At the Quantum Developer Conference 2025, IBM revealed major breakthroughs in its roadmap toward practical quantum computing. The company introduced its latest Nighthawk processor, announced an experimental architecture named Loon, and unveiled significant upgrades to its Qiskit software stack.
The IBM Quantum Nighthawk represents the firm’s most advanced processor to date. It features 120 qubits interconnected through 218 tunable couplers, allowing for circuit execution that’s 30% more complex than the previous generation, IBM Quantum Heron.
Currently, Nighthawk supports up to 5,000 two-qubit gates, with targets set to reach 7,500 by 2026, 10,000 by 2027, and 15,000 by 2028. These milestones will be enabled by long-range couplers, allowing qubits to interact even when physically distant on the chip.
IBM believes this scalability could enable the company to achieve quantum advantage by late 2026—the point at which a quantum computer performs tasks beyond the capabilities of classical supercomputers.
The firm also introduced major updates to Qiskit, its open-source quantum software suite. Enhancements to dynamic circuits have improved precision by 24% for processors exceeding 100 qubits. Additionally, the new C-API (C Application Programming Interface) allows developers to integrate high-performance computing tools for faster error mitigation, reducing associated costs by up to 100x.
Support for C++ programming has also been added, enabling direct quantum computation within conventional programming environments. By 2027, IBM plans to expand Qiskit with specialized libraries for fields such as machine learning and optimization.
In pursuit of fault-tolerant quantum systems by 2029, IBM unveiled the experimental Loon processor, designed to test large-scale quantum error correction. Loon’s architecture features routing layers with additional conductors that link distant qubits, a critical step toward stable and resilient quantum systems.
IBM also demonstrated that classical computers can assist in quantum error detection, achieving correction times as low as 480 nanoseconds using new qLDPC codes.
Both Nighthawk and Loon are being developed at the Albany NanoTech Complex, one of the world’s leading semiconductor research facilities. IBM expects to make Nighthawk available to enterprise clients by the end of 2025.
These innovations mark another major milestone in IBM’s quantum roadmap, positioning the company as one of the frontrunners in the race toward scalable, commercially viable quantum computing.
