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The potential competitive advantage offered by quantum computers is sparking organization interest in the rapidly evolving technology sector. Organizations express a strong intent to invest, and most anticipate realizing material value from quantum computing within the next three to five years. While organizations are already looking to public cloud providers and established technology vendors for quantum resourcing and strategy development, key barriers to widespread adoption remain, including cost, immature access methods and a technology skills gap. These and other trends are highlighted in the results of a survey conducted by 451 Research from S&P Global Energy Horizons.
Fielded in January and February 2026 with a panel of IT and line-of-business decision-makers, the survey focuses on organizations’ understanding of quantum computing, plans for exploration and adoption, forcing factors and barriers, and anticipated use cases for the technology.
The Take
With the quantum computing market set to grow by nearly 36% over the next five years and quantum vendor road maps projecting powerful, error-corrected systems before the turn of the decade, organizations globally are beginning to look at quantum more closely. Conversations are increasingly focused on how organizations might use quantum systems in their workflows and, importantly, what the integration of quantum technology will look like in practice. This, in turn, has driven a renewed focus on quantum software development, hardware standardization and integration, and talent development. While quantum computers are not yet commercially widespread, the industry is laying the groundwork to make the shift from potential to product.
Summary of findings
IT decision-makers report general familiarity with quantum computing, and many have hands-on experience with the technology. While 13% of respondents report no knowledge of quantum computing, the vast majority (87%) indicate at least a general understanding. Nearly half (42%) of IT decision-makers say they generally understand it, while 27% claim a strong understanding of the technology’s operation and potential uses. Notably, nearly one-fifth of those surveyed (18%) claim an expert understanding of quantum computing, with hands-on experience using, creating or building the technology. While many in IT purport to already have a good base-level understanding of quantum computing, skills gaps continue to be cited as a barrier to quantum adoption, perhaps undercutting self-reported claims of capability.
Intention to invest in quantum computing remains high, particularly among larger companies. Slightly more than half (53%) of organizations survey respondents express high intent to invest in or assign budget toward quantum computing, up from 46% in a survey conducted in 2025 by 451 Research from S&P Global Energy Horizons. Around a third (30%) of organizations cite moderate intent to invest in quantum computing (up from 27% a year ago), while the remaining 24% have low intent. Investment plans vary by company size: Organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees report a median investment interest of 6 on a 10-point scale, while organizations with more than 1,000 employees indicate a median investment interest of 8.
Quantum commerciality is broadly expected within the next three years. While 13% of organizations expect quantum computing to begin producing material value for their business in the next year, the largest proportion (36%) expect to see quantum value in the next 1-3 years. The turn of the decade also brings plenty of quantum promise, with 28% of organizations expecting internal quantum value in the next 3-5 years. A solid 16% anticipate value in the next 5-10 years, while 5% expect value from quantum after 10-plus years, and only 3% expect to never realize material business value.
Quantum’s first home will likely be in the cloud, but access methods remain distributed. Most organizations (51%) expect to deploy quantum resources in public cloud environments, although other forms of access remain competitive: 48% expect to deploy quantum in hosted, private environments; 45% plan to use collocated data center environments; 41% expect to own and operate their own quantum computer in-house; and 30% expect to deploy quantum via national labs, shared research networks or consortiums. The spread of responses indicates that organizations will likely access quantum resources via many routes, depending on individual use cases and data sovereignty requirements. Access will likely also evolve for organizations as they progress on their quantum journey — cloud access provides an ideal test-bed to experiment with various early quantum systems, but organizations transitioning to integrated quantum use might prefer a dedicated resource environment.
Long-term competitive advantage is driving organizational interest in quantum. More than half (52%) of organizations cite long-term competitive advantage as one of the most significant factors driving their interest in quantum computing technology, followed by innovation leadership/brand positioning (49%), R&D efforts (44%) and cost optimization/operational efficiency (43%). However, priorities vary by industry: Software and IT services respondents are driven by innovation leadership (65% of respondents); manufacturing organizations are highly interested in talent development (50%); finance firms value risk mitigation and future-proofing (54%); and healthcare and retail are focused on cost optimization/operational efficiency (62% and 64%, respectively).
Cost, technology immaturity and skills gaps are key barriers to adoption. The top barrier to organizational adoption of quantum computing remains cost, cited by 42% of respondents. Other barriers include immature software tools and/or access methods (35%), skills gaps (34%), security or data governance concerns (32%) and integration challenges with existing infrastructure (31%). Interestingly, hardware immaturity seems to be of less concern for many organizations: Less than a quarter (24%) of respondents deem it a primary barrier to adoption, reinforcing the quantum landscape’s shift in focus up the stack.
General interest in the intersection of quantum and AI remains high, while other potential use cases vary by industry. When discussing which types of workloads organizations expect to run on quantum computers, AI and ML remain top-of-mind across the board.
Around half (52%) of respondents expect to use quantum computers for machine learning or generative model training, a use case generally classified as quantum AI (QAI), while 47% expect to run quantum-enhanced machine learning for ML and AI acceleration.
Additional use cases, including finance-specific portfolio optimization or risk modeling, supply chain optimization, scientific simulation, and energy-specific battery design or carbon capture track solidly across industries.
Established technology vendors, particularly cloud computing providers, are top picks for quantum resources, strategy, advisory and education. While the quantum computing market is full of startups building quantum systems, organizations are primarily turning to generalist technology vendors and cloud hyperscalers to access quantum computing resources and information.
More than half (54%) of survey respondents indicate they will likely rely on cloud computing vendors such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud to access quantum computing resources, and 56% expect to consult cloud vendors for strategy and advisory work. Meanwhile, 48% of respondents plan to seek resources from private quantum hardware vendors, and 45% plan to use public quantum hardware vendors.
While cloud hyperscalers offer access to various quantum systems via their clouds, most are also developing their own quantum hardware and software offerings.
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