With Japan's first commercial quantum computer going into operation last month, more global competitors are entering the race to gain an advantage by mastering the next-generation technology, with Germany emerging as a strong contender. In Kawasaki, a city in the Tokyo metropolitan area, sits a commercial quantum computer made by IBM at the Kawasaki Business Incubation Center. Toyota Motor, Hitachi and Toshiba are among the companies that are using the device. Quantum computers are expected to break the limitations of conventional computing. In 2019, Google startled the world by using the technology to solve a problem in 3 minutes and 20 seconds that would have required 10,000 years by a conventional computer.

Google developers are confident they can build a commercial-grade quantum computer by 2029. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the plan during today's I/O stream, and in a blog post, quantum AI lead engineer Erik Lucero further outlined the company's goal to "build a useful, error-corrected quantum computer" within the decade. Executives also revealed Google's new campus in Santa Barbara, California, which is dedicated to quantum AI. The campus has Google's first quantum data center, hardware research laboratories, and the company's very own quantum processor chip fabrication facilities. The main benefits of quantum computing come in terms of processing power, scale and accuracy, allowing researchers to run complex computations incredibly quickly.