Podcast | 2026 Predictions and the Road to 40,000 Logical Qubits — with Photonic

"Our goal at Photonic is to have a minimum of 40,000 logical qubits in service, running applications 24/7, 365 days a year."

The International Year of Quantum is now in the books, and the industry seems to be driving toward an amazing 2026. To capture this momentum, we invited back one of the companies DARPA chose to help build a fault-tolerant future. We'll discuss that initiative, recap what we learned in 2025, and look ahead to what may be a pivotal year toward achieving practical advantage.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: Welcome to The Post-Quantum World. I’m your host, Konstantinos Karagiannis. I lead Quantum Computing Services at Protiviti, where we help companies prepare for the benefits and threats of this rapidly evolving field. I hope you’ll join each episode as we explore the technology and business impacts of the post-quantum era. Our guest today is the CEO of Photonic, Paul Terry. Welcome to the show.

Paul Terry: Hi, great to be here.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: Thanks for coming. We’re going to have a little fun today—recapping 2025, the International Year of Quantum, and looking ahead to what 2026 might bring. First off, congratulations on being selected for the DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative Stage B. For listeners who may not know, could you give a quick elevator pitch about what the QBI actually is?

Paul Terry: The Americans have a DARPA program that started several years ago. There was a provisional program for two years before the main program began in 2025. About 18 or 19 companies were selected for DARPA Stage A at the beginning of 2025. Now, 11 companies have moved on to Stage B, and eventually there will be a selection for Stage C. DARPA is a reflection of the US government’s effort to accelerate the practical commercialization of quantum computers. They want a plan and a reason to believe that quantum computers are coming soon, and they’re helping companies figure out how to get there. We were selected for both Stage A and Stage B. Stage A ended around November, with a lengthy report—about 250 pages. From that, 11 companies were chosen for Stage B. The goal now is to create an R\&D plan for a universal quantum computer to be available by 2033 or earlier. The big surprise is how many companies have practical plans to deliver quantum computers much sooner than previously thought. DARPA has created a race, and some of the smartest people in the world are now preparing plans for universal quantum computers to be deployed on or before 2033.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: If you all win, we all win. We can use as many of these machines as possible. What specific milestones does Photonic need to prove to DARPA over the next year or so to confirm your utility-scale dreams are achievable by 2033? 

Paul Terry: First, we need a quantum bit—a qubit—that is stable, manufacturable, and has high fidelity. For many years, quantum research focused on theory before practical qubits were made. It wasn’t until 2000 that physicists began implementing qubits. That journey took about 20 years. As late as 2018–2019, computers had only 54 qubits. Now, several modalities have 100, 200, or 300 physical qubits. The focus has shifted from making a qubit to making a practical qubit that can run applications. The DARPA program is all about benchmarking—making qubits fit for purpose and useful to the world. The big move in the last two years was the end of noisy qubits. In 2025, we entered phase two: a small number of logical qubits. From 2026 onward, it’s about scaling to large numbers of logical qubits. Not all logical qubits are made the same—the error correction rate matters. We classify logical qubits as bronze, silver, or gold, depending on their error rates. Today, we’re in the sub-bronze category. DARPA and other governments are keen on increasing both the number and quality of logical qubits, aiming for gold-grade logical qubits by 2030. The race is on for large numbers of gold-standard logical qubits by 2030. DARPA wants to see all the roadmap items that show we can scale and achieve that quality.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: That really clarifies things. If we’re in the sub-bronze area now, it’s a little fuzzy. A lot of headlines in 2025, like Google’s Willow, focused on gate-based error correction on a single processor. Photonic has always doubled down on entanglement-first distributed architecture. How does your selection for Stage B validate that distributed approach over the monolithic processor approach?

Paul Terry: My background is in networking, telecoms, and supercomputing—all about scale, which we achieve via networks. Humans are good at scaling on chips and networks. The currency of quantum computing is entanglement. All modalities have qubits, but what distinguishes them is how they generate and consume entanglement. Traditionally, entanglement was created using proximity—bringing quantum objects close together. The entanglement-first architecture, pioneered by Steph Simmons, allows two quantum objects to entangle without proximity, using photons to carry the entanglement signal. This idea won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2022. Now, you can create entanglement between objects that have never met. The implications are significant: these objects are less subject to quantum noise and more manufacturable. If you use telecom-grade photons, you can transmit entanglement information over regular networks, enabling arbitrary scale. The architecture becomes a field of connected qubits interacting via photons. Another implication is that entanglement can occur in pairs, all in the same clock cycle, making it a massively parallel computer. Networking enables an arbitrarily fast machine. That’s why we started with entanglement and worked backward to create a networkable quantum computer, which is also a quantum network. The network is the computer, and the computer is the network—this is becoming true again in quantum.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: There’s a lot going on. This year we saw new modalities, like Microsoft’s topological qubit news. It sounds like you still believe firmly in silicon T centers and spin-photon qubits for network scaling. How does that work with existing telecom infrastructure?

