Is the Quantum Computing Market growing now?

When we say the quantum computing market is growing, what are we actually measuring?

The quantum computing market is growing only if customers are spending more money on quantum systems, cloud access, software and services.

That sounds obvious, but quantum computing makes the distinction unusually important. Funding rounds, stock prices and technical breakthroughs can all explode while customer revenue stays tiny. We therefore give the most weight to actual industry revenue, company revenue, bookings, contracts and production use. Funding and valuations help us understand how much money is being committed to future growth, but they cannot prove that today's market is already large.

The cleanest industry-wide data comes from QED-C, which works with Hyperion Research on its annual quantum-computing market study. QED-C estimated the market at $1.07 billion in 2024 and around $1.4 billion in 2025. That gives us a useful anchor because it measures commercial activity across the industry rather than the valuation of a few listed companies.

Is quantum computing revenue actually growing right now?

Yes, quantum computing revenue is growing fast right now, with the best industry-wide estimate showing roughly 31% growth in one year.

QED-C estimated that global quantum-computing revenue rose from $1.07 billion in 2024 to approximately $1.4 billion in 2025. That means the industry added about $330 million of annual revenue in twelve months.

The forward numbers point in the same direction. QED-C currently expects quantum-computing revenue to grow around 30% a year and pass $3 billion by 2028. Its company survey also found that 37% of respondents expect their own revenue to grow more than 25% in 2026.

Forecasts can obviously be wrong. The important part is that the forecast starts from an industry that has already crossed $1 billion of annual sales and just grew by roughly one-third.

Measure	2024	2025	2028 forecast
Global quantum-computing revenue	$1.07B	~$1.4B	>$3B
Annual growth	-	~31%	~30% expected
Commercial stage	Early	Growing quickly	Expected to more than double

Is quantum computing already a big market, or just a fast-growing small one?

Quantum computing is still a small market, even with growth around 30%.

A $1.4 billion global industry is large enough to support real companies and real contracts. It is also tiny beside cloud computing, semiconductors or enterprise software. That small base makes percentage growth look dramatic very quickly.

Quantinuum gives some perspective. The company reached a $17.6 billion valuation when its shares opened on Nasdaq in June 2026. One quantum company was therefore valued at more than twelve times the previous year's revenue of the entire quantum-computing market.

The operating numbers at several suppliers are smaller still. Rigetti generated $5.1 million in its latest quarter. D-Wave generated $3.1 million. Quantinuum generated $8 million.

We should take the 30% growth seriously without pretending quantum computing has already become a large computing industry. Both are true, and the gap between them is still huge.

If you want more recent data on this point, see the latest figures in our Quantum Computing report ↓.

Which quantum computing companies are actually growing today?

Quantum computing company revenue is growing across several suppliers today, although IonQ is carrying most of the visible increase among the largest listed pure plays.

We compared the latest second-quarter revenue of IonQ, Quantinuum, Rigetti and D-Wave with the same quarter a year earlier. Combined revenue rose from about $27.7 million to $96.3 million. That is an increase of roughly 248%.

The aggregate looks spectacular until we look inside it. IonQ generated $80.1 million, or about 83% of the group's combined revenue. Quantinuum grew 279% to $8 million and Rigetti grew 185% to $5.1 million, while D-Wave remained around $3.1 million.

The pattern extends beyond those four companies. IQM reported that first-half revenue increased 47% to €8.9 million, driven mainly by more on-premise quantum-computer sales.

So we are seeing growth across several suppliers. We are also seeing an industry where one company can heavily influence the public-company growth picture.

Company	Latest Q2 revenue	Previous-year Q2	Change
IonQ	$80.1M	$20.7M	+287%
Quantinuum	$8.0M	$2.1M	+279%
Rigetti	$5.1M	$1.8M	+185%
D-Wave	$3.1M	$3.1M	~0%

Is IonQ's growth really coming from quantum computing demand?

