Quantum computing began as a physics proposition more than four decades ago. This year, its industrial ambitions became harder to ignore. Quantinuum went public, IBM announced plans to invest more than $10 billion over five years, and the Department of Energy set a 2028 target for fault-tolerant capability.
At Energy Capital Ventures®, quantum is not new territory. In Issue #81, we examined the quantum threat to energy cybersecurity and the migration to post-quantum cryptography. We continue to study the field more broadly as part of the expanded lens described in our last issue: technologies that complement our Green Molecules® thesis and support the energy expansion. We follow these developments from our headquarters in Chicago, where quantum is becoming a significant local investment and infrastructure story.
In this issue of the Green Molecules® Journal, we look at what quantum computing is, where it stands, and why progress depends as much on the infrastructure around the processor as on the processor itself.
A classical computer stores information in bits. Picture a line of coins lying flat on a table, each showing heads or tails. A quantum qubit is more like a coin that has been flipped and is still spinning: it holds a combination of both possibilities until it is measured. That property, superposition, means a system of many qubits can represent an exponentially larger space of possibilities. These qubits can also be entangled, so their states are linked in ways that classical bits cannot reproduce.
Quantum computers are not simply faster classical computers. For most tasks, classical machines remain faster and cheaper, and industry roadmaps assume the two will work together. The quantum advantage is specific: for certain problems, particularly simulation and factoring, quantum algorithms can change how the computational work scales, not just how fast it runs.
The trouble is that these “spinning coins” are delicate. Interaction with the surrounding environment can disrupt the quantum state, a process called decoherence. Alongside errors in control and measurement, this limits how long a reliable calculation can run. Engineers respond on two levels:
On the path to fault tolerance, logical qubits and reliable operations are more informative than physical-qubit counts alone. The question is not just how many qubits a machine contains, but how much useful computation it can complete.
The industry often describes the current stage as the noisy intermediate-scale quantum, or NISQ, era: machines with meaningful qubit counts, but without the full error correction needed for long, reliable calculations. Error mitigation uses statistical techniques to reduce the effect of noise on results. It helps, but does not provide the same protection as correcting errors throughout a computation. The goal is fault tolerance: maintaining reliable computation even as individual components make errors.
IBM’s roadmap offers one version of the timeline: Kookaburra this year, Cockatoo in 2027, and Starling in 2029, targeting 200 logical qubits capable of running circuits with 100 million gates. The DOE’s Quantum Genesis initiative separately targets scientifically relevant fault-tolerant capability by 2028.
These are targets, not delivered systems. The commercial milestone is not reaching a date on a roadmap. It is completing a useful calculation with a performance or economic advantage over the classical alternatives.
Building a full-stack quantum computer is an infrastructure-scale undertaking. IBM, Google, the National Labs, and heavily funded private developers are committing substantial resources to it. For ECV, these developers are useful reference points for understanding the technical requirements and potential customers of the enabling layer.
The machines attract the largest headlines. Our interest also extends to the technologies that make them work: error-correction and decoding software, noise isolation, cryogenics, control electronics and interconnects.
Because every architecture faces errors and environmental disturbances, a company that improves reliability may not have to pick the winning qubit type. Technologies that address shared bottlenecks could serve multiple hardware developers, although compatibility has to be verified case by case. A solution built for one system is not automatically portable to another.
Hybrid computing is another important part of the picture. Industry roadmaps treat quantum processors as specialized accelerators working alongside classical high-performance computing, rather than replacing it. That makes the software that schedules, routes and integrates these workloads potentially relevant both before and after fault-tolerant systems arrive.
Beyond the cybersecurity implications, three areas are drawing the energy sector’s attention.
Chemistry and materials simulation has a direct theoretical foundation: molecules and materials are themselves quantum systems. Targets include catalysts for hydrogen production and industrial processes, carbon-capture sorbents and battery chemistries. S&P Global’s 2026 energy report names materials discovery, alongside grid optimization, as a leading potential application.
Optimization and subsurface modeling are being explored through industrial research. ExxonMobil has worked with IBM on LNG shipping routes, and BP is working with Quantinuum on seismic imaging. A QED-C and SPE working group identified seismic imaging, reservoir simulation and production optimization as candidate use cases, with hybrid methods explored as a way to accelerate selected calculations within existing workflows.
Quantum sensing is a separate branch of quantum technology with its own development timeline. It does not require waiting for a fault-tolerant quantum computer. The World Economic Forum’s 2026 assessment identifies leak detection, pipeline monitoring and methane measurement as promising applications for quantum sensing in natural gas. For operators building measurement, monitoring and verification programs, quantum sensors may eventually complement the existing stack. Adoption will depend on field performance, reliability and cost relative to established alternatives.
Congress is considering legislation to reauthorize the National Quantum Initiative, extending and updating the federal framework for quantum research. The House proposal would strengthen coordination across agencies, add NASA as a formal research partner, and support workforce development and international collaboration. For the industry, the significance is continuity: a sustained public-sector role in developing the research base and technical talent that commercialization depends on.
Quantum computing startups attracted more than $1.5 billion in venture funding in the first half of 2026, based on Crunchbase’s mid-May funding tally and subsequently announced rounds.
Chicago also has a significant role in this story. Illinois has committed more than $700 million to quantum since 2019, including $500 million for the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park on the former U.S. Steel South Works site. In July, the EDA announced approximately $30 million in federal funding for the region’s Bloch Quantum Tech Hub.
For a Chicago-based fund, this is a technology story unfolding close to home.
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