Paul Terry: Scale is about making something bigger while keeping the marginal cost of adding one more thing at zero. The Internet scales because adding a router costs almost nothing. Transistors in microprocessors scale similarly. Our modality benefits from both silicon scale and network scale. All our engineering focuses on those two scales. Competitors must solve scalability in both dimensions. It’s not just about making things bigger—they must also be stable. Redundancy and cloud computing approaches help with scalability. Ultimately, we want logical qubits in service for people to run on, available 24/7, 365 days a year. Most modalities have scalability on a chip or in a box; few have scalability beyond the box. In 2025, we saw the rise of interconnecting boxes and error correction. We solve both simultaneously.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: IBM and Cisco announced they’ll work together on networking quantum computers. IMQ has been acquiring companies to connect machines for scale. You should feel vindicated—it’s the same approach you’ve been working on. For 2026, what does your commercial roadmap look like? What kinds of algorithms do you expect to run this year on your hardware?

Paul Terry: It’s not easy to link quantum computers together. If you have to change modalities to link them, you’re inventing a difficult interface. The only way is to create and chain entanglement, essentially inventing a quantum repeater. Steph’s breakthrough in 2018 was a quantum modality native to telecom networks. Interconnecting quantum computers is not straightforward; many will need to reinvent their modalities. Efficiency is typically low, and it’s a major challenge. In 2025, the big breakthrough was error correction. We do error correction based on networking. If you use proximity, surface codes are excellent, with 25 years of research. If you relax proximity, you can use LDPC codes—low-density parity codes, similar to erasure codes and used in 5G wireless. We spent years developing quantum LDPC codes, reducing the physical requirements for quantum computers and increasing utilization. Now, the industry is moving to LDPC codes. In 2026, the race is on for more logical qubits and greater error correction rates—essentially, gold qubits. Our goal at Photonic is to have a minimum of 40,000 logical qubits in service by 2030, running applications 24/7, 365 days a year. Quantum computers will be provided as a cloud service. Anyone buying a quantum computer today will find it obsolete in 12 months due to rapid innovation. The question is no longer if quantum computers will be real, but when, how many, and when can I use them. The pace of deploying logical qubits depends on scalability, not on making a new generation of computers.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: How soon will we have gold logical qubits with Photonic? Forty thousand by 2030 is impressive. What do the next two years look like? How soon can someone use 100 or 1,400 logical qubits?

Paul Terry: Practical applications require between 100 and 2,000 logical qubits. There are applications below 100 and above 2,000 logical qubits. About 80% of what we do is in the 100–2,000 range. Progress is being made in reducing the number of logical qubits needed for specific algorithms. Google has published papers showing that far fewer logical qubits are needed than previously thought. As logical qubits come online, optimization will continue, just as it has in classical computing. AI and LLMs typically need fewer logical qubits. In the next few years, we’ll see 100–300 logical qubits applied to LLMs. With about 1,000 logical qubits, you unlock chemistry; with about 1,800, you unlock finance. Our focus is on enabling partners and strategics to run practical applications on our systems. We’ll have journey customers in the next two years and public consumption by 2030. 

Konstantinos Karagiannis: In 2025, hybrid became a buzzword, with NVIDIA quantum integrations. Has the industry started leaning toward a standard for classical and quantum communication, or is it still a mess?

Paul Terry: They haven’t standardized yet. Parallel computing and quantum computing are synonymous—every quantum computer will be a parallel computer. How problems are divided and communicated is well known in GPU farms but virtually unknown in quantum. We’ll see parallel architectures in quantum computers. Sequentially writing quantum circuits is naive; parallel tasks will dominate. All computers will be hybrid—quantum computers won’t drive web interfaces directly. Some tasks, like big databases, are better on classical servers. Quantum computers are compute engines, not data storage. Data will flow between quantum and classical systems, with user interfaces handled by traditional cloud computing. At Photonic, we aim to provide quantum services to the global 10,000 who need them, not just sell quantum computers to those who can afford them. Cloud access to quantum computing will revolutionize industries.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: More than a billion dollars flowed into the quantum industry in 2025. Will VCs be asking different questions as we enter the new year, especially with looming logical qubit numbers?

