ParityQC Set New Record Benchmark using IBM Quantum Computer with the Largest Quantum Fourier Transform ever Reported

Quantum computing is rapidly transitioning from pioneering work in the lab to the era of industrial development. This new benchmark shows that growth not only continues but accelerates.

Innsbruck / New York, April 16 2026 — The European quantum architecture company ParityQC today announced a new record benchmark implementation of the largest Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT), a cornerstone algorithm with applications in cryptography, financial modeling, and materials science. The achievement was realized using an IBM Quantum Heron processor. This latest showcasing of the ParityQC Architecture processed 52 superconducting qubits, nearly doubling the previous benchmark of 27 trapped-ion qubits, set just 24 months earlier.

“This milestone was only possible through the synergy of IBM’s latest quantum hardware and the ParityQC Architecture, which unlocked an exponential improvement in efficiency,” say Wolfgang Lechner and Magdalena Hauser, Co-CEOs of ParityQC. “What we are witnessing is European quantum innovation taking a global lead in translating theoretical potential into real-world performance.”

Industrialization of a Pioneering Academic Field

Until recently, advances in quantum computing were driven by pioneering academic groups. Today’s announcement proves that quantum computing capabilities continue increasing exponentially. The near doubling of the QFT benchmark indicates that quantum computing progress could be following similar early dynamics of Moore's Law in classical computing, a development that transformed a research discipline into a global industry.  Quantum computing is undergoing the same transition, becoming a standardized and scalable industrial sector.

“Just as the doubling of transistor density once brought the era of the integrated circuit, the doubling of quantum computing capacity marks quantum computing's entry into its own era of exponential scaling,” says Hermann Hauser, ParityQC investor and co-founder of Acorn and ARM.

“ParityQC's demonstration of their Parity Twine application achieving this QFT benchmark — using IBM quantum hardware — is a promising example of how the application could also extend to enabling hardware-aware implementations of algorithms solving complex, industry-useful optimization problems as our hardware improves along our roadmap," said Scott Crowder, Vice President, IBM Quantum Adoption.

“We’re incredibly proud of this achievement due to the excellent work of hardware and architecture team on both sides. Advancements like these show that progress in quantum technologies begins to follow a predictable path,” comment Wolfgang Lechner and Magdalena Hauser, Co-CEOs of ParityQC.

What this Means in Practice

ParityQC’s Parity Twine architecture can be used for a wide range of quantum applications. It could help accelerate the simulation of molecular interactions critical to drug discovery, and support highly complex portfolio optimization and risk modeling in finance. In materials science, this opens new possibilities for understanding and simulating highly complex physical systems.

As quantum technologies transition into real-world deployment, these capabilities could translate into solving problems that would take today’s most powerful supercomputers years - if they could be solved at all.

ParityQC takes a unique approach to quantum computing. The company develops blueprints and the enabling software environment based on the ParityQC Architecture for scalable quantum computers. The recent record underpins their goal to build highly performant quantum devices with hardware developers worldwide in a co-design approach. The ParityQC Architecture reduces the complexity of the hardware design, includes error correction, and simplifies the connectivity. By leveraging the benefits of the architecture in combination with different hardware platforms, ParityQC is working actively together with the quantum ecosystem to continue the path of exponential growth.

Key innovations

• Record implementation of QFT on an IBM Heron processor:
  When applying QFT on an IBM Heron r3 processor, the teams achieved the highest reported process accuracy ever for unitary QFT with 52 qubits. Crucially, the team also demonstrated that the performance advantage of Parity Twine scales exponentially (exp(N²)) compared to the previously best-known alternatives, where N is the number of qubits.
  

• Substantially reduced gate count and circuit depth:
  Parity Twine is a circuit compilation approach that substantially reduces both gate count and circuit depth when implementing quantum algorithms – critically, without requiring SWAP gates, which are a major source of overhead and error on many hardware platforms. By eliminating this overhead, Parity Twine allows algorithms to run in fewer steps, with less accumulated noise, and at significantly higher fidelity. 
  

• Impact of QFT as cornerstone subroutine on quantum computing applications:
  The end-to-end tested algorithm shows significant improvement towards process fidelity compared to previous implementations. The team selected the Quantum Fourier Transform as their benchmark as it is a cornerstone subroutine that underpins a broad range of quantum computing applications, making it a measure of real-world quantum performance.

The results are published on arXiv:2604.12465

About ParityQC
As quantum architecture company, ParityQC’s focus is on developing blueprints and operating systems for quantum computers. ParityQC solves the challenges in the scalability of quantum devices by a fundamentally new paradigm which allows for fully programmable quantum chips with simplified design and control, as well as integrated error correction.

ParityQC collaborates with hardware partners all over the world to jointly build highly scalable quantum computers for applications ranging from solving optimization problems on NISQ devices to general-purpose, error-corrected quantum computing.

parityqc.com