From Google’s Lab to the Nobel Prize: John Martinis on the Quantum Computer Breakthrough

In 2019, a team at Google led by physicist John Martinis achieved something once thought impossible—a quantum processor completed in three minutes a calculation that would have taken the world’s most powerful classical supercomputer 10,000 years.
In this second episode with Martinis, 2025 Nobel Prize winner in physics, host Steve Ispas goes beyond the science to explore what quantum computing actually means for the world. The conversation covers how the Google quantum supremacy experiment came together, what a quantum computer physically looks like and costs today, and the very real national security implications—including the threat quantum computers pose to RSA encryption, internet security, and Bitcoin.
Martinis also shares his work at his own startup Qo Lab AI, where he is applying semiconductor manufacturing techniques to bring quantum computers down from $100 million machines to something that can scale to millions of qubits. He discusses the parallels between quantum computing and AI, his role on the Presidential Commission of Science and Technology, and why he believes quantum is still several years behind AI’s current trajectory.
Watch the full episode for a grounded and wide-ranging conversation on the technology that could reshape computing, security, and science as we know it.