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IBM and the University of Chicago claim quantum advantage with 70 logical qubits

IBM and University of Chicago researchers announced on July 30 a demonstration that, in their view, meets the criteria for quantum advantage with verifiable results.
July 30, 2026
Curated Medium

What it says

  • The team encoded 70 logical qubits with a new error-correction method and ran 2,415 two-qubit logical operations and 468 logical T gates.
  • Thanks to the encoding, the effective logical error rate was 10 times lower than that of the physical qubits.
  • The quantum computer took about 15 minutes; the classical simulation methods that were tried faced infeasible run times.
  • What is new compared with random circuit sampling is confidence: the construction of the circuits makes it possible to check that the result is correct. The circuits and results are published in IBM's Quantum Advantage Tracker.
  • That same day, other partners in IBM's ecosystem announced their own demonstrations of quantum advantage.

The Tech Guardian summarizes and comments in its own words on third-party publications. The full information belongs to the original source, which we recommend you read.

Our take

Quantum advantage is still being demonstrated on problems designed for it, not on your business calculations. What is useful about the announcement is something else: verifiability, which is what will be needed to trust a quantum result. If your sector handles data that must remain confidential ten years from now, the timeline that matters to you is that of post-quantum cryptography, and that one is already running.

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