In the past two weeks DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative advanced multiple firms into Stage B: on 2025-11-06 Quantinuum (its Lumos system, with a roadmap to a fault‐tolerant “Apollo” by 2029), IBM (advancing with R&D plans targeting large‐scale fault tolerance by 2033), and Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) were selected for a year‐long, performance‐based evaluation to validate designs, error correction and scalability. Stage B requires detailed hardware, error‐correction and end‐to‐end system blueprints and effectively crystallizes a timeline toward “utility‐scale” quantum systems by 2033, driving hardware investment, validation tooling, government funding priorities and enterprise planning for early‐2030s use. Immediate next steps are the Stage B evaluations, publication of verifiable technical metrics, and monitoring additional Stage B awardees and prototype trials as key indicators of progress.

On 2025-11-05 Reuters reported that China issued guidance requiring state‐funded data centres under construction to use only domestically produced AI chips, forcing projects under 30% completion to remove foreign chips and subjecting more mature builds to case‐by‐case review; foreign suppliers named include Nvidia, AMD and Intel and even advanced Nvidia parts (H20, B200, H200) are barred. The directive aims to cut reliance on foreign hardware amid U.S. export controls and fast‐tracks market share to domestic vendors such as Huawei, Cambricon, MetaX and Moore Threads; Reuters cites Nvidia’s share in China falling from ~95% in 2022 to zero under the move and reports suspended projects. Expect technical risks (immature software stacks, supply disruptions), geopolitical tension and supply‐chain realignment; monitor formal rules late 2025–early 2026, capacity ramps 2025–2027, project delays in the next six months and foreign or allied responses through 2026.

In early November 2025 three coordinated advances shifted the quantum-computing landscape: on Nov 5 Princeton reported 2D transmon qubits with coherence >1 millisecond and 99.994% single-qubit fidelity using tantalum on high-resistivity silicon; on Nov 5 Quantinuum unveiled Helios, a 98‐qubit ion‐trap system with a 2:1 physical-to-logical ratio (48 logical qubits), 99.9975% single‐qubit fidelity and 99.921% two‐qubit fidelity, available via cloud and slated for installation in Singapore in 2026 alongside a new Python-embedded language for real‐time error correction; and on Nov 7 DARPA advanced 11 companies to Stage B of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (targeting utility-scale operation by 2033), including QuEra which may receive up to $15M for a 12‐month R&D plan. Together these developments make practical quantum error correction and scaling materially more achievable; Stage B work and Helios deployments are the immediate next steps.

On 2025-10-22 Google and IBM announced complementary quantum milestones that move the field toward practical use: Google’s 105-qubit Willow processor ran the new Quantum Echoes OTOC algorithm, producing verifiable expectation values (including NMR-inferred geometries for 15- and 28-atom molecules) and executing 13,000× faster than the best classical algorithm, while Willow reported single-qubit fidelity ~99.97%, entangling gates ~99.88% and readout ~99.5%; IBM demonstrated a quantum error‐correction routine running in real time on conventional AMD FPGAs at 10× the required speed, advancing its Starling roadmap toward 2029. These results matter because verifiability and faster, FPGA-enabled error correction make real applications (molecular modeling, materials, drug discovery) more plausible; next steps are scaling to logical qubits, external replication of Quantum Echoes and error‐correction results, and broader industry benchmarks, with Google projecting useful applications within five years.