The U.S. Wants a Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computer by 2028

The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a formal request for information from companies capable of building and deploying a fault-tolerant quantum computer with 150 to 250 logical qubits by 2028. The system would be installed at a national laboratory and used for complex scientific computing.

This is a significant signal. Logical qubits — qubits that are error-corrected and reliable — are far more demanding than the raw "physical" qubits that dominate today's headlines. A machine with 150 to 250 logical qubits would represent a generational leap from current hardware, which operates with noisy, error-prone physical qubits numbering in the hundreds.

Why it matters

Fault tolerance is the holy grail of quantum computing. Today's machines are powerful enough to demonstrate quantum effects, but errors accumulate so quickly that most calculations break down before they finish. A fault-tolerant system corrects its own errors in real time, enabling computations that could run indefinitely — and solve problems that classical supercomputers cannot touch.

The DOE's timeline is aggressive. Two years is extremely fast for a technology that, just recently, many experts believed was a decade away. But the pace of progress has surprised even insiders. Harvard researchers reported in May 2026 that advances in error correction have accelerated quantum computing timelines by five to ten years.

Who could deliver?

The RFI does not name specific companies, but the short list of plausible contenders is small. IBM has the most detailed public roadmap toward fault tolerance, with its Kookaburra processor combining quantum memory and logic processing units. Google's Willow chip has already demonstrated that error rates decrease as qubits are added — a key prerequisite for scaling. Microsoft's topological qubits, if they scale, could require far fewer physical qubits per logical qubit. Quantinuum, which is preparing an IPO, holds records for gate fidelity and recently delivered its H2 system to Japan's RIKEN institute for a hybrid quantum-classical supercomputer.

The bigger picture

The DOE announcement lands in a week of quantum milestones. China's Origin Quantum unveiled its fourth-generation system, the 180-qubit Wukong-180. IonQ opened a major new R&D lab in Colorado. And CNN reported that Google now estimates quantum computers could break widely used encryption by 2029 — three years from now.

The race for fault-tolerant quantum computing is no longer theoretical. The U.S. government is putting a deadline on it. And the companies that can deliver will define the next era of computing.