IonQ's growth reflects real quantum demand, but its $80 million quarter now covers much more than selling access to trapped-ion quantum computers.

IonQ's latest results are difficult to dismiss. Revenue increased 287% year over year to $80.1 million, remaining performance obligations grew 297%, and management raised full-year revenue guidance to $280 million-$290 million. Around 60% of quarterly revenue came from commercial customers and roughly half came from international customers.

There is an important wrinkle. IonQ has deliberately expanded into quantum networking, sensing, security, satellites and semiconductor manufacturing. About 25% of its latest quarterly revenue came from customers buying multiple types of products.

IonQ has also been acquiring aggressively. Its SEC filings show six acquisitions during 2025 with a combined purchase price of about $2.66 billion, followed by the roughly $1.8 billion acquisition of SkyWater.

IonQ therefore gives us strong evidence that customers will spend serious money with a quantum company. Its numbers are becoming a weaker proxy for pure quantum-computing demand because the company itself is becoming a much broader quantum-technology platform.

If you want more recent data on this point, see the latest figures in our Quantum Computing report ↓.

Are companies actually buying quantum computers, or are governments still paying most of the bill?

Companies are buying quantum computing now, but governments and research institutions still pay a large share of the bill.

The difference between suppliers is striking. Rigetti said government entities accounted for roughly 90% of its 2025 revenue. Quantinuum has also depended heavily on large institutional customers; RIKEN alone represented about 60% of its 2025 revenue.

IonQ looks much more commercial today. Around 60% of its latest quarterly revenue came from commercial customers. D-Wave's first-half figures moved in the same direction: 67.7% of revenue came from commercial customers, versus only 16% in the comparable period a year earlier.

D-Wave also recognized revenue from more than 100 customers during the first half, with more than half of those customers classified as commercial enterprises.

This tells us more than simply counting logos on customer pages. The market is slowly moving from research institutions buying experimental access toward companies paying for systems and applications. Government money still plays a huge role, especially for companies pushing the technical frontier, but private demand has become much harder to ignore.

Are quantum computing pilots finally turning into real production workloads?

Yes, a small number of quantum computing projects have moved into production, especially in optimization, although production use is still rare.

D-Wave currently gives us the clearest numbers. In the first half of 2026, production applications represented 37.3% of its Quantum Computing as a Service revenue, up from 9.8% a year earlier. That is a substantial change in the mix of the business.

The company also signed a $10 million, two-year agreement with an unnamed Fortune 100 customer to develop and deploy several quantum-powered applications. A contract of that size is very different from a small proof of concept.

AT&T offers a more concrete workload. According to D-Wave's latest investor materials, an early network-optimization application reduced processing time from roughly one hour to less than 15 seconds. AT&T subsequently expanded the relationship to explore outage response, technician routing, network construction and traffic management.

We should still be careful with claims based on vendor-reported performance. Yet the commercial evidence has clearly moved beyond companies paying for a few hours of experimental access. Some customers are now putting quantum systems inside workflows that they expect to keep using.

Can quantum computing companies rely on recurring revenue yet?

No, quantum computing revenue is still far too lumpy for us to call it predictable.

D-Wave is the clearest example. Its 2025 revenue jumped 179% to $24.6 million, helped by a $13.7 million system sale. When that sale disappeared from the comparison, first-half 2026 revenue fell 67% even though first-half bookings jumped from $2.9 million to $35.5 million and remaining performance obligations reached $40.7 million.

Quantinuum shows the same problem from another angle. Its latest quarter grew 279% year over year, yet first-half revenue fell from $21.2 million to $13.2 million because the previous year's first half contained much larger revenue from one major customer.

Rigetti swings too. Revenue fell 34% during 2025 and then reached $9.5 million in the first half of 2026, almost three times the $3.3 million reported a year earlier.

This is what we would expect from a young hardware market where individual system deliveries and large research contracts can dominate a quarter. Growth is visible, but smooth recurring revenue is still unusual.

Is quantum computing funding accelerating again?

