The Perpetual Five Years

How quantum computing became a future that never arrives

Ten septillion years: that’s how long Google claimed its quantum chip would need to solve a problem it handled in five minutes. The number is so large it makes the age of the universe look like a rounding error, which is precisely the point.

The announcement triggers a familiar cascade. Investment analysts update their quantum computing forecasts. Venture capitalists schedule new meetings. Tech journalists write explainers. And everyone nods along to the timeline: five years. Maybe ten. Certainly soon.

Except we’ve been here before. For two decades the headline has stayed remarkably consistent: in five years, the arrival of the quantum computer era (machines that break encryption, reshape drug discovery, optimize everything). Any day now. Five years. Always five years.

This isn’t a story about whether quantum computers work. They do, sort of, sometimes, in laboratories that require near-absolute-zero temperatures. This is about what it means that we keep reconstructing the same five-year horizon, over and over, like a horizon that moves at exactly the speed we approach it, while the actual machines remain perpetually out of reach.

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The December 2024 Announcement Complex

December 2024. Google’s Willow chip demonstrated what physicists call ‘below threshold’ quantum calculations: meaning when they added more qubits, errors decreased instead of multiplying. Scientists called this ‘non-trivial.’ Everyone else heard ‘we’ve built a time machine.’ Both were wrong.

What it meant to The Verge: “completed a standard computation in less than five minutes that would take the fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years.”

These two framings coexist without irony. The careful scientific claim (we showed error rates can decrease with scale) and the spectacular marketing claim (we beat classical computers by an incomprehensible margin) occupy the same announcement. Neither is false. But they describe fundamentally different things.

The ten-septillion-years claim comes from a benchmark called Random Circuit Sampling: a deliberately designed test that quantum computers should theoretically excel at and classical computers should struggle with. It has, as multiple reports noted, “no known real-world applications.” It’s not code-breaking or drug discovery. It’s a quantum computer doing what quantum computers are built to do well, measured against classical computers attempting something they’re not designed for.

The gap between technically impressive and commercially useful. Between benchmark and application. Between physics demonstration and industry transformation.

This is the gap.

And yet: nobody slows down to mark the difference. The same week, Rigetti Computing announced AI-powered calibration tools for quantum processors. McKinsey would later report (well, they published their report in June 2025, but looking back at 2024 data) that nearly $2 billion flowed into quantum technology startups that year, a 50% increase over 2023. By early February 2025, QuEra Computing closed a $230 million funding round, with investors including Google Quantum AI itself and SoftBank Vision Fund.

A system in motion. Chips improving. Capital flowing. Press releases multiplying. All of it orbiting machines that, for practical purposes, don’t yet exist.

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The Crash

Then: a single comment.

January 8, 2025. CES. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, asked about quantum computing timelines, said: “15 to 30 years away” from being “very useful.”

Within hours, quantum stocks collapsed like a wave function. Forty percent of market value evaporated in a single afternoon. Companies that had surged 1,000% on Willow’s momentum suddenly found themselves worth less than their hype. The mathematics of quantum computing remained unchanged, but the mathematics of valuation proved remarkably fragile.

D-Wave’s CEO called Huang “dead wrong.” Fair enough. But the volatility itself reveals something: the entire market capitalization was speculation about when, not whether. And the speculation was priced to a very particular when: not thirty years, certainly not fifteen. More like... five.

Huang’s crime wasn’t being skeptical. It was being specific about the distance. The quantum computing investment thesis requires imminence. Not eventual arrival. Not “someday we’ll solve this.” Imminence. The five-year horizon.

Move the horizon, and the money disappears.

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Who Profits From Perpetual Imminence

The network thrives despite (or because of) the gap between promise and delivery.

Investors and venture funds profit from valuations driven by press releases and milestone announcements. Whether or not the quantum computers eventually work at scale, the funding rounds are real now. The portfolio companies exist now. The markups happen now. QuEra closes $230 million in February 2025 for machines that might work in a decade. Or two. Or never. The money doesn’t wait for the physics to resolve.

