QuEra’s Libra fault-tolerant quantum computer due in 2028

QuEra Computing has announced Libra, its first fault-tolerant quantum computer, and plans to make the system available on Amazon Braket in 2028.

It has also expanded its multi-year strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services, with Libra becoming the first system covered by the broader agreement.

The Boston-based quantum computing company describes Libra as a megaquop-class machine, a term it uses for a system intended to carry out about one million reliable logical quantum operations. The machine is projected to offer more than 256 error-corrected logical qubits and a logical error rate of 10−6.

Fault-tolerant quantum computing is widely viewed as a key step beyond today’s error-prone systems because it is intended to support longer, more dependable calculations. QuEra says this could open a path to early commercial and research workflows in fields such as molecular simulation, materials discovery and optimisation, where classical computing methods can struggle as problems grow larger.

AWS link

Under the arrangement, AWS customers will be able to access Libra through Amazon Braket, the cloud group’s managed quantum computing service. AWS says Braket gives users a single environment to build and run quantum applications alongside existing classical infrastructure, including high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning services.

The tie-up extends a relationship that began in 2022, when QuEra’s Aquila system became available on Amazon Braket. Aquila is a 256-physical-qubit neutral-atom quantum computer, while QuEra’s Gemini system, which the company says has logical-qubit functions, is co-located with the ABCI-Q supercomputer in Japan.

Andy Ory, chief executive officer of QuEra Computing, said the company sees the announcement as part of a broader shift in the industry.

“Fault-tolerant quantum computing is moving from a scientific milestone to an engineering and deployment roadmap,” Ory said.

“We have executed this roadmap in the open, with peer-reviewed milestones and validated system advances. Libra brings fault-tolerant computing to the cloud at scale in 2028. It is an important step forward, and subsequent generations will scale even further, as we will reveal in our roadmap webinar later this month. We are inviting leaders to engage now so they can build the talent, use cases and workflows needed to be ready when these systems come online,” he said.

Research base

QuEra says every building block of the Libra architecture has already been validated in peer-reviewed research. It points to eight papers in Nature and Physical Review Letters by its teams and by researchers in the laboratories of its scientific founders at Harvard and MIT.

According to the company, the papers cover logical qubits, below-threshold error correction, transversal logical operations, fast decoding for real-time error correction, sustained operation of thousands of qubits with continuous atom reloading, and error-correcting codes intended to reduce the number of physical qubits needed for each logical qubit.

Neutral-atom quantum computing has drawn increasing attention as one of several technical approaches in the race to build practical quantum systems. QuEra’s strategy has focused on demonstrating error correction and then scaling towards fault tolerance, rather than only increasing raw qubit counts.

Amazon Web Services says the collaboration reflects its view that fault-tolerant quantum systems will become part of customers’ computing environments.

“We believe fault-tolerant quantum computing will become a foundational part of how customers solve their hardest computational problems on AWS. QuEra’s technology has demonstrated a clear path to that future. By bringing these capabilities to customers through Amazon Braket, they can combine QuEra’s fault-tolerant quantum processors with the scalable AWS HPC and AI services they already rely on,” said Eric Kessler, general manager of Amazon Braket at AWS.

Commercial pressure

QuEra is also using the announcement to urge potential users to prepare for fault-tolerant systems before they become commercially available. It plans to keep building successive in-house generations of fault-tolerant systems ahead of Libra’s release, both to refine the design and to give selected partners earlier access to working environments.

Yuval Boger, chief commercial officer of QuEra, said organisations that delay planning could lose time once the systems arrive.

“Waiting until 2028 to build a quantum strategy is a competitive risk,” Boger said.

“The algorithms that will harness fault-tolerant systems at this scale might not yet exist. Given that Libra will be available on the cloud in 2028 with a one-in-a-million error rate, the organizations that start co-developing now will be operational on day one, not catching up,” he said.

Industry analysts say the announcement marks an important moment for a field often criticised for setting ambitious targets without enough technical disclosure. QuEra’s emphasis on peer-reviewed milestones appears intended to distinguish its timetable from less transparent claims in the sector.

“QuEra’s plan to deliver fault-tolerant systems in 2028 represents a significant inflection point for the quantum computing industry. QuEra’s approach entails publishing every milestone, validating through peer review and now offering concrete QC end-user engagement paths. This disciplined and visible strategy is what aspiring QC end users in HPC centres and related government programs want to see before committing substantial resources to an emerging technology,” said Bob Sorensen, chief analyst for quantum computing at Hyperion Research.