Yes, investors are pouring much more money into quantum computing again, and the biggest checks are getting very large.

QED-C estimated private venture investment across the broader quantum industry at $4.9 billion in 2025, more than double the previous record. The money is also concentrating around companies trying to build complete fault-tolerant systems rather than being spread evenly across dozens of small startups.

PsiQuantum raised $1 billion at a $7 billion valuation. Quantinuum raised roughly $600 million privately before its IPO. IQM raised $320 million. Those three financings alone represent about $1.9 billion.

The size of these rounds changes what companies can attempt. Building quantum hardware involves fabrication, cryogenic systems, control electronics, error correction, specialized facilities and years of R&D. A $20 million venture round and a $1 billion financing support completely different ambitions.

Investors are clearly betting that a few companies can become major computing platforms. Customer revenue has not caught up with the amount of capital entering the sector, which is why funding growth strengthens the market-growth case without proving it by itself.

Company	Major financing	Main approach
PsiQuantum	$1.0B	Photonic quantum computing
Quantinuum	~$600M	Trapped-ion quantum computing
IQM	$320M	Superconducting quantum computing

Are quantum computing valuations running far ahead of revenue?

Yes, quantum computing valuations are running far ahead of what these businesses currently sell.

Quantinuum makes the gap unusually easy to see. Its IPO raised $1.68 billion. At the $60 IPO price, the company was worth roughly $15.7 billion, and its shares briefly opened at a valuation around $17.6 billion.

Quantinuum subsequently told investors to expect only $28 million-$32 million of revenue for 2026. Using the $30 million midpoint, the IPO valuation was roughly 520 times expected annual revenue. At the opening valuation, it was closer to 590 times.

Those multiples show what public investors are actually buying: a possible future computing platform rather than today's customer base.

That can coexist with genuine market growth, but it makes quantum stocks a terrible shortcut for measuring the size of the quantum market. The businesses can grow quickly for years and still fail to justify valuations that already assume a much larger industry.

If you want more recent data on this point, see the latest figures in our Quantum Computing report ↓.

Is the quantum computing industry starting to consolidate?

Yes, quantum computing is starting to consolidate as bigger players buy technologies they would otherwise need years to build themselves.

IonQ is pushing hardest. Its six acquisitions during 2025 cost about $2.66 billion in total and brought in Oxford Ionics, Vector Atomic, Capella Space, Lightsynq and other assets. It has now added SkyWater for roughly $1.8 billion, giving IonQ its own U.S. semiconductor foundry capability.

D-Wave spent $550 million on Quantum Circuits, adding a superconducting gate-model architecture alongside its annealing systems. The deal gives D-Wave a second route toward error-corrected computing rather than forcing it to develop the entire stack internally.

Google has moved in the same direction on a smaller disclosed scale. The Atlantic Quantum team joined Google Quantum AI to help the company scale its superconducting hardware.

The bottlenecks are moving. Winning in quantum computing increasingly requires control over processors, fabrication, packaging, error correction, networking and classical integration. Companies with large balance sheets are starting to assemble those pieces rather than waiting for every capability to mature independently.

Is quantum hardware improving fast enough to keep the market growing?

Yes, quantum hardware is improving fast enough to make today's commercial growth much easier to believe.

Google's Willow work remains one of the strongest technical markers. In peer-reviewed results, increasing the size of its error-correcting surface code reduced the logical error rate by a factor of about 2.14 at each step. That is the behavior researchers need if adding more physical qubits is eventually going to create more reliable logical qubits.

Quantinuum has since reported near five-nines logical fidelity on Helios and continues developing its Sol and Apollo systems. The company says Apollo remains targeted for 2029.

The most useful outside check comes from DARPA. Its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative has already evaluated approaches from 20 commercial companies. Eleven have reached Stage B, where DARPA examines detailed engineering plans and technical risks, while two companies from the earlier US2QC program have reached the equivalent of Stage C.

