IBM and Cisco announced their intention to collaborate on the foundation of networked distributed quantum computing, with the goal of bringing the concept to life as early as the beginning of the 2030s. By leveraging IBM’s momentum in building practical quantum computers alongside Cisco’s advancements in quantum networking, the partnership is designed to explore how to scale fault-tolerant quantum systems far beyond IBM’s already ambitious roadmap – and unlock the groundwork required for a future quantum computing internet.
Over the next five years, the two companies plan to demonstrate a proof-of-concept network connecting multiple large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers, enabling them to collectively execute computations across tens to hundreds of thousands of qubits. Such a network would pave the way to run applications requiring trillions of quantum gates – the core entangling operations driving groundbreaking quantum use cases, from massive optimization models to the discovery of next-generation materials and medical breakthroughs.
“At IBM, our roadmap includes plans to deliver large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers before the end of the decade,” said Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow. “By working with Cisco to explore how to link multiple quantum computers like these together into a distributed network, we will pursue how to further scale quantum’s computational power. And as we build the future of compute, our vision will push the frontiers of what quantum computers can do within a larger high-performance computing architecture.”
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“Getting quantum computing to useful scale is not just about building bigger individual machines, it is also about connecting them together,” said Vijoy Pandey, GM/SVP at Outshift by Cisco. “IBM is building quantum computers with aggressive roadmaps for scale-up, and we are bringing quantum networking that enables scale-out. Together, we are solving this as a complete system problem, including the hardware to connect quantum computers, the software to run computations across them, and the networking intelligence that makes them work.”
Building the Future of Distributed Quantum Computing
Through this collaboration, IBM and Cisco intend to jointly explore quantum hardware and software innovations capable of connecting multiple fault-tolerant quantum computers across a unified network. The companies are targeting an initial demonstration before the end of 2030, focused on entangling qubits from independent quantum systems housed in separate cryogenic environments – a milestone that will require breakthroughs such as microwave-to-optical transducers and a dedicated software framework to support multi-system operations.