IBM wants to redefine the future of computing. And inside this ultra-cold, high-tech lab, it’s betting everything on a technology that doesn’t just push the limits of physics—it rewrites them. Welcome to IBM’s Quantum Lab: where the world’s oldest tech company is making its boldest bet yet.
00:00So this is the inside of one of our Heron characterization systems.
00:06It's the largest quantum processor that's available for people to use out there.
00:11Welcome to IBM's Quantum Lab, where one of the world's oldest tech companies is making its boldest bet yet.
00:18We see ourselves as always having a dual mission in research.
00:21One is to be the organic growth engine of the company.
00:24And then the second mission in IBM research is to invent the future of computing.
00:28At IBM, that future is being molded inside this ultra-cold, high-tech lab.
00:34It's making a big bet on a technology that turns the strangest laws of quantum physics into raw computing power.
00:46IBM's Yorktown Heights campus was designed in the early 1960s
00:52and was one of the final projects of the visionary architect Aero Saarinen, known for futuristic designs that captured the spirit of technological advancement,
01:02like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport.
01:08Nestled inside the building, this quantum computing lab is more than an experiment in physics.
01:14It's an experiment in corporate reinvention.
01:17Welcome to our quantum characterization and test lab.
01:20Typically what we do here is a lot of the pre-testing and checking of our quantum chips.
01:27What you hear are actually our quantum computing test systems that you're looking at right here.
01:32It's kind of noisy.
01:33It's kind of noisy.
01:34That's the sound of these refrigeration systems that we have.
01:37It's actually a compressor that basically take our quantum chips and cool them down to 100 times colder than outer space.
01:46What we're looking at here are a couple of our quantum processor chips.
01:51So that one chip in there has a thousand qubits on it.
01:54Unlike the binary ones and zeros of classical computers, quantum machines use qubits, able to represent many states at once.
02:03That lets them solve problems too complex for today's most powerful supercomputers.
02:09While other tech giants race to own the cloud or dominate large language models, IBM is carving out a different future.
02:16One where quantum and AI converge to tackle the world's most complex challenges.
02:22IBM is obviously making some really big bets in AI and quantum.
02:26It feels like you're all in.
02:28But so much of that comes from where we're sitting right now at the IBM Research Lab.
02:34You're right.
02:35In so many ways, there's like this thread of connectivity from the past to the future.
02:41And sort of IBM research is at the fulcrum of that thread across IBM's history.
02:46For decades, IBM was the titan of business tech.
02:50The company was known for popularizing the punch card and the magnetic stripe credit card.
02:56They built towering mainframe computers and its early Watson AI became famous for winning Jeopardy.
03:03Since 1961, when we've had this building, this has been like the mothership.
03:08Now IBM research today.
03:09The mothership.
03:10The mothership.
03:11Yeah.
03:12IBM research is global.
03:13We have labs across the globe.
03:15But this is the mothership because this is where we actually have our AI systems, our quantum system too.
03:21It inspires our clients.
03:22It inspires our partners and certainly inspires our employees.
03:26IBM was the titan of business tech until it wasn't.
03:30Caught between the rise of big cloud and the boom of consumer software, IBM slowly faded from relevance.
03:38Yet under CEO Arvind Krishna, that story is changing.
03:42He's spun off the company's slower moving divisions, doubled down on artificial intelligence,
03:48and revived a moonshot that's been decades in the making, quantum computing.
03:53This is our Think Lab.
03:55Amazing.
03:56There's a quantum computer here.
03:58There's an AI supercomputer here.
03:59And there's classical computer all throughout.
04:01There's our Z system.
04:02So this is really where this vision of future computing, bits, neurons, and qubits, all come
04:08together in one place.
04:10A good way to think about it really is that nature and everything that we experience around
04:15us, it really obeys the laws of quantum mechanics.
04:19But we don't really experience that.
04:21We don't really, per se, care.
04:23But underlying is an entirely very rich mathematics that when it's leveraged to compute, you can
04:30do things entirely different from what you can do with your classical computers that rely
04:35on bits, zeros and ones, for example.
04:38So the desktop on your desk?
