Web Summit 2024: The $1.4B Quantum Boom

Web Summit was held in Lisbon, Portugal, from 11 to 14 November 2024. Our CEO, Dr Joe Fitzsimons, took the stage alongside Dr Chris Ballance of Oxford Ionics for a panel discussion moderated by Jennifer Strong of SHIFT.

On the panel, Joe Fitzsimons emphasised that quantum computing is so fundamentally different from classical computing that we must rebuild the entire framework of modern computer science from the ground up. In terms of computational power, it will far surpass conventional computers.

“The thing to understand is this is really it's not like computing in 1978, it's like computing in 1948 we have nothing, so we have to build the entire edifice of modern computer science from scratch,” said Joe Fitzsimons.

The past year has seen major breakthroughs in both quantum hardware and software. Notably, the first successful demonstration of quantum error correction was achieved, marking a key milestone in the journey towards scalable, reliable quantum computing.