The future of quantum computing: behind the scenes video

Many thought IBM's power had faded -- but CEO Arvind Krishna is betting big on the future of quantum. In this video, you'll see it happening at an iconic NY campus

I had such a fabulous time hanging out at IBM's Yorktown Heights campus (a midcentury modern marvel designed by the same guy as the St. Louis Arch and the classic TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport!) in NY as part of my coverage for this year's Fortune 500 issue, which dug deep into the company's recent rebound. (Fun fact: Did you know that IBM is one of only two tech companies that has been on the Fortune 500 since the list’s inception in 1955? I will let you guess the other ha ha)

Part of that reporting took me inside the company's quantum lab: As I said in my piece, "Walking through the IBM research center is like stepping into two worlds at once. There are the steel and glass curves of Saarinen’s design, punctuated by massive walls made of stones collected from the surrounding fields, with original Eames chairs dotting discussion nooks. But this 20th-century modernism contrasts starkly with the sleek, massive, refrigerator-like quantum computer—among the most advanced in the world—that anchors the collaboration area and working lab, where it whooshes with the steady hum of its cooling system."

Fortune's amazing video team accompanied me on my tour of IBM's quantum lab and I'm thrilled to share the results!

Below is the transcript if you prefer to read:

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Sharon Goldman:

Welcome to IBM's quantum lab, where one of the world's oldest tech companies is making its boldest bet yet.

Sriram Raghavan, Vice President of IBM Research AI:

We see ourselves as always having a dual mission as research. One is to be the organic growth engine of the company, and that the second vision in IBM Research is the future of computing.

Sharon Goldman:

At IBM, that future is being molded inside this ultra cold, high tech lab. It's making a big bet on a technology that turns the strangest laws of quantum physics into raw computing power. IBM's North town Hall's campus was designed in the early 1960s and was one of the final projects of the visionary architect hero Sharon, known for futuristic designs that capture the spirit of technological advancement, like the Gateway Arch in St Louis and the TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport. Nestled inside the building, this quantum computing lab is more than an experiment in physics, it's an experiment in corporate reinvention.

Jerry Chow, Director, IBM Quantum Systems:

Welcome to our quantum characterization and Test Lab. Typically, what we do here is a lot of the pre testing and checking of our quantum chips. We hear are actually our quantum computing test systems that you're looking at right? It's kind of noisy. That's the sound of these refrigeration systems that we have. It's actually a compressor that basically take our quantum chips and cool them down to 100 times total than outer space. What we're looking at here are a couple of our quantum processor chips from that one chip in there has 1000 qubits on it.

Sharon Goldman:

Unlike the binary ones and zeros of classical computers, quantum machines use qubits, able to represent many states at once, to solve problems too complex for today's most powerful supercomputers. While other tech giants race to own the cloud or dominate large language models. IBM is carving out a different future, one where quantum and AI converge to tackle the world's most complex challenges.

IBM is obviously making some really big bets in AI and quantum it feels like you're all in but so much of that comes from where we're sitting right now at the IBM Research Lab.

Sriram Raghavan, Vice President of IBM Research AI:

You're right in so many ways. There's like this thread of connectivity from the past to the future and sort of IBM Research is at that fulcrum of that thread across IBM’s history.

Sharon Goldman:

For decades, IBM was the titan of business tech. The company was known for popularizing the punch card and the magnetic stripe credit card. They built towering mainframe computers, and its early Watson AI became famous for winning Jeopardy.

Sriram Raghavan, Vice President of IBM Research AI:

Since 1961, since we had this building. This has been like the mothership. IBM Research is global. We have labs across the globe, but this is the mothership, because this is where we actually have our AI systems, our quantum system. It inspires our clients and inspires our partners, inspires our employees.

Sharon Goldman:

IBM was the titan of business tech until it wasn't. Caught between the rise of big cloud and the boom of consumer software, IBM slowly faded from relevance, yet under CEO Arvind Krishna, that story is changing. He spun off the company's slower moving divisions, doubled down on artificial intelligence and revived a moon shot that's been decades in the making, quantum computing.

