Summary of QC Cloud Access Offerings: Scoping the Wide Range of QC Providers, Technology Options, and Pricing Schemes

According to a recent Hyperion Research study of 135 US quantum computing (QC) technology developers across the academic, commercial, and government sectors, selected financial indicators in the QC commercial sector have yet to settle into any easily characterized profile. For example, Hyperion Research estimates that while more than one third of the reporting QC suppliers in the survey had revenues of five million dollars or more in 2019, almost half that supplied revenue figures had revenues of less than $500 thousand or no sales in 2019. Likewise, survey respondents indicated that the appropriateness of QC R&D funding differ greatly across the corporate, government, and VC spaces, citing a need for more government funding while expressing concern that current VC funding for the sector may be excessive. Finally, when asked about a potential quantum winter, QC suppliers were much more pessimistic than the base of current and potential QC users, with about half of QC suppliers believing a quantum winter is somewhat or highly likely in the next decade, twice that of counterpart QC end users.

Covid-19 has impacted the worldwide HPC ecosystem in a variety of manners, leading to unpredictable changes in spending trends on systems, production, and installation of those systems, as well as changes in the sources of users' compute resources. Hyperion Research conducts surveys throughout the year to ask buyers for their expected short-term and long-term HPC spending changes in order to keep a tab on the ebbs and flows of the market. This Special Analysis explores changes in short-term budgets and expected spending. Due to the ever-changing situation of the world, these surveys have become critical in understanding, and predicting, the short-term spending trends of HPC buyers.