Large tech firms gain narrative positioning. Google announces Willow and becomes a “quantum leader” in investor presentations, recruitment pitches, grant applications. Microsoft, AWS, IBM: they all maintain quantum computing divisions less for 2025 revenue and more for the long game of being positioned when (if?) the inflection point arrives. The hype isn’t a bug, it’s strategic. Hedge your future by investing in all possible futures, quantum included.

Service providers build businesses around preparation. They sell quantum-adjacent infrastructure: control electronics, error-suppression tools, cloud access, algorithm frameworks. The pitch: “Quantum is coming, better get quantum-ready.” Consultants sell quantum readiness frameworks. Cloud providers rent access to quantum prototypes. Academic departments launch quantum computing programs. All of it generating real revenue, real jobs, real activity. And they’re not wrong, exactly. It might be coming. Five years. Ten. Thirty.

Meanwhile, actual quantum researchers work on qubit fidelity, error correction, and cryogenic systems. They often avoid the spotlight. The serious work is incremental, technical, far less media-friendly than “our chip is 10 septillion times faster.” You can get a Nature publication for demonstrating one error-corrected logical qubit. You can get $2 billion in venture funding for promising a thousand.

The latter gets more attention.

The system we have: a functioning economy organized around a technology that largely doesn’t yet function. Not a scam, exactly. More like aligned incentives producing momentum, funding, and perpetual almost-there-ness.

Everyone profits from almost. No one delivers actually. A perpetual motion machine of promises.

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The Engineering Underneath

To be clear: real progress exists. It exists in parallel to the hype, neither fully separate nor fully integrated.

Google’s Willow demonstration of “below threshold” error correction, while limited to a single logical qubit, shows that error rates can decrease as systems scale (previously they increased). This matters. This is actual physics progress, the kind that makes researchers say “non-trivial” and mean it as high praise. IBM in 2024 protected 12 logical qubits using 288 physical qubits, advancing error correction techniques. Rigetti and Quantum Machines announced AI-powered calibration that achieved 99.9% single-qubit gate fidelity.

The hardware is improving. Error correction is advancing. Control systems are getting smarter. The science is real. None of this is fake. But none of it is the revolution either.

Here’s the math that matters: a useful quantum computer needs thousands of logical qubits. Each logical qubit requires 100 to 1,000 physical qubits to maintain error correction. Google’s Willow has 105 physical qubits demonstrating one logical qubit. That’s not a gap. That’s an abyss we keep selling as a stepping stone.

And yet the researchers keep working. Publishing. Incrementing. While around them swirls $2 billion in annual funding, stock crashes, press releases, and perpetual five-year promises.

Two systems, same field. One builds quantum computers. The other builds quantum futures. They share funding sources, conference halls, and the same technical vocabulary. But they’re solving fundamentally different problems: one in physics, the other in narrative maintenance.

Timeline estimates vary wildly depending on who’s asked and when. 2035-2040, says one projection. 3-5 years, says another. 15-30 years, says Jensen Huang, and the stocks crater. The range itself tells you everything. We’re not in “Moore’s Law predictability” territory. We’re in “complex physics problems with unknown unknowns” territory.

But the market doesn’t price in “unknown unknowns” very well. It prices in five years. Always five years.

Consider Dr. Aris Thorne, a composite figure representing thousands of quantum researchers. Thorne spends years improving error correction by 0.3%. Publishes in Nature Physics. Receives a modest grant. Meanwhile, a startup CEO with a slick pitch deck raises $100 million by promising “quantum advantage” in eighteen months. Both work in “quantum computing,” but they inhabit different universes: one of incremental physics, the other of narrative maintenance. Thorne knows the distance between one logical qubit and a thousand is not a gap but an abyss. The CEO knows investors don’t care about the math, only the timeline.

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Why Five Years, Always Five Years

The five-year horizon persists because our institutions demand it. Quantum physics operates on geological time while venture capital operates on fund cycles. Investors need exits within ten years. Media needs headlines. Universities need program funding. Thirty years doesn’t fit any of these structures. Five years fits all of them perfectly: just distant enough to be unfalsifiable, close enough to justify spending now.