Paul Terry: Quantum has become very real. The G7 announced quantum as a major initiative alongside AI. The Canadian government, the US with DARPA, and the UK are all investing heavily. It’s not an “if,” it’s a “when.” There’s still a chicken-and-egg question about applications and computers. We’re working with strategics in chemistry and finance to prepare applications for when quantum computers arrive. VCs and investors are paying attention. There are institutional investors and growth funds—growth funds are starting to see winners emerge. The winning modalities will be superconducting, ion traps, spin qubits, and neutral atoms. The question is whether there will be one winner or multiple. Quantum applications are attracting private equity interest. Public markets are investing in quantum stocks, with valuations jumping from hundreds of millions to tens of billions. Companies are going public to raise money. Photonic is a private company and well-funded, so we don’t see the need to go public, but there are two dynamics at play.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: What about the fear component? Fear drives technology, as we’ve seen with AI. The first money spent on quantum was for encryption cracking. IonQ’s CEO expects to crack encryption in 10 quarters, not ten years. Your timelines are similar. NIST says 2035, but you and others say 2030 or sooner. The Gidney paper from Google calls for 1,399 logical qubits running for five days. Cracking encryption might be one of the first successful use cases. Do you advise CISOs or companies about the threat while building toward this future?

Paul Terry: Security is a continuum, not an absolute. Quantum computers won’t be used to crack credit card numbers. Replacing RSA with post-quantum cryptography is a national priority. The US, Canada, and other countries are making it a priority. My daughter’s school in Canada is now post-cryptographic safe. Several browsers are already post-cryptographic safe. I’m not worried about e-commerce—algorithms will improve to make it difficult to crack. However, point-to-point security for critical systems like interbank lending won’t be safe in 10 quarters. Quantum cryptography is the answer—QKD is a point-to-point solution, and products exist. Eventually, quantum repeaters will allow point-to-hub security. The technology is available if the market demands it; it’s a matter of cost. Identity management is a big issue in QKD, and quantum entanglement can help solve it. Blind computing is also possible with quantum entanglement. The world will become safer, but it will cost money.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: With repeaters, that’s fine until you get to wireless—then you need PQC ciphers. It goes beyond encrypting links to identity management. Quantum entanglement can solve identity management, and blind computing is possible. There are new areas to uncover that will make the world safer, though it will cost money.

Paul Terry: Exactly. The world will become safer even as the threat increases.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: We have an episode coming on fully homomorphic encryption and how it’ll work in a post-quantum world. I appreciate your insights—classifying qubits like Olympic medals is terrific. Before we wrap up, what’s your personal moonshot prediction for 2026? A big milestone, technical or commercial, that the industry might not expect?

Paul Terry: In 2026, several things will happen in parallel. First, governments will lean in hard—all G7 governments will get involved. The DARPA B program is a 2026 initiative, transitioning to DARPA C, a $300 million prototyping program. Other governments may follow suit. We’ll see breakthroughs in reducing the number of logical qubits needed for applications and a rise in quantum applications. A surprising development will be programming quantum computers with AI. The intersection of AI and quantum will appear in 2026. The front end to quantum computers will become more human, possibly using AI to generate quantum programs. Quantum computers may use their own power to optimize performance. Unlike classical computers, quantum computers are reversible, allowing new optimization techniques. Programs will run on fields of quantum computers, with less reliance on hardware. The focus will shift from single-qubit fidelity to overall computer performance and business value. 2026 will be the year of the quantum business case, not just quantum modalities. The demand for logical qubits will exceed supply as industries realize their potential. Quantum computers will create synthetic data to model the real world, especially in chemistry, enabling AI to navigate it. That’s one of the killer applications for quantum—modeling the world for AI.

Konstantinos Karagiannis: I agree with all of it. I’m excited about AI helping the quantum stack. On these optimistic predictions, I think 2026 will be exciting, and I look forward to seeing what Photonic does this year.

Paul Terry: Thank you very much for letting me rant for an hour. 

Konstantinos Karagiannis: Thanks for coming on. That does it for this episode. Thanks to Paul Terry for joining to discuss Photonic and his predictions for 2026. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to Protiviti’s The Post-Quantum World and leave a review to help others find us. Follow me on all socials @KonstantHacker. For more information on our quantum services, check out protiviti.com or follow Protiviti on X and LinkedIn. Until next time, be kind and stay quantum curious.