Quantum computers turned out to be more useful than expected in 2025

For the past year, I kept bringing the same story to my editor: quantum computers are on the edge of becoming useful for scientific discovery. Of course, that has always been the goal. The idea of using quantum computers to better understand our universe is part of their origin story, and it even featured in a 1981 speech by Richard Feynman. Contemplating the best way to simulate nature, he wrote: "We can give up on our rule about what the computer was, we can say: Let the computer itself be built of quantum mechanical elements which obey quantum mechanical laws." Today, Feynman's vision has been realised by Google, IBM and dozens more companies and academic teams. Their devices are now being used to simulate reality at the quantum level - and here are some highlights.