Meet IBM Quantum Starling

On June 10, 2025, we unveiled breakthrough research charting the path to IBM Quantum Starling, the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer.

Slated for delivery in 2029, this milestone marks a pivotal shift from today’s high-performance quantum systems to practical, scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing beyond the capabilities of the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers.

Read below for a breakdown of Starling and its capabilities, our quantum roadmap, and why this matters for society. ⤵

🧠 What Is IBM Quantum Starling?

Starling is a next-generation quantum computer designed to perform 20,000 times more operations in a single quantum circuit execution than today’s most powerful quantum systems. It will be built at the IBM Quantum Data Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is expected to be the first system capable of running quantum circuits that execute up to 100 million quantum operations across 200 logical qubits.

🧩 Why Fault Tolerance Matters

Today’s quantum computers are powerful machines capable of accurately solving problems so complex that classical computers can only approximate their solutions. However, quantum computers are still very sensitive to errors, which limit the size and complexity of the problems they can tackle.

IBM researchers have introduced detailed plans for a fault-tolerant architecture that'll allow Starling to detect and correct errors in real time, enabling reliable, large-scale quantum computations.

🧬 What Can Starling Actually Do?

Starling will allow researchers to explore problems that are currently out of reach for today’s most powerful computers, both quantum and classical alike. These include:

• Accelerating drug discovery and the development of new materials

• Solving complex optimization problems

• Simulating quantum chemistry at scale

• Large-scale quantum machine learning experiments

We estimate that representing the computational state of Starling would require the memory of more than a quindecillion (10⁴⁸) of today’s most powerful supercomputers.

How big is a quindecillion? Picture filling the entire observable universe with grains of rice — then repeat that a billion times. Even then, you still wouldn’t come close.

🛣️ The Road to Starling: IBM’s Quantum Roadmap

Starling is a key milestone in the IBM Quantum Roadmap, which details each of the technologies needed to realize our fault-tolerant architecture. Following Starling, we plan to introduce IBM Quantum Blue Jay, an even more powerful system capable of executing quantum circuits with 1 billion operations performed on up to 2,000 logical qubits.

👉 Check out our updated quantum development and innovation roadmap here. ⤵

🏗️ Built for the Future

The IBM Quantum Data Center will serve as the foundation for Starling and future systems. This facility is designed to support the infrastructure, cooling, and control systems needed for large-scale quantum computing.

🌍 Why This Matters for Industry and Society

Starling isn’t just a scientific achievement—it’s a platform for solving real-world challenges. From climate modeling to financial risk analysis, industries will gain access to a powerful new tool that can transform how we understand and shape the world. Starling represents a leap toward the quantum future. As we move closer to 2029, the quantum revolution is no longer a distant dream—it’s becoming a reality.

Want to learn more? Check out our IBM Research blog here. ⤵