Postquant launches quantum VM running on 3 hardware types

Postquant Labs launched its Quip Virtual Machine, a shared runtime for quantum and classical computers, on the Aglais testnet on Oct. 20, the company said, as quantum computing firms generated over $1 billion in 2025 revenue, according to McKinsey.

The design borrows from blockchains: quantum work is priced in gas, with a cost ceiling known before execution. On Azure Quantum, for example, each hardware provider sets its own pricing.

Quantum revenue passes $1 billion while pricing stays vendor-specific

Quantum computing companies generated more than $1 billion in revenue worldwide in 2025, and investment in quantum start-ups reached $12.6 billion, 6.3 times the 2024 level, according to McKinsey's report, published April 28, 2026.

Financial authorities are preparing for quantum risk. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a quantum-readiness roadmap in July 2025 that urges the financial system to start moving to quantum-safe cryptography now.

Pricing differs by provider. Azure Quantum's pricing page lists IonQ at a minimum of $97.50 per program execution on Aria 1 and Quantinuum's Standard plan at $125,000 a month, as of Oct. 16.

By the numbers

One runtime spans annealers, gate-based machines and classical chips

The QVM is a unified instruction set and runtime for quantum computation, priced in shared compute credits, the company said. Programs written in one constraint-based language compile for annealers, gate-based quantum systems and classical hardware.

Gas price depends on qubit space, execution time and entanglement, the company said. Each transaction carries a baseline cost plus an optional tip, and the maximum cost is known before execution.

Quantinuum's Standard plan on Azure Quantum costs $125,000 a month plus infrastructure fees, or $1.5 million over 12 months by our calculation: $125,000 x 12. Quantinuum also offers pay-as-you-go, so the comparison is not like-for-like.

At a Quantum.Tech World demonstration, the QVM ran 1,930 head-to-head portfolio-optimization races between quantum and classical solvers, the company said, counting results within 0.5% as ties.

The quantum solver matched or beat the classical one in every race, with a median 2.56% better portfolio where results differed by more than 0.5%. Not independently verified: the release does not name the hardware.

"We need to be ready and ahead of it on quantum," Sarah Breeden, deputy governor at the Bank of England, said at the Institute of International Finance annual meeting on Oct. 15, Reuters reported.

The Bank of England is surveying lenders on quantum readiness. Her remarks concern security risk, not compute services like the QVM. They show supervisors asking firms to plan now.

How we got here

• July 7, 2025: The BIS publishes its quantum-readiness roadmap for the financial system.
• April 2026: Quip Network's testnet opens, according to the company's site.
• April 28, 2026: McKinsey publishes its Quantum Technology Monitor.
• Oct. 15, 2026: The Bank of England's Breeden says the bank is surveying lenders on quantum, Reuters reported.

What to watch: mainnet tokens, outside checks and the 2030 RSA clock

The release gives no mainnet date. Mainnet will price computation in network tokens, not compute credits. Independent replication of the 1,930-race result would test the 2.56% median; the release sets no date for one.

Supervisors work to longer clocks: according to the BIS paper, NIST plans to deprecate RSA after 2030 and disallow it after 2035. What we do not know: which quantum hardware ran the demo.

How we reported this: Postquant Labs supplied the launch details, demo results and quotes in a release dated Oct. 20; market figures come from the linked McKinsey, Microsoft and BIS pages, and the $1.5 million figure is our calculation: $125,000 x 12.