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Zapata Quantum and IBM team up to build real-world quantum apps

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October 6, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

Zapata Quantum is joining the IBM Quantum Network to address a critical challenge in the field: translating theoretical advances into practical quantum applications, the company says. The collaboration will use IBM’s superconducting qubits, which Jonny Olson, VP Strategy and Co-Founder of Zapata Quantum, identifies as the foundation for this effort.

This aims to bridge the gap and deliver “real ROI” for organizations, according to Olson, as the companies build on prior joint research including a study published in Nature Biotechnology. Sumit Kapur, CEO of Zapata Quantum, states, “These advances must be matched by progress in identifying, evaluating and developing the applications that will deliver real-world value.”

Zapata Quantum and IBM Expand Collaboration on Application Development

The collaboration directly addresses a growing concern within the field; Sumit Kapur, CEO of Zapata Quantum, explains that “The rapid progress IBM is making on the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing brings the quantum application gap into sharper focus.” This gap represents the disconnect between theoretical advances in quantum computing and the delivery of tangible, real-world benefits for organizations. Zapata’s Quantum Application Intelligence platform will be used to translate high-mission priorities into practical quantum applications, informed by insights gained from the IBM Quantum Network.

This expanded relationship is not isolated; Zapata is also pursuing collaborations with other leaders in the quantum and artificial intelligence ecosystems. The company intends to use knowledge from the IBM Quantum Network to refine Quantum Pilot, a platform designed to help enterprises prioritize and develop quantum applications as hardware capabilities mature.

According to Olson, “Joining the IBM Quantum Network lets us better identify valuable opportunities for organizations that need the fastest systems, and then prepare those organizations for the precise moment that quantum gives them real ROI.” The ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between potential and practical application, delivering measurable returns on investment for early adopters of quantum technology.

The rapid progress IBM is making on the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing brings the quantum application gap into sharper focus.

Sumit Kapur, CEO of Zapata Quantum
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Avatar of Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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