Oliver Dial

IBM Fellow and VP for Quantum Systems at IBM, serving as IBM Quantum’s CTO. He leads quantum systems work spanning superconducting quantum hardware, system deployment, error correction, and the roadmap toward useful quantum computing.

Lower-Overhead Error Correction Puts IBM’s 2029 Quantum Roadmap Within Reach

IBM quantum systems chief Oliver Dial argues that quantum computing has moved from an open-ended promise to a testable engineering timeline. In a podcast interview with Craig Smith, Dial says IBM reached quantum utility in 2023, is targeting quantum advantage in 2026 through public benchmarks, and now sees a credible path to useful error-corrected machines by 2029 after a lower-overhead error-correction code changed the scaling math. His claim is narrower than saying quantum computers are broadly useful today: present systems remain noisy, quantum AI is still toy-scale, and advantage claims will depend on verification against classical methods.

Eye on AIMay 19, 202619 min read