IBM just bought a quantum bet it doesn’t build. Days later, the payoff hit Nature.

Six days ago, IBM agreed to buy a quantum-computing lab that builds a kind of qubit IBM does not. HRL Laboratories published a result in Nature on Wednesday: a silicon quantum processor that, in effect, runs itself. The winning quantum machine will be the one you can actually build, the way silicon won conventional computing. Both qubit types use silicon, so HRL’s control chips, interconnects and packaging help IBM whichever one wins. The timing is the tell: IBM bought the prize on 23 July, and the rest of us saw the trophy six days later.