IBM’s Quantum Computing bet: From New York labs to India’s classrooms

IBM

Inside IBM’s Research facility in Yorktown Heights, New York, sits a machine that looks like it belongs in a science fiction set: a golden chandelier of wires, plates and chambers, suspended from the ceiling. This, Scott Crowder tells me, is not decoration but the guts of a quantum computer — IBM’s answer to the next great leap in computing.

Crowder, Vice President of Quantum Adoption at IBM, frames it as a centennial moment. “It’s been a hundred years since quantum mechanics became our best way of explaining the universe,” he says. “The first wave gave us lasers, semiconductors, LEDs, MRIs—technologies that reshaped the 20th century. Quantum computing is the second wave. Over the next century, it could have a similar impact.”

That impact, as he lays out, won’t be everywhere. Your spreadsheets and video calls will still be handled perfectly well by the classical machines on your desk. But there are classes of problems —molecular chemistry, material design, optimisation puzzles — that classical computers stumble over. These aren’t esoteric challenges. They cover batteries that hold a charge longer, drugs that target proteins more precisely, financial portfolios that can withstand tail-risk events.

Today’s computers crunch everything as zeros and ones. Quantum systems, instead, use properties like superposition and entanglement to attack the same problem space differently. In practice, that means simulating nature on its own terms.

IBM Quantum 2

Crowder also talks about the gap between the promise and present. Take ferrosulfide, a molecule important in biological processes. Run a calculation on it using approximate classical methods and you’re looking at hours of time on Fugaku, the world’s fastest supercomputer in Japan. IBM researchers, working with a 72-qubit quantum machine, managed a similar computation in about twelve minutes.

“We’re not yet at the point where quantum beats classical,” he cautions. “The best classical approximations still edge out in accuracy. But that’s how close we are.” The difference between “almost” and “advantage” lies in hardware stability and algorithm refinement. IBM’s roadmap points to those gains arriving within the next year or so — when, for the first time, a quantum algorithm consistently produces better results than any known classical one.

For now, the machines still look like straight out of a sci-fi movie.  I saw Quantum Two in operation at the research lab and it looks mightily impressive. Their impact on our day-to-day lives may not happen in the immediate future.

Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai believes that quantum computing will change what technology can do. Earlier this year in a blog, Pichai said “Quantum computing will push the limits of what technology can do. It could help solve huge problems in healthcare, security, and science, as per Pichai. Pichai said that it could take 5-10 years for “practical” quantum computers. IBM claims that by 2029, it will deliver IBM Quantum Starling the first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer capable of running 100 million quantum gates on 200 logical qubits (which is 20,000 times more powerful than today’s quantum computers).

Quantum as a service

Unlike the mainframe era, where corporations bought hulking machines and tucked them into basements, quantum computing is being built as a cloud service. IBM already runs over ten quantum systems on the cloud at any given moment, refreshed on a rapid cadence. Developers write programs, send them via IBM’s open-source Qiskit software, and get results back from real quantum hardware.

That matters because, as Crowder stresses, IBM can’t do this alone. “Nine years ago, there was no such thing as a quantum developer. Today, 650,000 people have used our platform, and they’ve published more than 3,000 papers. That ecosystem didn’t exist until we opened up access.”

Which brings us to India.

Why India matters

If New York is where the hardware gleams, India is where IBM sees the future workforce being forged. India has bet heavily on quantum technologies, with government programmes, university curricula, and startups all pulling in the same direction. IBM has positioned itself as a keystone in that ecosystem.

Its local experts work with Indian universities to seed quantum courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Faculty development programmes are designed not just to teach theory but to anchor content in practical use cases — finance, logistics, healthcare, cybersecurity. IBM engineers run workshops and case studies, and perhaps most importantly, give students cloud access to real quantum machines.

Since 2021, over 200,000 people in India have accessed IBM’s learning resources. The company has provided the equivalent of $14 million in cloud credits to Indian users. More than 615 professionals in India are now certified in quantum computing by IBM — the highest number outside the US. Dozens of Indian students have interned at IBM’s quantum centres in Delhi and Bengaluru, working on problems like circuit optimisation, protein folding and energy operators.

India’s regulators are helping push momentum too. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have announced new undergraduate courses in quantum technologies. IBM is co-developing textbooks for these programmes with IITs and startups, ensuring students learn not from hand-me-down physics notes but from up-to-date material shaped by industry practice.

This collaboration is bearing fruit. Indian researchers, supported by IBM, have published work in diverse domains — from financial optimisation to quantum approaches in drug discovery. There’s also a vibrant grassroots scene: student clubs, hackathons, and open courses pulling in thousands of participants who might, a decade ago, have never heard the word “qubit.”

The bigger bet

Why India? Part of the answer is demographics: a vast pool of engineers and scientists hungry for emerging tech skills. But it’s also strategic. As with AI, building early capacity in quantum could give India a seat at the global table when commercial applications mature. IBM, for its part, ensures that when its fault-tolerant systems come online, there’s already a critical mass of trained users in the country who know how to squeeze value out of them.

Crowder frames it less as altruism and more as necessity. “We can’t invent every algorithm, every application ourselves,” he says. “This is about building communities that can explore problems we haven’t even thought of yet.”

It’s easy to get lost — more like overwhelmed and confused — in the jargon. Logical qubits, error correction thresholds, partial differential equations — all terms which sound extremely loaded. But beneath the physics lies something more human: the attempt to expand what we can calculate. Just as semiconductors once unlocked whole industries, the hope is that quantum computing will push open doors we don’t yet see.

(The writer travelled to New York on the invitation of IBM)