Quantinuum Unveils Helios: A Leap Towards Scalable Quantum Computing with Enhanced Error Correction
Published on November 5, 2025 at 09:43 PM
Quantinuum, a company with locations in both the US and UK, today announced Helios, its third-generation quantum computer, boasting expanded computing capabilities and enhanced error correction.
While Helios, like other current quantum computers, isn't yet capable of running complex algorithms needed for applications like materials discovery and financial modeling, its design using individual ions as qubits could offer scalability advantages over superconducting qubit systems used by companies like Google and IBM.
"Helios is an important proof point in our road map about how we’ll scale to larger physical systems," said Jennifer Strabley, vice president at Quantinuum.
Located in Quantinuum’s Colorado facility, Helios comprises a complex arrangement of mirrors, lasers, and optical fibers. At its heart is a small chip containing 98 barium ions that serve as qubits. These barium ions represent an upgrade from the 56 ytterbium qubits used in its predecessor, H2, due to their improved controllability. The system operates within a chamber cooled to approximately 15 Kelvin (-432.67 ℉), accessible to users remotely via the cloud.
Helios encodes information using the quantum states of the ions, leveraging superposition—the ability of a qubit to represent 0, 1, or a probabilistic combination of both. This quantum mechanical property enables computations beyond the capabilities of classical computers.
Despite significant investment in quantum computing research, the technology remains in early stages, with commercially viable applications still on the horizon. A key challenge is implementing effective error correction. Helios addresses this by using two physical qubits to create one logical qubit, fewer than the physical qubits required in recent superconducting quantum computers. For example, in 2024 Google used 105 physical qubits to create a logical qubit. This year, IBM used 12 physical qubits per single logical qubit, and Amazon Web Services used nine physical qubits to produce a single logical qubit.
Rajibul Islam, a physicist at the University of Waterloo, highlights the precision of Helios' qubits, noting their low error rates. Quantinuum demonstrated a 99.921% success rate in entanglement operations between qubit pairs. This advantage stems from the “all-to-all connectivity” design, allowing ions to interact with each other, which allows for error correction approaches that use fewer physical qubits.
Quantinuum has also demonstrated "on the fly" error correction on Helios, using Nvidia GPUs to identify errors in parallel. The company has used its computers to simulate the behavior of electrons in a high-temperature superconductor.
Looking ahead, Quantinuum plans to build another version of Helios in Minnesota and is developing a fourth-generation computer, Sol, slated for delivery in 2027 with 192 physical qubits. The company aims to release Apollo in 2029, targeting thousands of physical qubits and full fault tolerance.