Milestones
- Advantage (5,000+ qubits)Sep 2020Complete.
- Advantage2 prototypeJun 2022Complete.
- Science paper on beyond-classical simulation12 Mar 2025Complete.
- Advantage2 generally available20 May 2025Complete.
Most important updates
- 18 Aug 2026
- 20 May 2025
- 12 Mar 2025
Upcoming
- 28 Oct 2026Qubits Asia 2026 user conference, Seoulin 18 days (next)
Current obstacles
- Proving speedup on practical problemsWhether annealers beat the best normal-computer methods on real optimisation problems is still contested.
Physics limits
- The energy gap can closeAnnealing finds the best answer only if it runs slowly compared with the smallest energy gap along the way. For hard problems that gap can shrink exponentially with size, forcing exponentially slow anneals.
- Embedding eats qubitsReal problems link each variable to many others, but each qubit has 20 neighbours. Chains of physical qubits must stand in for one variable, cutting the usable problem size several-fold.
- No error correction for analog runsAnnealers have no known way to correct errors during a run. Thermal noise and analog control errors of a few percent limit how precisely a problem can be encoded.
How it works
Superconducting loops
Each qubit is a superconducting loop whose current circulates one way or the other, standing for 0 or 1, cooled to near 0.01 K.
Problem as a landscape
Couplers set how strongly pairs of qubits prefer to agree or disagree, turning an optimisation problem into an energy landscape.
Slowly settling
A sideways magnetic field lets qubits explore many states at once; it is slowly turned off so the system settles into a low-energy state, the answer.
More connections per qubit
Advantage2 has over 4,400 qubits, each linked to 20 others (15 before), so problems fit with fewer qubits.
Update log
Tue 18 Aug
- Minor: PressCommercial
Tue 20 May 2025
- Major: PressHardware
Wed 12 Mar 2025
- Major: PaperResearch
About D-Wave Quantum
D-Wave Quantum
Quantum annealers, Advantage2, gate-model
Founded in 1999, D-Wave sold the first commercial quantum computers: annealers that solve optimisation problems. Advantage2 became generally available in 2025. In January 2026 it bought Quantum Circuits to add error-corrected gate-model machines.
- Advantage2 (May 2025) has over 4,400 qubits, each linked to 20 others.
- Published a beyond-classical simulation of magnetic materials in Science (March 2025).
- Bought Quantum Circuits Inc. for $550M, closing in January 2026.
- Founded
- 199927 yrs
- Headquarters
- United StatesCanada
- Status
- Public
- Listed
- QBTS (opens google.com)NYSE
- Valuation
- public
- Works in
- QuantumQuantum annealing
- Coverage
- 2 programs · 5 updateslatest 8 Sep 2026checked 25 Sep
- People
- Alan Baratz (opens dwavequantum.com)CEO