Quantum.Tech 2025

Recently Rotterdam was host to the 3-day Quantum.Tech conference, where the current state of all things quantum was discussed among various players in the field. Enterprises trying to figure out where quantum would enter their business strategies, the academics to provide a clear view on the actual state of progression, and vendors showing what we’re currently capable of and where the roadmaps will take us.

There were multiple different tracks, catering to various industries, but on the technical level, everything could be divided into three main areas.

Quantum Safe

The topic least related to improvements in quantum technology, but rather a reaction to the looming threat of Quantum computing’s general availability. There was an entire track dedicated to explaining both the risk and mitigation strategies to tackle this.

First key point is that waiting and seeing for quantum to become a real possibility might not be the safest bet. Harvest now, decrypt later, a hacking strategy where encrypted data is stored until technology sufficiently advances to read it, is putting a difficult to estimate time constraint on the whole quantum safe story. It might take 5 year or 10 years before the current algorithms are cracked, maybe more, but depending on how long you want that data to remain secure, the clock might already be ticking. That is why it was stressed session after session that starting now is probably a safe bet, at least when it comes to Post-Quantum Cryptography – PQC.

PQC itself is simply exchanging existing keys and algorithms for more secure versions that don’t rely on prime factorisation, which will become vulnerable to Quantum computing. New algorithms have already been made available, which count on other mathematical principles to guard against decryption, so updating to these ones is important. Even then, one of the key points they tried to get across is that having an accurate inventory of where cryptography is used and especially having good procedures to update and modify keys is just as important. Any algorithm will have a set lifetime as technology improves, so being more agile with cryptography should also become a crucial part of security.

There was one other part of the quantum safe puzzle that was discussed, the Quantum Key Distribution – QKD. This is a secure way to distribute keys to multiple parties and is actually based on quantum principles to guarantee no interference. However, almost all speakers made it very clear that while this will definitely be implemented in future, especially for high threat targets like military, banks, governments, etc…this is far less important than PQC and the speed of adoption will be much lower and some parties might never be interested in this. To put it bluntly, the QKD setup can be recreated by a trusted employee on a bike with a USB stick. Obviously this is somewhat facetious, but considering the cost, it also isn’t completely wrong to point this out. In short, PQC, yes – as fast as possible – KQD, maybe for this to mature and even then determine if this is truly a functionality you require.

Quantum sensing

A second branch of the quantum ecosphere is the use of its mechanics to create a new way to interact with the physical world. Quantum sensing is mainly a way to group new technologies that rely on more accurate quantum measurements compared to classical ones to either improve the performance of current hardware or unlock new avenues that were previously not accurate enough when using classical mechanics. To make this a bit more tangible, I can provide a sample of both of these to hopefully give a general sense of what this domain entails.

Aviation optics

It should come as no surprise that some of the more cutting edge use-cases of technology can be found in the military industry. Optics are extremely important for targeting, navigation and detection. All of these exiting technologies aren’t too unchanged from their inception, obviously huge improvements have been made, but the underlying way of working is not far removed from how they started. Some of the big US military providers are therefore now looking at new quantum sensors to gain an advantage in the modern operating theatre by giving them more accurate and denoised sensor information. It should also become possible for a single platform to gain more autonomy, as these quantum sensors could take over some of the external data inputs now received from satellite systems. And it goes without saying, that any improvements in this sector, will eventually end up improving civilian application as well.

GPS replacement

GPS is nothing short of extraordinary. We often take for granted how amazing it is that assets in space can determine our location to within a metre and that it is readily available to consumers on a large scale. There are however some drawbacks. It requires a signal to external systems to be able to provide this accurate measurement, is vulnerable to interference and if we do ever find ourselves in a worse global situation, it can be switched off. One might assume that GPS is a very complicated solution for a simple problem. Surely, if you know your position and you subsequently track your velocity and direction, it should be easy to keep your position marked. As it turns out though, this is not the case. Slight inaccuracies in the readings can quickly throw you off, but a company in the UK has decided to try this method by using quantum measurements instead. As it turns out, this has provided some excellent results. Not only was it able to maintain accurate positional information over time, but it was tested on underground railways and submarines, two places where GPS does not work well. Granted, the module used was still very large, but the concept has already proven that it is viable. It can be used underground and underwater, it is resistant to jamming efforts and once the scale issue is resolved, it can increase autonomy for many vehicles and devices.

All in all, it is very interesting to see how advancements in the field of quantum sensing are having us revisit existing or even rejected ideas to improve upon their designs or find out that what wasn’t possible in the past, is now a real possibility. While it might not be as flashy as quantum computing and it doesn’t have the same gravitas that quantum cryptography has, these new applications are already being built and tested outside the lab, so expect great innovation in this field over the coming years.

Quantum computing

Last, and definitely not least, the state of quantum computing itself. As it turns out, there are already plenty of companies looking into this, hoping that when the quantum train truly leaves the station, they are on it. And while the projections currently estimate the first big breakthroughs to be in hard science fields like materials, compounds and other chemical applications, other domains were also investing to at least figure out where quantum might provide an edge. Getting this insight was very interesting, because one of the big issues we often talk about, is the general lack of use cases outside of the very obvious. Therefore, it might be good to have a short, non-exhaustive overview of what is ripe for quantum improvement according to the various industries.

• Aviation industry has made attempts to use it for early prediction and detection of corrosion, which in turn would greatly benefit maintenance times and cost. But they also tried applying it to gate assignment and figuring out the optimal way to direct traffic between connecting flights, making travel times as low as possible.
• The fossil fuel sector also has a good use case, by using quantum to better predict where they should drill, as it is currently still more hit and miss than you would expect. On top of that, they already have proven that with the application of quantum mechanics to the scanning process, they can get a much better view of the makeup of the crust to facilitate drilling.
• Pharmacy, maybe one of the more obvious ones, where they are trying to find new compounds to treat various diseases, or modify existing ones to potentially reduce side effects, improve the production process or even make it more environmentally friendly.
• Various financial institutions are testing whether they can improve prediction or have the same quality of predictions faster, because in this case, both have their benefits.
• Aerospace was also present, but their use cases are more or less that you’d expect. Better materials for the harsh realities of space travel, improvements to navigational calculations and new possibilities for rocket engines.
• And no list could ever be complete without the worlds current most favourite buzzword, AI. Mathematically, quantum and AI are already operating in a not too dissimilar space, but AI companies are trying to use quantum to help clean and generate data for AI, which then in turn can feed into quantum again, to create a sort of improvement loop that could possibly help with the shortage of good data for training AI systems.

It is worth noting that for almost all of these, they were mainly in a concepting and simulating stage. The fact they were there to speak generally meant that they saw value in their work so far and could truly see improvement down the line, but there was also a large emphasis on the difficulties in converting their current processes into something that could be tackled by a quantum computer. Some speakers even urged the entire community to share failures as much as successes, because those are much more frequent at this stage and can be just as informative, if not more, than successes. In their estimation, it wasn’t time yet for real competitiveness, but rather working together to improve understanding of what this new technology can bring.

In the end, it was very refreshing to see an event where there was a very realistic view from so many different industries on Quantum computing. Something that has clear indications on the massive value it can bring, but with an equally honest admission that an enormous amount of work is still ahead and not just with producing the physical hardware, but also the work of truly breaking down the existing workflows and adapting them to this new way of working and review thinking on existing processes.

‍