04:40The desktop, your phone, right?
04:42Even the most powerful GPUs out there, they're still using zeros and ones.
04:48But when you have a quantum computer, you're using a much richer mathematical representation.
04:55It changes the rules for how you can actually process information.
05:01From the outside, I feel like for a lot of people, AI, maybe people are starting to wrap
05:06their minds around how this fits into my daily life, into my daily work.
05:10Quantum feels so much farther away than that.
05:14And yet, it's being so hyped right now.
05:17We have always talked about it in sort of three stages.
05:20We have said there was quantum utility, quantum advantage, and then we talk about full fault
05:25tolerant computing.
05:26We said there was quantum utility already in 2023, where you're able to show that a combination
05:33of quantum and classical computing is you can do things that you couldn't do classically
05:39even by simulation.
05:41So I mean, so this is actually the inside of one of our refrigeration systems.
05:45Okay.
05:46Okay.
05:47You see a lot of cabling and a lot of wiring.
05:49I'll get my colleagues to open it up for you to see the inside of it.
05:54When people say, oh, this is hype.
05:56This is never really going to happen for real.
05:59You say what?
06:00Well, we have proof points.
06:02This is where we work with our global set of partners.
06:04It's not just us saying anymore, right?
06:06So our most recent demonstration is with our partners Riken in Japan, combining our quantum
06:12computer with the Fugaku supercomputer.
06:14So this is not all abstract.
06:15Here is data.
06:16Here is an experiment.
06:17Here is what you would have done classically.
06:19Here is quantum and classical working together.
06:22I think demystification is A, actually having systems people can work with.
06:28Two, working with an ecosystem of partners.
06:31I think we have a worldwide network of over 250 partners.
06:35IBM knows the stakes.
06:37Quantum computing is far from changing anything tech in your hands right now, but its impact could reshape global industries.
06:44And if IBM is right, it won't just compete with today's tech giants.
06:49It will leapfrog them.
06:50But if it's wrong, this lab becomes another cautionary tale of corporate overreach.
06:56So here we're looking at how this is all going to grow in miniature form.
07:00Miniature form, right?
07:01But it's a good sense to show the concept of modularity, right?
07:04Where, you know, you have your classical sort of compute clusters.
07:07You have your trigonic infrastructure where the quantum processors sit.
07:11And then there's classical electronics around it.
07:13But we really designed this in a way that has this opportunity to scale.
07:18And, you know, we really have a vision of building this out.
07:21IBM's CEO is betting that deep tech is still worth the risk.
07:26And Wall Street agrees.
07:28The company's 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.
07:41Already, IBM is bringing in partners, from research labs to Fortune 500s, eager to be early adopters of what could become the most transformative computing shift since the microchip.
07:53Kids today, they might not think of IBM.
07:56When they think AI, they think OpenAI.
07:59They think Google.
08:00They think Anthropic.
08:02Does that concern you?
08:04Or do you see IBM just having a different path?
08:08Companies with a consumer business have a natural opportunity to have their technology in the hands of consumers.
08:16And that gives them a natural path to visibility and awareness.
08:20But I think we're very, very comfortable, honestly, as a company and including the research division, that we are an enterprise-focused company.
08:27But that doesn't change the fact that we are really moving the needle on the future of computing.
08:32It's just we need different paths for that awareness to drive in.
08:36We have learned, especially in AI, predictions beyond three, five years.
08:42Who cares? I could tell you anything you wanted.
08:45And so acknowledging the uncertainty of that.
08:48We believe that our combination of AI and hybrid cloud allows us to tap into the biggest market.
08:55So success is being the absolute leader in enterprise AI.
08:59than all things for you on the next behalf.
09:00We believe that our bizi K-K- 스타ed, technology is responsible for bringing out everything.
09:01They are built in our world.
09:02So as far as aid, we believe available in our minds, our customers' life as well.
09:04The director is called power, apple, and other core product.
09:05Thinking about this type-like.
09:06We足質 odds are good.
09:07We didn't have this team all.
09:08Great opportunity to enacting more funding.
09:10We believe that people have startupsendo skills and 92.
