Dec. 13, 2023 — Hyperion Research recently announced the results of the fourth annual Quantum Computing (QC) Global Market Study at the Q2B Silicon Valley conference last week. The study, conducted by Hyperion Research and sponsored by Q2B, QED-C, the Korea Quantum Industry Association, and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, revealed that the global QC market was worth an estimated US$848 million in 2023.

The market is anticipated to expand at an annual rate of 22.1 percent through 2026 to an estimated US$1.5 billion.

The estimate is strongly data-driven, drawn from a survey of 133 respondents representing 108 quantum computing vendors headquartered in North America, Europe, the Asia/Pacific Region, and the Middle East. Survey respondents spanned the range of the QC ecosystem, including QC algorithm and QC application software developers, QC hardware developers and product providers, and QC venture capital organizations.

“Supply-side growth this year is driven by a combination of forces including continued revenue progress by traditional QC suppliers, first revenue appearances by a number of new-to-market players, and an expanding base of domestic suppliers in the more nascent QC markets around the world,” said Bob Sorensen, chief analyst for Quantum Computing at Hyperion Research. “On the demand side, there continues to be a robust and growing interest within the HPC community looking to QC to accelerate their most compelling compute jobs, a growing base of end use case exploration for QC systems, a range of sustained government programs, and increasingly related government procurements, fostering sales and building credibility with potential end users.”

Additional insights from the study included:

• Over the next three years, market revenues for QC hardware to support demand for both on-premises and cloud-based access will be worth about 30% of the global QC market, equating to a US$469 million QC hardware market in 2026. Software, both applications and middleware, will compose about 22% of the global QC market in 2026, worth about US$338 million that year. Cloud-based QC access by end users will garner about 15 percent, followed closely by QC professional services at 13 percent.
• The most promising market segments for QC adoption in the next three years cited by the QC suppliers surveyed were quantum computing development organizations, chosen by about half of all survey respondents as the number one end users’ sector, followed by the Chemicals/Chemistry sector, and then the Financial sector. However, the overall list of application areas deemed attractive by survey respondents was broad and encompassed over 20, spanning the academic, commercial and government spaces.
• According to the study, the main algorithms driving QC usage were modeling and simulation (22% of respondents), optimization (19%), and AI including both machine learning and deep learning (18%). However, for the first time, the Other category, usually a minor selection, was chosen by 17% of respondents, likely due to the increasing perception of end user interest in exploring mixed QC algorithms exploration.
• QC supplier responses revealed that the trend towards less concern about a potential quantum winter continues. 42% of respondents see a potential QC winter as somewhat unlikely, the most positive outlook since this annual study began in 2019. There was some concern, however, by 42% of respondents that recent developments in the LLM space, including options using ChatGPT and BERT, could be a distraction for potential QC end users, drawing away both attention and investment from the QC sector.
• Finally, the overall QC supplier sector is taking on a more traditional revenue-based financial profile. In 2021, 49% of survey respondents had $500K revenues or less, while this year only 27% of survey respondents had $500K revenues or less. Likewise, in 2021, 32% of survey organizations had no revenues, while for this year’s study, only 11% had no revenues.

This study is the fourth annual QC market forecast by Hyperion Research and underwritten by QED-C and QC Ware. The findings, which were recently presented at the 2023 Q2B conference, will help inform decisions made by QC developers interested in rapidly changing QC market trends and opportunities; national-level policymakers tasked with QC-related R&D funding support, procurement policies, trade, and QC-specific security consideration; current and future QC end-users looking to gauge the pace and progress of the sector; and various corporate and venture capital entities assessing the technology and market potential of the sector.

Regular updates to these studies will track the growth of the QC industry and help vendors, investors, and policymakers understand the evolving landscape of the quantum computing ecosystem. Future studies will be presented at the annual Q2B conference, held in the second week of December in California.

Celia Merzbacher, Executive Director of QED-C said: “This data-driven study provides a snapshot of where the industry is now and where it is headed in the next three to five years. The consistent results over several years provide added confidence in the estimates for growth. The diversity and expansion of applications and end users is another indication of progress and of increasing belief in the ability of quantum computing to impact businesses across the board.”

“We believe that building practical quantum computing applications, which is our main mission, is not a zero-sum game,” said Yianni Gamvros, Head of Business Development, QC Ware. “QC Ware is actively investing and cares deeply about the health of the entire quantum computing ecosystem. Support for this report is one of many community initiatives that we are undertaking to ensure the entire space is healthy, transparent, and growing as quickly as possible.”

The following organizations are acknowledged for helping to distribute the survey to their members:

• Australian Quantum Alliance
• European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC)
• Japan Quantum STrategic industry Alliance for Revolution (Q-STAR)
• Korea Quantum Industry Association
• Quantum Industry Canada
• UKQuantum

About Quantum Economic Development Consortium

The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) is an industry-driven consortium managed by SRI with the mission to support a robust U.S. QIST industry and related supply chain. QED-C is supported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U.S. Department of Commerce and more than 240, including more than 170 corporations from across the quantum supply chain including component suppliers/manufacturers, software and hardware system developers, service providers and end users.

About Hyperion Research

Hyperion Research is the premier industry analyst and market intelligence firm for high performance computing (HPC) and associated emerging markets. Hyperion Research analysts provide timely, in-depth mission-critical insight across a broad portfolio of advanced computing market segments, including High Performance Computing (HPC), Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI), High-Performance Data Analysis (HPDA), Quantum Computing, Cloud and Edge Computing.

---

Source: Hyperion Research