Superconducting quantum processors

IBM, Google and Rigetti Computing are among the leading companies working on superconducting quantum processors. IBM and Google are associated with transmon-based processors, while Rigetti designs and manufactures quantum chips and integrates them with software and cloud infrastructure. IQM Quantum Computers develops full-stack superconducting systems, and QuantWare builds processors and related hardware.

IQM Quantum Computers, Alice&Bob and QuantWare are among the 33 startups identified in this field. IQM develops full-stack systems and reported high-fidelity gates and readout in one device. Alice&Bob develops superconducting cat qubits, while QuantWare builds processors and related hardware. These examples represent different routes to scaling, from system development to encoded qubits and processor supply.

Rigetti Computing, IQM Quantum Computers and QuantWare are named as superconducting processor developers or suppliers. Rigetti designs and manufactures chips and integrates them with software and cloud infrastructure. IQM develops full-stack quantum computers, while QuantWare supplies processors for research and commercial systems. IBM and Google are also major processor developers, though the supplied facts describe them primarily through their processor research.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are among the prominent research organizations in the field. MIT studies materials-related decoherence and qubit performance. Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory participate in collaborative quantum research, including the Quantum Systems Accelerator. Princeton University and the University of Science and Technology of China also contribute work on materials and processor architectures.

The field has recorded $468.5 million in grants across 361 awards since 2020. This figure covers grants, not all corporate investment or funding rounds, so it should not be read as total capital invested in the technology. A separate example is QuantWare’s $178 million funding announcement in May 2026, reported in the news.

QuantWare announced $178 million in funding in May 2026 to accelerate its open-architecture plans and processor production. The news also reports that IQM Quantum Computers received a $320 million late-stage investment in February 2026. These are separate company funding announcements; they are not part of the field’s grant total, which records $468.5 million across 361 awards since 2020.

Recent developments include IQM Quantum Computers’ report of above 99.9% fidelity for single- and two-qubit gates and readout in one device, published in September 2026. Other work that month examined pulse-level suppression of XY crosstalk and demonstrated coherent quantum routers on a superconducting processor. In August 2026, MIT researchers reported fluorine-based surface treatments aimed at reducing materials-related decoherence.

Alice&Bob leads the listed patent holders with 40 patents, followed by Fujitsu Limited with 31 and Iqm Finland Oy with 27. Google holds 25 in the same listing. These figures identify patent-holder counts in the supplied facts; they do not establish the commercial value, legal strength or active status of any particular patent.

Patent activity declined 53.5% in the last 12 months compared with the previous 12 months, while the 24-month window contains 375 patents. Publication activity moved differently: the number of publications in the last year was 953, up 1.3%. The figures suggest a recent divergence between patenting and research publication activity, rather than a uniform slowdown across all types of work.

The main approaches listed are transmon qubits, fluxonium qubits, flux qubits and bosonic encoded qubits. Transmons are a widely used microwave-controlled design; fluxonium changes the circuit energy levels through a large inductance. Flux qubits encode information in circulating currents. Bosonic encoding stores information in cavity states to pursue hardware-efficient error correction, but requires more complex control and cavity hardware.