Accelerating Science: A Blueprint for a Renewed National Quantum Initiative

Quantum technologies are rapidly emerging as foundational capabilities for economic competitiveness, national security and scientific leadership in the 21st century. Sustained U.S. leadership in quantum information science is critical to ensuring that breakthroughs in computing, sensing, networking and materials translate into secure technologies and industries, a skilled domestic workforce and long-term strategic advantage. To secure this future, Congress must act and reauthorize the National Quantum Initiative (NQI).

On Dec. 21, 2018, President Trump signed into law the bipartisan NQI, establishing for the first time a broad, multi-agency strategy spanning universities, national labs and industry to advance quantum information science as a national priority.

This coordinated initiative accelerated the maturation of quantum technologies by enabling sustained investment, shared infrastructure and a world-class research and development ecosystem. Since the NQI's inception, dramatic advancements have been made in qubit coherence, gate fidelities and system scaling, moving quantum platforms from isolated demonstrations toward scalable architectures. Collectively, this progress has clarified a viable roadmap toward useful quantum systems and reinforced the value of long-term, coordinated national investment.

The Genesis Mission: A New Era of Scientific Instrumentation When testifying before the House Science Committee in December 2025, Under Secretary for Science Dr. Dar o Gil aptly described the current moment as the precipice of a scientific revolution driven by the convergence of AI, high-performance computing and quantum systems. He outlined the Trump Administration's Genesis Mission, an initiative to mobilize national laboratories, industry and academia to build an integrated discovery platform capable of doubling the nation's R&D productivity within a decade.

Gil emphasized that AI and quantum computing are no longer just distinct tools, but the foundational elements of a new class of supercomputers. He noted that just as telescopes and microscopes transformed our observation of the universe, these converged systems will function as the new scientific instruments of our time, allowing us to decipher the complexity of the natural world.

Realizing this vision requires breaking down silos and a sustained focus on the integration of AI and quantum technologies, not treating them as independent efforts. Many of the most consequential quantum applications will emerge through this convergence, embedded within AI-driven and accelerated workflows that transform entire scientific domains.

This is why we are urging Congress to reauthorize the NQI. The importance of a deliberate synthesis between AI and quantum computing has only recently come into focus, and the existing national strategy predates this understanding. Reauthorizing the NQI will enable an evolution of strategy to align with the current technological landscape. A reauthorized NQI should explicitly recognize and support the integration of AI, accelerated computing and quantum processors to ensure these capabilities mature into broadly useful systems and to position the U.S. to lead this next phase of computing.

What Is a Quantum-GPU Supercomputer? Unlocking lasting impact for the U.S. ecosystem across national laboratories, academia and industry means embracing a mission-focused approach to quantum information science.

A scientifically useful quantum system - one capable of providing the necessary hundreds of logical qubits and millions of operations - depends on more than state-of-the-art quantum hardware. It also requires a seamless unification of classical and quantum systems, in which GPUs, CPUs and QPUs work in concert as a single, integrated capability. This system-level integration is what transforms quantum capability from isolated demonstrations into a practical scientific resource.

Across the U.S. ecosystem, it is becoming clear that tightly integrated, open architectures are essential for quantum-GPU supercomputing. Through close collaboration with leading U.S. institutions, NVIDIA has made available two foundational components of such architectures:

The Bridge (NVIDIA NVQLink): Quantum-GPU interconnect technologies provide the low-latency, high-throughput connections required for quantum processors to operate at the scale and speed required to both implement demanding control tasks and perform the hybrid workloads that solve meaningful problems. They enable classical supercomputers to drive QPUs through real-time feedback loops that are essential for error correction and control.

The Platform (NVIDIA CUDA-Q): To democratize access, the quantum ecosystem must bridge the gap between physicists and domain scientists. CUDA-Q is a unified, open source programming model that allows developers to program QPUs, GPUs and CPUs in a single system, enabling seamless, end-to-end hybrid workflows and accelerating scientific adoption.

AI is increasingly central to overcoming key challenges in scaling and deploying quantum computing - from real-time tasks such as quantum error correction and hardware calibration to the discovery of more efficient quantum algorithms. As a result, quantum research and development programs, including those at U.S. national laboratories, are rapidly integrating AI supercomputing into their core workflows.

While industry can build the bridges and platforms needed to leverage AI and quantum systems, integrating them into massive, fault-tolerant infrastructures for open science requires federal scale. A federal role is essential to demonstrate these capabilities on national testbeds, proving out system integrations, validating architectures in open environments and establishing the foundations that will ultimately power a competitive commercial market.

How Can Congress

LINK:	https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/national-quantum-initiative/...
	See more stories from nvidia

More from Nvidia