What happened
- On October 19, 2026, Quantinuum announced a logical fidelity of 99.9995% on its commercial Helios computer, using its error-correction architecture.
- It equals about 5 uncorrectable errors per million operations. The company says it is 10 times better than its September mark.
- The color code used up to 37 physical qubits per logical qubit, against 10 for the earlier Helix code.
- According to Science News, the result corresponds to a single logical qubit. Quantinuum presents it as validation of its path to a fault-tolerant computer, Apollo, planned for 2029.
Why it matters
- Quantinuum says that, alongside the figure, errors fell exponentially as the code was strengthened. That is the behavior needed to scale, and it is a company claim.
- Whoever in Chile safeguards long-lived encrypted data, such as banks, notaries and registries, gets no risk date yet, but does get a signal that the quantum calendar is measured in years, not decades.
- A single logical qubit is not a useful computer. Hundreds or thousands operating together are needed, and no results are published there.
The number
99.9995%: reported logical fidelity, with up to 37 physical qubits per logical qubit.
Context
The announcement adds to a month of movements in the sector, such as the IQM quantum cloud Bechtle will give the German aerospace center and DARPA’s contract with Xanadu. The comparison with Google Quantum AI, about 100 times better than the published superconducting result, comes from the company and not from a third party.
What’s next
- Apollo, Quantinuum’s fault-tolerant machine, targets the year 2029.
- No announced timeline for showing the same performance with several logical qubits at once.
- An outside replication or evaluation of the figure is still missing.
Bottom line
Error correction is the debate that decides whether quantum arrives, and any published figure is only as good as the number of logical qubits it sustains. Meanwhile, mobile apps still carry no post-quantum code in nearly every case measured.
Sources
- Quantinuum — press release of October 19 (via PR Newswire on Manila Times) — October 19, 2026. Reproduces the company’s release
- Science News — A quantum computing feat brings the ‘megaquops’ era a step closer
- Image: autor no indicado, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
Edited by Rodrigo Cornejo. How we select and verify: who writes these notes.
