The Post-Quantum World

The groundbreaking Pinnacle Architecture paper has sent shockwaves through the quantum computing industry by demonstrating that RSA-2048 encryption could potentially be cracked with just 100,000 physical qubits. This is a massive order-of-magnitude reduction from previous estimates that once reached into the millions. Join host Konstantinos Karagiannis as he sits down with Felix Thomsen and Paul Webster from Iceberg Quantum as they explain the techniques in the paper and its serious potential ramifications. By leveraging high-efficiency LDPC codes and a novel modular architecture, the team explains how they’ve bridged the gap between theoretical quantum error correction and practical hardware implementation, effectively accelerating the timeline toward Q-Day. More than one quantum computing hardware roadmap has us reaching 100,000 physical qubits before 2030! And there’s no reason to believe future work couldn’t lower the qubit requirements even more. 
  
Beyond the security implications, the architecture is also a blueprint for the first generation of utility-scale quantum systems. Thomsen and Webster detail how their modular design—featuring dedicated processing units, magic engines, and shared memory—can be optimized for “slow” hardware like trapped ions or applied to life-changing scientific breakthroughs in quantum chemistry and material science. Whether you are a cryptographer bracing for the post-quantum transition or a scientist eager to see the first practical applications of fault-tolerant quantum computing, you’ll need to understand this paper’s potential impact. 
  
For more information on Iceberg Quantum, visit https://www.iceberg-quantum.com/.   
  
To read the Pinnacle paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11457. 

Visit Protiviti at www.protiviti.com/US-en/technology-consulting/quantum-computing-services  to learn more about how Protiviti is helping organizations get post-quantum ready.  
Follow host Konstantinos Karagiannis on all socials: @KonstantHacker and follow Protiviti Technology on LinkedIn and X: @ProtivitiTech.             
Questions and comments are welcome!  
Theme song by David Schwartz, copyright 2021.  
The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by, Protiviti Inc., The Post-Quantum World, or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries.  None of the content should be considered investment advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as an endorsement of any company, security, fund, or other securities or non-securities offering. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Protiviti Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, including minorities, females, people with disabilities, and veterans.

A one-shot signature is a new quantum computing tool that lets people verify information publicly using a quantum signing key that destroys itself after use. This “proof of destruction” makes sure the key can only be used once, which could lead to cryptographic solutions that classical math could not achieve. Host Konstantinos Karagiannis talks with Omri Shmueli, a cryptographer and postdoctoral research fellow at NTT Research, about how one-shot signatures might change digital finance and secure communication. Shmueli shares how this technology could make decentralized cryptocurrency possible without a blockchain or help solve the big scalability problems of current blockchains by letting users create their own unique quantum money. The episode also looks at how unclonable quantum keys could give users proof that not only do they have a secret key, but they are the only person in the world who does. 
  
For more information on the research NTT is doing, visit https://ntt-research.com/.   

Visit Protiviti at www.protiviti.com/US-en/technology-consulting/quantum-computing-services  to learn more about how Protiviti is helping organizations get post-quantum ready.  
Follow host Konstantinos Karagiannis on all socials: @KonstantHacker and follow Protiviti Technology on LinkedIn and X: @ProtivitiTech.             
Questions and comments are welcome!  
Theme song by David Schwartz, copyright 2021.  
The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by, Protiviti Inc., The Post-Quantum World, or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries.  None of the content should be considered investment advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as an endorsement of any company, security, fund, or other securities or non-securities offering. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Protiviti Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, including minorities, females, people with disabilities, and veterans.

Explore the high-stakes world of quantum venture capital. Host Konstantinos Karagiannis sits down with Kike Miralles, Investment Director at Intel Capital. Moving beyond surface-level hype, Miralles introduces his “five-layer stack” philosophy — a strategic framework that evaluates everything from physical infrastructure and QPUs to middleware and end-user applications. He shares candid insights into why Intel Capital favors Series A and B rounds, how his background in physics helps him spot “miracles” required for a startup to succeed, and why he believes the quantum computing industry shifted gears so aggressively toward error correction and logical qubits in 2025. 
  
It’s a masterclass in “revenue realism” as Miralles discusses the complex transition from consulting-heavy pilots to scalable SaaS models in quantum. The conversation dives into the wiring bottleneck of solid-state platforms, the skepticism surrounding QKD versus post-quantum cryptography, and the potential for a killer app at the intersection of quantum simulation and AI in the pharmaceutical industry. Whether you are an entrepreneur looking to avoid red flags or a tech enthusiast curious about who might become the Nvidia of quantum, this episode provides a grounded, expert look at the roadmap to a multi-billion dollar quantum future. 
  