Lab demonstrations aren’t products. Google demonstrates one error-corrected logical qubit and the headlines read “quantum breakthrough.” Fair enough: it is one. But the distance from “demonstrated in controlled conditions” to “reliable industrial deployment” gets compressed in announcements. A working prototype and a scalable product feel similar in press releases. They represent years or decades of difference in engineering. The gap gets elided. The timeline doesn’t adjust.

The belief becomes infrastructure. If everyone thinks quantum is five years away, capital flows. Talent enters the field. Universities launch programs. Startups form. Infrastructure gets built. The belief creates conditions that might advance the timeline (or at least prevent it from collapsing entirely). It’s partly self-fulfilling. But if everyone believed quantum was thirty years away, funding dries up, talent leaves, and the delay becomes self-fulfilling too. So we maintain the five-year horizon as an act of collective will.

Everyone benefits from deferral. Researchers get funding. Companies get valuations. Investors get growth stories. Consultants sell readiness. No one has to deliver the revolution today: just maintain belief it’s coming soon. And “soon” has held stable at approximately five years for two decades. We have constructed a system that runs on imminence without requiring arrival.

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Watching The Gap

If you want to distinguish signal from narrative (and the gap between them has never been wider), a few patterns emerge:

“Quantum breakthrough” announcements rarely specify benchmark versus application. Random Circuit Sampling (the 10 septillion years claim) is a benchmark with no known real-world use. Drug molecule simulation would be an application. The difference matters.

Qubit counts in announcements favor physical numbers because they’re bigger. 105 sounds impressive. One logical qubit sounds less so. Until systems demonstrate hundreds of error-corrected logical qubits, scale remains aspirational. The math to get from 105 physical qubits to thousands of logical qubits involves an abyss.

Timeline promises stay vague: “Useful” (by whose measure?). “Transformative” (for what?). “Soon” (when?). “Breakthrough” (toward what end?). The language performs specificity while maintaining maximum flexibility.

When quantum stocks swing 40% on a single executive’s comment, the volatility is the information. The market is pricing narratives, not fundamentals. The uncertainty is being dressed up as momentum. Jensen Huang’s crime was being specific about distance. The market prefers perpetual imminence.

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The Computers That Don’t Exist

We’re in late February 2025. Quantum computers exist as laboratory experiments, vendor prototypes, cloud-accessible systems that researchers can run small tests on. They demonstrate physics principles. They hit benchmarks. They generate papers.

But the quantum computer that breaks RSA encryption? Doesn’t exist.
The quantum computer that revolutionizes drug discovery? Doesn’t exist.
The quantum computer that optimizes supply chains or simulates battery materials or transforms machine learning? None of them exist.

Not yet. Maybe in five years. Maybe ten. Maybe fifteen. Maybe thirty. Maybe never. It’s possible the physics challenges prove insurmountable at scale, or that classical computing advances make quantum advantages irrelevant for most applications.

The functioning network: $2 billion in annual funding, university programs, startup accelerators, consultants selling quantum readiness, cloud platforms offering quantum access, stock tickers fluctuating wildly on executive comments, and an endless stream of announcements calibrated to maintain momentum without promising delivery.

The research is real. The scientists are serious. The engineering challenges are genuine. Quantum computing might actually arrive and matter.

But we’ve built something else alongside the science: a perpetual five-year future. A horizon that moves at exactly the speed we approach it. A narrative structure that allows funding, prestige, and infrastructure to flow toward a destination that never gets closer.

And we keep walking toward it, announcing progress, marking milestones, resetting the timeline. Five years. Always five years.

We’ve become masters at constructing futures that never arrive. The real breakthrough isn’t in the labs. It’s in our collective ability to believe in a horizon that moves at exactly the speed we approach it. The quantum computers still don’t exist (not in the sense of reshaping industries or breaking cryptography). But the perpetual promise? That works perfectly. And maybe, for the industry that’s grown around it, that’s enough.

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