Critical Minerals and Energy Intelligence. Stay Ahead.

Google’s ground-breaking quantum chip needs critical minerals

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Google has unveiled a ground-breaking new quantum chip, called Willow, that can run “mind-boggling” computations:

“It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10²⁵ or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years” — Hartmut Neven, Founder and Lead, Google Quantum AI

As quantum computing advances, it will drive increased demand for specific critical minerals, essential to its hardware development (eg enabling high-density qubit storage), including:

tungsten
helium
platinum
nickel
rare earth elements, such as terbium, europium
germanium
rubidium
lithium
cobalt
silicon-28
copper
aluminum
and gold

Superconducting qubit-based quantum computers similarly require certain specialised components which are only produced and assembled at specific locations.

A survey of the quantum industry in 2022 by The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) predicted that supply chain issues related to quantum computing, particularly key raw materials, would likely become problematic within the next three years.

And, with recent export bans by China to the US of germanium, the timeline appears to have been correct, with potentially significant impact on the industry.

Time delay resulting from the most critical supply chain disruption - The Oregon Group - Critical Minerals and Energy Intelligence

In their announcement, Google notes how the new quantum chip “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.”

But, while quantum computing theory explores multiple universes, one of its biggest practical challenges remains firmly grounded in our own: finding sufficient critical minerals to support its development.

Our recent analysis on the challenges facing germanium and gallium exports:

The canary in the gallium and germanium mine

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