DARPA's current program director has gone further and said it now appears likely that someone will build a utility-scale quantum computer by 2033, although he remains unsure which company or architecture will do it.

That judgment is still a forecast. Coming from a program specifically designed to challenge quantum-company claims, it carries more weight than another vendor roadmap.

Technical marker	What has changed
Google Willow	Larger error-correcting codes reduced logical errors
Quantinuum Helios	Reported near five-nines logical fidelity
DARPA QBI	11 companies reached deeper Stage B evaluation
DARPA view	Utility-scale quantum computing by 2033 now considered likely

Has quantum advantage become useful for real businesses yet?

Useful quantum advantage exists in narrow cases today, but businesses still cannot treat quantum computing as a general-purpose alternative to classical machines.

Google's Quantum Echoes experiment moved the debate forward. On Willow, the algorithm ran around 13,000 times faster than Google's estimate for the best classical approach on the targeted calculation. More importantly, the result can be independently checked, unlike some earlier quantum-supremacy demonstrations built around artificial benchmark problems.

Google also used the method in a proof-of-principle experiment involving molecular structure, which gives the work a more plausible path toward chemistry and materials applications.

There is still a large gap between a scientifically useful algorithm and a customer saving money with quantum computing every day. Error-correction overhead, system cost, workflow integration and the range of problems where quantum hardware wins all remain limiting factors.

DARPA uses a helpful threshold: a utility-scale quantum computer should create more computational value than it costs to operate. The agency is still evaluating which systems can reach that standard by 2033.

Quantum advantage has become more credible and more useful, while broad economic advantage remains unproven.

If you want more recent data on this point, see the latest figures in our Quantum Computing report ↓.

Which quantum computing use cases are getting real traction?

Quantum computing demand today is clustering around chemistry, materials science and optimization.

QED-C's latest market work found computational chemistry representing about 26% of identified application focus and materials science another 22%. Together, those two areas account for almost half of the application activity it tracked.

The company roadmaps point in the same direction. Google's Quantum Echoes work is aimed partly at learning more about molecular structure. Quantinuum is developing algorithms for molecular properties and has demonstrated quantum simulation work with a Fortune 100 pharmaceutical company and NVIDIA. IBM regularly works with customers in chemistry, materials and scientific simulation.

Optimization is further ahead commercially in some cases because D-Wave's annealing systems are already being used on workloads such as telecommunications network optimization.

The market is becoming more selective. A few years ago, quantum computing was routinely attached to finance, machine learning, logistics, cybersecurity, pharmaceuticals and almost any difficult computational problem. Today, we see much more repeated activity around a shorter list of problems where quantum mechanics or combinatorial complexity gives the technology a believable reason to exist.

Are IBM, Google and NVIDIA still increasing their quantum bets?

Yes, IBM, Google and NVIDIA are putting more resources into quantum computing today, and their involvement is moving deeper into infrastructure.

IBM recently committed more than $10 billion over five years to quantum computing, covering R&D, manufacturing, capital spending, acquisitions and ecosystem development. IBM says its Quantum Network already includes more than 340 organizations running workloads, and the company has signed more than $1.1 billion of quantum client contracts since 2017.

Google continues developing Willow, hired the Atlantic Quantum team and has also expanded its work into neutral-atom computing. That gives Google exposure to more than one hardware path while it continues pursuing an error-corrected machine.

NVIDIA is approaching the market from the classical side. Its NVQLink architecture connects quantum processors to GPU supercomputers and launched with support from 17 quantum-computing builders, five controller companies and nine U.S. national laboratories.

The shape of the industry is becoming clearer here. Quantum computers increasingly look like another processor inside a larger computing system, working alongside CPUs and GPUs rather than sitting alone in a separate technological universe.

Has one quantum computing technology clearly won yet?

No quantum computing architecture has clearly won, and several very different approaches still have credible money and technical teams behind them.

