Who is currently leading in quantum computing?
Asked "Who is currently leading in quantum computing?", ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity named 14 distinct names across 5 answers on September 8, 2026, and 9 of them in two or more answers, and all 5 engines agreed on IBM, the only name every engine named.
9 of 14 names confirmed · named in 2 or more of 5 answers · asked September 8, 2026 · 5 engines
There is no single leader in quantum computing, with leadership distributed across several players depending on the metric, including IBM, Google, Quantinuum, IonQ, and Microsoft, each leading in different aspects such as qubit count, fidelity, error correction, and commercialization.
- 1IBMnamed in 5 of 5 answers
- 2Googlenamed in 5 of 5 answers
- 3IonQnamed in 5 of 5 answers
- 4Quantinuumnamed in 4 of 5 answers
- 5Microsoftnamed in 4 of 5 answers
- 6D-Wavenamed in 3 of 5 answers
- 7QuEranamed in 2 of 5 answers
- 8PsiQuantumnamed in 2 of 5 answers
- 9Pasqalnamed in 2 of 5 answers
- 10QuEra Computingnamed in 1 of 5 answersone answer
- 11Rigetti Computingnamed in 1 of 5 answersone answer
- 12Atom Computingnamed in 1 of 5 answersone answer
- 13Xanadunamed in 1 of 5 answersone answer
- 14IQMnamed in 1 of 5 answersone answer
The full measurement
- The position each of the 5 engines gave all 14 names.
- How many of the 5 answers named each of them.
- 37 sampled observations behind this ranking, and where the engines disagree.
- Fan-out — the query each engine actually searched.
- Every citation, and the sources nobody cited.