Here’s the thing about breakthrough technologies: they don’t announce themselves with fanfare. They creep up on us, quietly building momentum until suddenly they’re everywhere. Take artificial intelligence. For years, it was just something computer scientists talked about at conferences. Then ChatGPT came along, and overnight everyone could have a conversation with a machine. That’s when AI became real for ordinary Americans.
Quantum computing is having its quiet moment right now. And if we’re not careful, we’re going to miss it entirely. While we’ve all been mesmerized by AI chatbots and deepfakes, quantum computing has been steadily growing into a real business. The global market is still relatively small at $1.8 billion, but it’s expanding at nearly 30 percent each year. In just the first three months of 2025, investors poured $1.25 billion into quantum startups. That’s double what they invested in the same period last year.
This isn’t just speculation anymore. Companies are making real money solving real problems. They’re optimizing delivery routes for shipping companies, helping financial firms balance investment portfolios, and running chemical simulations to design new materials. These aren’t science experiments. They’re paying customers. Consider IonQ, a quantum computing company you’ve probably never heard of. In the second quarter of this year, it brought in $20.7 million in revenue, more than double the previous quarter. It just raised $1 billion, giving it a war chest of $1.6 billion. Its stock price has soared 440 percent in the past year. Yet it barely registers in our national conversation about technology.
That’s the problem. All our attention, all our investment dollars, all our political energy is focused on artificial intelligence. I get it. AI is flashy and immediate. You can play with ChatGPT right now. Quantum computing, by contrast, seems abstract and distant. It requires effort to understand. But here’s what history teaches us: the most important technologies often develop in the shadows, away from public attention. By the time they break into mainstream consciousness, the fundamental decisions about who controls them have already been made.
We’re approaching what I call the “tangibility threshold” for quantum computing. That moment when it becomes real for ordinary people, when they can see and touch and interact with it the way they do with smartphones or laptops. When that happens, adoption will explode. But here’s the catch: by then, it will be too late to influence who controls this technology. The countries and companies building the infrastructure today will set the rules tomorrow. Everyone else will be playing catch-up, and in the technology business, catching up is nearly impossible.
This revolution won’t start with a viral TikTok video or a splashy product launch. It’s happening right now in research labs, small contracts, and specialized applications that most of us will never see. The question is whether we’ll pay attention while we still have time to shape what comes next. Or will we look up in five years and discover that the future has been written without us?