The companies moving through DARPA's deeper evaluation make that obvious. Its Stage B group includes trapped-ion systems from IonQ and Quantinuum, neutral atoms from Atom Computing and QuEra, superconducting approaches from IBM and Nord Quantique, photonics from Xanadu, and several forms of silicon spin qubits.

Private capital is making similarly different bets. PsiQuantum raised $1 billion around photonics. IQM has raised heavily around superconducting processors. QuEra is building neutral-atom systems. IonQ continues investing in trapped ions while buying technology to improve scaling.

Even Google is now exploring neutral atoms alongside the superconducting work behind Willow.

For the market, this creates an unusual situation. Several hardware ecosystems can keep hiring, raising money and selling systems at the same time, even if only one or two architectures eventually dominate. Today's industry growth says very little about who the long-term winners will be.

Could government money be making the quantum computing market look healthier than it is?

Government spending is boosting quantum computing growth, but private demand is now too visible to dismiss the market as a subsidy story.

Public support is enormous. QED-C estimated that announced government quantum-funding commitments increased by another $12.7 billion in 2025, taking cumulative commitments to around $56.7 billion. National security, technological sovereignty and the threat quantum computers could eventually pose to today's encryption give governments reasons to spend before the economics are obvious.

Some suppliers remain highly exposed. Rigetti derived around 90% of its 2025 revenue from government entities. Research institutions also account for major contracts at companies such as Quantinuum.

Commercial customers are becoming a bigger part of the picture elsewhere. IonQ gets around 60% of current quarterly revenue from commercial customers. D-Wave generated 67.7% of first-half revenue from commercial customers and has signed a two-year $10 million agreement with a Fortune 100 company.

We would probably have a smaller quantum industry today without government support. We would still have a commercial market.

What could break the current quantum computing growth story?

The quantum computing market could keep growing while still suffering a brutal funding or valuation reset; the main risk is that useful workloads arrive too slowly.

The industry's spending levels assume that hardware will become dramatically more capable over the next several years. If fault-tolerant systems keep slipping, customers remain stuck in pilots, and production applications stay limited to a few optimization problems, investor expectations could fall much faster than industry revenue.

The financial numbers already show the mismatch. Quantinuum can be worth more than $15 billion while guiding to roughly $30 million of annual revenue. Rigetti can spend tens of millions per quarter while generating around $5 million of revenue. Huge funding rounds let these companies keep building, but they also increase the amount of future success required to justify today's investment.

Customer concentration adds another risk. One large system delivery can still transform a company's annual results, and government programs remain important enough that policy changes could affect several suppliers quickly.

We therefore see more risk of a quantum investment winter than a collapse in quantum-computing activity itself. The market now has customers, revenue and infrastructure that did not exist at comparable scale during earlier hype cycles.

If you want more recent data on this point, see the latest figures in our Quantum Computing report ↓.

So, is the quantum computing market growing now?

Yes. The quantum computing market is genuinely growing now, although today's commercial market is much smaller than the valuations and investment surrounding it suggest.

The evidence goes beyond one hot company or one technical announcement. Industry revenue has been rising at roughly 30%. IonQ, Quantinuum, Rigetti and IQM have all recently reported substantial sales growth. Commercial customers now account for a majority of revenue at IonQ and D-Wave. D-Wave is seeing more revenue from production applications. Large enterprises are signing multi-year contracts. Companies are buying on-premise systems.

At the same time, investors are financing billion-dollar hardware programs, IBM is committing more than $10 billion to quantum computing, and DARPA has become more confident that a utility-scale machine can be built within the next several years. Technical progress is keeping pace well enough for companies and customers to continue spending.

We would still reject the strongest version of the quantum boom story. Broad fault-tolerant quantum computing has not arrived. Revenue remains lumpy, some suppliers depend heavily on governments, production use is limited, and valuations assume an industry many times larger than the one customers are paying for today.

The direct answer is therefore yes, with high confidence. Quantum computing has moved into a real early commercial growth phase. The open question now is how long it takes this roughly billion-dollar market to become a genuinely large computing industry.