IBM (NYSE:IBM) shares rose 1.9% on Wednesday morning following a series of major announcements at the company’s Quantum Developer Conference, where it revealed its most advanced quantum processor to date.
The tech giant introduced the IBM Quantum Nighthawk, a processor designed to achieve quantum advantage by the end of 2026. The new chip features 120 qubits and 218 next-generation tunable couplers, representing a 20% increase over the previous Heron processor. This upgraded architecture enables users to run circuits with 30% greater complexity while maintaining low error rates.
According to IBM’s updated quantum roadmap, the Nighthawk processor will be available to users by late 2025. Future generations are expected to process up to 7,500 gates by the end of 2026, 10,000 gates by 2027, and as many as 15,000 two-qubit gates by 2028, powered by systems with 1,000 or more interconnected qubits.
IBM also introduced the IBM Quantum Loon, an experimental chip showcasing the core elements required for fault-tolerant quantum computing, a milestone the company aims to achieve by 2029. In addition, IBM reported a tenfold improvement in quantum error correction decoding speed compared to current state-of-the-art methods — an achievement reached one year ahead of schedule.
To accelerate progress, IBM has shifted its quantum chip manufacturing to a 300mm wafer facility at the Albany NanoTech Complex in New York, effectively doubling development speed and increasing chip complexity tenfold, particularly for its fault-tolerant error correction roadmap.
IBM is also collaborating with Algorithmiq, researchers at the Flatiron Institute, and BlueQubit to develop an open, community-driven Quantum Advantage Tracker, designed to monitor and validate real-world progress toward quantum advantage.