IBM and Cisco announced plans to build a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing network.

IBM and Cisco announced today a partnership aimed at the foundational work of distributed quantum computing networks, with plans to achieve this by the early 2030s. By combining IBM's leadership in practical quantum computing and Cisco's quantum networking innovation, the two companies plan to explore how to extend large-scale and fault-tolerant quantum computers beyond IBM's ambitious roadmap. Additionally, they will focus on addressing the fundamental challenges faced by quantum computing networks. Within five years, IBM and Cisco will focus on demonstrating the first concept validation of a network combining a single large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer, enabling them to work together on computations with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of quantum bits. This network will allow operations that may reach tens of billions of quantum gates, which are necessary for transformative quantum applications. IBM and Cisco plan to explore the development of quantum hardware and software that can physically connect many large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers to form a distributed quantum computing network.