Quantinuum Sets New Record for Quantum Computing Accuracy

Quantinuum has announced a groundbreaking achievement in quantum computing, reporting a record logical accuracy of 99.9995% on its Helios commercial quantum computer. This milestone translates to only five errors per million operations and represents a tenfold improvement over the company’s previous record set just a month prior.

Quantinuum has achieved a major industry breakthrough that solves a critical error-correction bottleneck and validates our path to delivering a fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029. We’ve announced a new world record for quantum error correction, achieving 99.9995% logical fidelity on our Helios commercial quantum computer using our error-correction architecture.

This record was established using Quantinuum's proprietary error-correction architecture based on a color code. The achievement surpasses the previous best published results, which were obtained by Google Quantum AI using superconducting systems, by a factor of 100. Additionally, the study indicated a remarkable 12-fold reduction in logical errors as the code distance increased, a crucial step toward achieving scalable fault tolerance.

Importance of the Achievement

Quantinuum claims to have crossed a threshold necessary for exponential accuracy growth, positioning its results within the target range for Apollo, a universal fault-tolerant quantum computer expected to launch by 2029. CEO Rajib Hazra stated that this result demonstrates the viability of both the error-correction architecture and trapped-ion technology needed for universal fault tolerance.

Independent expert Robin Bloom-Kohout from Sandia National Laboratories noted that the logical qubit quality is almost 100 times superior to its physical qubits. He suggested that a scaled-up version of the system could achieve the desired reliability with fewer than one million physical qubits.

In September 2026, Quantinuum had already set a record using a different code called Helix on the same Helios system. The comparison highlighted a trade-off: while Helix uses ten physical qubits for each logical qubit, the color code requires up to 37 but results in a lower error rate, allowing for tailored code selection as the company progresses toward fault tolerance.

It is noteworthy that in April, the U.S. Department of Energy announced plans to develop a fully functional fault-tolerant quantum computer for scientific computations within three years.