hellscape is effectively impossible.
More companies these days find themselves in the thousand-
dimensional Alps. They’re awash in data, to be sure. But even the
most powerful computers can’t solve some kinds of problems,
because they involve too many kinds of data—too many variables.
Consider Amazon, which seeks to ship everything to everyone
as efficiently as possible. Someone trying
to “optimize” that effort has to deal with
countless questions involving routing and
logistics, inventory, weather, traffic, local
laws, and whatever else the universe throws
at them. Humans and traditional comput-
ers wrestle with the chaos as best they can:
A quantum computer might tame it. And
boosters see even more potential for the
tech in tandem with A.I.: As self-teaching
machines take on more responsibilities,
quantum computing could turbocharge
machine-learning processes.
The possibilities are seemingly endless,
and also unproven, which is why the tech
lends itself to the inflationary churn of the
hype machine. But that isn’t stopping com-
panies from coding up software so they will
be prepared when the real deal, a so-called
universal quantum computer, comes online.
JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs
are exploring quantum applications to
manage risk in investment portfolios.
Daimler Mercedes-Benz hopes to use the
technology to boost battery performance
in electric vehicles. Pharmaceutical giant
Biogen has run quantum-driven tests to
find new candidate drugs to treat neurode-
generative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and
Parkinson’s. It’s easy to see why so many
companies are so invested in this burgeon-
ing market; perhaps no other emerging
technology spans so many different disci-
plines with so many potential applications.