For more information on Intel Capital, visit https://www.intelcapital.com/.   
  

Visit Protiviti at www.protiviti.com/US-en/technology-consulting/quantum-computing-services  to learn more about how Protiviti is helping organizations get post-quantum ready.  
Follow host Konstantinos Karagiannis on all socials: @KonstantHacker and follow Protiviti Technology on LinkedIn and X: @ProtivitiTech.             
Questions and comments are welcome!  
Theme song by David Schwartz, copyright 2021.  
The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by, Protiviti Inc., The Post-Quantum World, or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries.  None of the content should be considered investment advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as an endorsement of any company, security, fund, or other securities or non-securities offering. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Protiviti Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, including minorities, females, people with disabilities, and veterans.

The “Constellation Platform” is revolutionizing the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing. Rather than relying on traditional state vector simulations that hit a wall at 50 qubits, this platform from Quantum Elements uses a breakthrough method, stochastic compression, to create realistic digital twins of quantum hardware at scale. This approach allows developers to simulate the complex time evolution of a system, including specific noise models such as crosstalk and decoherence, without the high cost of running thousands of shots on physical QPUs.   
Host Konstantinos Karagiannis sits down with Izhar Medalsy, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Elements, to also explore the cutting-edge intersection of AI and quantum engineering, highlighting a “quantum copilot” in Constellation powered by Claude. This AI-native platform doesn't just help write context-specific code; it also acts as a virtual supervisor that can troubleshoot failed experiments by comparing real-world results with first-principles simulations. Whether you are a professional looking to optimize algorithms through advanced error suppression or a researcher seeking a hardware-agnostic layer to run code across different vendors, listen and learn how digital virtualization might play a key role. 
For more information on Quantum Elements, visit https://quantumelements.ai/.   

Visit Protiviti at www.protiviti.com/US-en/technology-consulting/quantum-computing-services  to learn more about how Protiviti is helping organizations get post-quantum ready.  
Follow host Konstantinos Karagiannis on all socials: @KonstantHacker and follow Protiviti Technology on LinkedIn and X: @ProtivitiTech.             
Questions and comments are welcome!  
Theme song by David Schwartz, copyright 2021.  
The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by, Protiviti Inc., The Post-Quantum World, or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries.  None of the content should be considered investment advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as an endorsement of any company, security, fund, or other securities or non-securities offering. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Protiviti Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, including minorities, females, people with disabilities, and veterans.

Let’s look to 2026 and recap a pivotal 2025 with Paul Terry, CEO of Photonic. Explore why the industry has officially moved past the era of noisy qubits into the race for fault-tolerant, "gold-standard" logical qubits. Paul joins host Konstantinos Karagiannis to break down Photonic’s selection for DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative Stage B and explains how their unique distributed architecture — which uses telecom-grade photons to entangle qubits across networks — allows them to bypass the scaling limitations of monolithic chips. He also details the game-changing shift to LDPC error correction codes, which is drastically reducing the physical resources needed to achieve utility-scale quantum computing. 
  
Paul offers a series of provocative predictions for the coming year, ranging from G7 governments "leaning in" heavily on funding to the emergence of AI as the primary interface for programming quantum machines. He outlines an ambitious roadmap to have 40,000 logical qubits in service by 2030, unlocking massive potential in chemistry and finance, while also addressing the looming reality of the quantum threat to encryption. Tune in to hear why the network is becoming the computer and why the coming year will be defined by business cases rather than hardware metrics. 
  
For more information on Photonic, visit https://photonic.com/.   
  

Visit Protiviti at www.protiviti.com/US-en/technology-consulting/quantum-computing-services  to learn more about how Protiviti is helping organizations get post-quantum ready.  
Follow host Konstantinos Karagiannis on all socials: @KonstantHacker and follow Protiviti Technology on LinkedIn and X: @ProtivitiTech.             
Questions and comments are welcome!  
Theme song by David Schwartz, copyright 2021.  
The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by, Protiviti Inc., The Post-Quantum World, or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries.  None of the content should be considered investment advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as an endorsement of any company, security, fund, or other securities or non-securities offering. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Protiviti Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, including minorities, females, people with disabilities, and veterans.