Shadbolt: One-million-qubit quantum computer will outperform all global conventional compute
Pete Shadbolt · Raising $2 Billion to Become the SpaceX of Quantum | PsiQuantum's Pete Shadbolt · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea · Sep 10, 2025 · at 29:25
PsiQuantum co-founder and CSO Pete Shadbolt explains the scaling advantage of PsiQuantum's planned 1-million-qubit quantum computer versus all planetary classical computing.
0:00 / 0:26exact quote · 26.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“A single million qubit quantum computer would outperform The net total of conventional computing on the entire planet. So you take all of the supercomputers on the planet, you take every AWS system, every Azure system, you add them all together, and we trash that capability for that specific set of problems in chemistry, material science et cetera.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Pete Shadbolt
Shadbolt: Useful quantum computing requires roughly one million qubits
“The general consensus is that you need more like a million qubits to do anything commercially impactful with a quantum computer.”
Shadbolt: PsiQuantum's million-qubit bet relies entirely on existing semiconductor fabs
“The only reason that we could afford to make that really extreme bet that we're going to go straight to a million qubits. The only reason that we felt that was plausible is that our technology fits into the fabs and the OSATs and the contract contract manufact…”
Shadbolt: Quantum will parallel AI's sudden breakthrough via hardware and architecture
“It was really the convergence of two things to my mind the availability of hardware that was built for another purpose in this case, gaming GPUs, and then also progress on the architecture where I see very strong parallels between what we've done and what has …”
Shadbolt: Quantum computers will solve simulations impossible on classical supercomputers
“Our conventional supercomputers suck at predicting the properties of these microscopic things. And that happens to be exactly the set of problems where a quantum computer is perfectly suited and where we will solve problems that can never be solved by any conv…”
Shadbolt: Semiconductor industry and PsiQuantum use almost no AI in chip design
“We basically don't use AI at all inside the company to design chips. And I think if you go and look at people who are building millions of chips in industry, there's a very small amount of AI, if any, that's being involved in the actual design of those chips t…”
Shadbolt: AI will not dramatically accelerate PsiQuantum's hardware timelines
“So no, I don't think the AI is going to dramatically reduce our timelines. Currently our timelines are mostly determined as far as I can tell by infrastructure, right? We're breaking ground on these sites in Australia and Chicago. These are roughly a hundred m…”