Jerry Chow: Director, IBM Quantum Systems:

This is our Think Lab, A quantum computer here, a AI supercomputer here and classical compute all throughout. So this is really where this vision of future of computing, bits, neurons and qubits all come together in one place. A good way to think about it really is that nature and everything that we experience around us, it really obeys the laws of quantum mechanics, but we don't really experience that. We don't really care. But underlying it is an big mathematics that when it's leveraged, entirely different from what you can do with your classical computers that rely on it's zero to one. The desktop your phone, yeah, right. Even the most powerful GPUs out there, you're still using zeros and ones, but when you have a quantum computer you're using a much richer mathematical representation. It changes the rules for how you can actually process information

Sharon Goldman:

From the outside, I feel like for a lot of people, AI, maybe people are starting to wrap their minds around how this fits into my daily life, my daily work. Quantum feels so much farther away than that, and yet it's being so hyped right now.

Sriram Raghavan, Vice President of IBM Research AI:

We have always thought about it in sort of three stages. We said there was quantum utility, quantum and then we talked about fault-tolerant quantum computing. We said there was quantum utility already in 2023 where you're able to show that a combination of quantum and classical computing, you can do things that you couldn’t do even by simulation.

Jerry Chow: Director, IBM Quantum Systems:

So this is actually the inside of one of our refrigeration systems. You see a lot of cabling and a lot of lot of wiring. I'll get my colleagues to open it up for you.

Sharon Goldman:

When people say, oh, this is hype, this is never really going to happen for real, you say, what?

Sriram Raghavan, Vice President of IBM Research AI:

Well, we have proof points. This is where we work with our global partners. It's not just us saying anymore, right? So our most recent demonstration is with our partners in Japan, combining our quantum computer with the fugaku supercomputer so this is not all abstract. Here is data. Here is an experiment. Here is what you would have done classically. Here is quantum and classical working together. I think demystification is a, actually having systems people can work with, 2, working with an ecosystem of partners, I think we have a worldwide network of over 250 partners.

Sharon Goldman:

IBM knows the stakes. Quantum computing is far from changing anything tech in your hands right now, but its impact could reshape global industries. And if IBM is right? It won't just compete with today's tech giants. It will leapfrog them. But if it's wrong, this lab becomes another cautionary tale of corporate overreach. So here we're looking at how this is all going to grow in miniature

Jerry Chow: Director, IBM Quantum Systems:

Miniature form, right. But it's good way to show the concept of modularity, right? Where you have your classical sort of computer clusters to have your cryogenic infrastructure where the quantum processor sits and then there's classical electronics around it, but we really designed this in a way that it has this opportunity to scale. And you know, we really have a vision of building this out.

Sharon Goldman:

IBM's CEO is betting that deep tech is still worth the risk, and Wall Street agrees the company shares reached a record high in June, driven by the company's announcement of a roadmap to build the world's first large scale, fault tolerant quantum computer by 2029 already, IBM is bringing in partners from research labs to Fortune 500 eager to be early adopters of what could become the most transformative computing shift since the microchip.

Kids today, they might not think of IBM when they think AI, they think OpenAI, they think Google. They think Anthropic. Does that concern you? Or do you see IBM just having a different path?

Sriram Raghavan, Vice President of IBM Research AI:

Companies with a consumer business have a natural opportunity to have their technology in the hands of consumers, and that gives them an actual path to visibility and awareness. But I think we're very, very comfortable, honestly, as a comprehensive research division, that we are an enterprise focused company. But that doesn't change the fact that we are really moving the needle on the future of computing. It just we need different paths for that awareness. We have learned, especially in AI predictions beyond three, five years. Yes, I could tell you anything you wanted, and so, so acknowledging the uncertainty of that. We believe that our combination of AI and hybrid cloud allows us to tap into the biggest market. So success is absolutely being the leader in enterprise AI.