Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research, stated that the transition validates the company's technical roadmap. IBM has publicly committed to delivering its first fault-tolerant system, dubbed Quantum Starling, by 2029. While previous stages of the DARPA program focused on R&D plans and risk mitigation, Stage C mandates that participants undergo independent testing of their hardware, systems engineering, and architecture.

Transition to Hardware Validation

IBM currently manages a global fleet of quantum systems supported by Qiskit software, serving a network of over 340 organizations across sectors including healthcare and finance. The company’s recent progress includes successful demonstrations of error correction decoding and core hardware components designed for fault tolerance. By moving into the evaluation phase, IBM joins a select group of performers tasked with proving that the computational value of their quantum systems will eventually exceed the costs of development and operation.