The transition to quantum computing is no longer a distant theoretical shift but a pressing strategic, commercial reality.
The Boston Consulting Group indicates that quantum technology represents a potential $2 trillion market opportunity, with an estimated 90 percent of that value accruing to early adopters. Similarly, IBM’s 2025 Readiness Report highlights that quantum-ready organizations already outperform their peers in innovation.
As a result, over half of companies expect to integrate quantum computing within the next two years. Walmart, Pfizer and Honeywell already have robust quantum teams, and major banks are experimenting with it for trading and risk. Enterprises are using it for everything from optimizing car body design to solving massive resource allocation challenges to identifying the next life-saving drug molecules. In the financial services sector, leading institutions are exploring high-impact applications like liquidity optimization, derivative pricing, risk simulations and machine-learning-driven anomaly detection.
Yet, many businesses still view investment in quantum technology as too high-risk to justify.
Like with AI adoption today, however, the reality is that those who delay foundational investment will find themselves scrambling to catch up while early movers secure talent and IP. Companies that wait for “perfect” quantum hardware risk being left behind by competitors who are already learning and using today’s systems to solve complex challenges.
To successfully integrate quantum computing into a strategic roadmap, company leaders must prioritize quantum workforce development, explore different routes of access and drive experimentation to determine the most effective solutions for their business.
Education empowers advancement
The most important element of a company’s quantum strategy is not necessarily having the most cutting-edge quantum technology but enhancing its employees’ understanding of it.
Innovation with new technologies can only happen when workers understand them enough to integrate them into their own creative problem-solving, and quantum is no different.
But building a quantum-ready workforce does not require a mass hiring of PhD physicists. Instead, the most effective strategy is upskilling existing domain experts. By designing and instituting educational programs that illuminate specific ways these experts can use the power of quantum computing in their own work, everyone from engineers to analysts at a company can become quantum-literate enough to enact real change.
This approach allows those who already understand the core business challenges to identify exactly where quantum algorithms can provide a competitive edge, ensuring the technology is applied to high-value problems rather than theoretical concepts.
Forward-thinking organizations are already aggressively building “quantum-ready” workforces using this educational approach. Firms like KPMG and Accenture Federal Services are utilizing practical, hands-on assessments and training to build expert teams and prepare their cyber practices for emerging threats. Deloitte, Ernst & Young and the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC), have adopted education platforms to scale global “quantum guilds” and establish national training standards. Meanwhile, JPMorgan has invested heavily in training internal quants, engineers and researchers on quantum algorithms to tackle complex financial problems.
By combining this workforce development with immediate technical validation, these companies are securing a decisive first-mover advantage in quantum.
Expanding access drives experimentation
As a company’s workforce upskills, it’s important that it provides them access to interact with the quantum technology itself. With a cost of several million dollars to install on-premise computing hardware, it’s understandable that most companies would be hesitant to take the leap.
Instead, organizations today can leverage cloud-based access to quantum computers or gain limited, shared access to an on-premise hub. This allows teams to run real-world workloads on today’s devices without the immediate burden of massive upfront Capex.
Plus, by establishing cloud partnerships and experimentation workflows now, companies secure their place in the queue, avoiding future blockers that could stall innovation for those who delayed their entry.
In Colorado, for example, Elevate Quantum is accelerating this regional ecosystem through the Quantum Commons campus. This first commercially deployable, open-architecture quantum system in the U.S. is the fastest path to establishing operational quantum infrastructure without multi‑year development cycles and is readily available for procurement.
It’s all about first mover advantage right now, and that comes from robust experimentation. To that end, companies must investigate multiple quantum workflows, architectures (how the tech stack is designed) and modalities (the various physical design possibilities for the computer itself). It’s important to avoid committing to a single vendor or approach too early.
Businesses can then initiate a structured approach to quantum experimentation by identifying high-impact, domain-specific use cases—such as complex optimizations or simulations—and use quantum computing to work through them. A crucial first step is translating a company’s business challenges into quantum-ready problems, and this is where that education on how to apply quantum to one’s workflow comes into play.
For instance, a risk officer calculating Value-at-Risk shifts from running classical Monte Carlo simulations, where improving precision by a single decimal place demands a costly 100x increase in samples, to encoding those market variables into quantum states. By using a quantum Monte Carlo algorithm optimized for today’s hardware, the system can achieve a quadratic sample reduction, requiring only a 10x increase in samples for the exact same precision gain.
For maximum impact, leaders should partner with quantum experts to assess the relevance of their company’s challenges for quantum computing and design programs that prioritize rapid learning over immediate success to continuously build momentum.
The key to starting up a quantum program is to begin with relatively small computing problems. Test out problems that teams could solve with high-powered traditional computers to help them get a feel for translating their ideas to the quantum realm. In the case of accounting or finance, these initial exercises could involve optimizing a small asset portfolio or making an audit sample selection. With every experiment, teams must rigorously benchmark test cases against classical approaches to determine where quantum offers advantages such as time and resource efficiency.
By championing small-scale proofs-of-concept now, leaders can validate quantum’s technical feasibility and figure out the best tools for longer-term use.
Quantum is delivering today
Industry leaders are already achieving results by experimenting with use cases on real quantum systems to maximize industry-relevant value.
In the energy sector, E.ON has used quantum computing to make its power system more efficient and stable by improving how it converts and delivers energy. Meanwhile, Qubit Pharmaceuticals recently matched the efficacy of classic drug discovery methods with only a utility-scale quantum computer.
Concurrently, Mitsubishi Chemical and SoftBank have set world records in algorithmic performance and are overcoming traditional computational bottlenecks in chemical modeling and system stability.
Meanwhile, in the financial sector, industry leaders like HSBC are exploring quantum applications to enhance the efficiency of algorithmic bond trading, while Vanguard is researching quantum capabilities to optimize complex, multi-asset portfolios.
Finally, Airbus has solved computationally intractable supply chain problems with quantum computing, and the company expects to implement these solutions widely to optimize industrial workloads by 2028.
These near-term use cases demonstrate that quantum technology is ready to handle high-impact, real-world business workloads. By empowering their workers with industry-specific quantum education, providing them access to quantum technology, and encouraging initial experimentation, executives can ensure their companies are ready to lead the next computational revolution.
