Usable quantum results, in your industry
The decisions that cost the most to get wrong are the ones you have to make before you can test every option. Here is what knowing the answer first looks like in each sector.
Know which formulation to make before you make it.
Take only the lead resist candidate to the fab.
Commit to a grid plan you can prove is the best available.
Know your autonomy controller is safe against the disturbances it will actually meet.
See the coordinated patterns that pairwise risk models miss.
Know which cipher to replace first, and by when.
Find where a protein can be drugged before you run the assay.
The detail, sector by sector
The same quantum engine fits a surprising range of decisions — ranking materials, planning a grid, scheduling a port, reading a protein, stress-testing a network. What decides whether it fits is the shape of the decision, not the industry label. Here is where it lands sector by sector, and honestly how far each has been taken.
Beyond the work we run ourselves, the use-case catalogue collects results delivered through Merlin’s platform network — production scheduling, traffic-signal coordination and carrier-aggregation tuning, each with its published conditions.
Walkthroughs
Nine guided walks, each on its own page, each ending with what to send us. They run in the browser and need no key.
Explore a sector
Three sectors have a full walkthrough you can click through, end to end.
Questions buyers actually ask
Six questions buyers actually ask before they commit, and the straight answer we give to each. Four of them are already backed by a result on hardware.
| the question | what comes back | state |
|---|---|---|
| Which of our problems is quantum actually worth it for? | A verdict on your own system in about a second, with the cost of the best classical route printed beside it. Free, no key, and it says classical when that is the answer. | flown |
| Will our network hold when part of it goes down? | The leftover spectrum after the contingency and a reinforcement plan. A ten-line transmission-expansion case returned the certified optimum with zero gap on photonic hardware; a simplified degree-two encoding of the same case came out nine per cent worse than the full model on the same machine. | flown |
| Can a quantum machine give us a result we can act on today? | A ranking of your candidates with the smallest difference it can resolve stated beside it, and an abstention when two are too close to separate. The same methods run on superconducting, neutral-atom, trapped-ion and photonic machines: IBM Heron, IBM Nighthawk, QuEra Aquila, AQT IBEX, Rigetti Cepheus, QCi Dirac-3 and IonQ. | flown |
| Does any of this reach our sector? | The map below: fifteen sectors, one constrained problem class. The industry label is not the boundary; the shape of the question is. | flown |
| Can it run on the machine our own programme owns? | The unit is six sites, so it runs on a 5-to-25-qubit machine rather than waiting for a hundred. The heavy computation can stay inside your network. | computed |
| What is past the edge of this? | Not a line we have drawn. The method is derive-first: collapse the problem by algebra, and the search that everything else has to do disappears. Where a lane is undone it is undone, not closed. | open |
The map
| sector | the decision | what you give it | what comes back | state |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advanced materials | Which design variant to take forward | Two to twelve candidate structures, or an active space from the package you already run | A ranking with the smallest difference it can resolve, or an abstention | flown |
| Pharmaceutical formulation | Which carrier or excipient to take to the bench | A candidate set, as files or active spaces | The ordering and the resolving floor between adjacent candidates | flown |
| Life sciences | Which residues carry the allosteric signal | A structure file. PDB or mmCIF. | A ranked residue list from structure alone | flown |
| Energy networks and critical infrastructure | Which reinforcement plan survives the contingency | A network file. MATPOWER, with in-service status honoured. | The leftover spectrum after the contingency, and a plan | flown |
| Aerospace and defence | Where the onset sits on a fine grid | A field problem | A field solve, and the cost of the best classical route beside it | computed |
| Automotive and mobility | Where the safe operating boundary actually is | A control problem and its envelope | A certified boundary, and where a coarse surrogate misplaces it | computed |
| Telecommunications | Where throughput is actually lost across the network | A network as an edge list | The real-frequency response of the network | mapped |
| Financial services | Which entities move together before the loss lands | A transaction graph with timestamps | A response feature on the entity graph | mapped |
| Cybersecurity | Which parts of a network fail together under attack | A dependency or asset graph | The response of the network to a disturbance, and where it concentrates | open |
| Maritime and logistics | Which routing or berth plan holds under disruption | A route network, or a schedule as a landscape | A plan, and whether the classical route already settles it | mapped |
| Manufacturing and industrial operations | Which process setting or material change holds the spec across the line | A process landscape, or the candidate chemistry behind it | A ranking, and whether the model you are already solving preserves the true objective | mapped |
| Healthcare delivery | Which pathway or allocation holds when demand moves | A network of units, flows and dependencies | Where the response concentrates, and what the classical route costs to find it | open |
| Climate and sustainability | Which intervention survives the scenario you are worried about | A network, or the chemistry behind a capture or storage candidate | A ranked set of interventions, or the contingency spectrum behind a plan | mapped |
| Space and frontier systems | Where a design or a schedule stops holding | A field problem, a structure, or a constrained plan | The solve, and the cost of the best classical route beside it | open |
| Semiconductors | Which process or material variant holds the spec | Candidate chemistry, or a process landscape | A ranking, and the absorption band line by line where that is the descriptor | flown |
Where each one stands
| Advanced materials flown | One screen of four formulations (the bare core and three counter-anion variants), ranked within 0.3%. The three counter-anion variants ranked on 120 qubits in one job, measured order equal to exact order. Award winner, 2nd place worldwide, GIC 2026 Advanced Materials track (Mitsubishi Chemical Group × AIST). |
| Pharmaceutical formulation flown | Live with a formulation partner on long-acting injectables. |
| Life sciences flown | No assay required. We do not lead the independent benchmark on the current method. |
| Energy networks and critical infrastructure flown | A transmission-expansion case with ten candidate lines, held at its true degree on photonic hardware, returned the certified optimum with zero gap. A simplified degree-two encoding of the same case dropped a candidate line and came back nine per cent worse than the full model, on the same machine in the same session: the cost of that simplification, not a failure of classical methods. |
| Aerospace and defence computed | A field solve to 4e-5 at 4,096 points, with the cost of the best classical route beside it. Ready for hardware. |
| Automotive and mobility computed | A shallow surrogate misplaces the boundary by 32 per cent. That gap is the product. |
| Telecommunications mapped | The same object as the grid work. The mapping is written. |
| Financial services mapped | The same object as the grid work, read on a transaction graph instead of a network. The mapping is written and the lane is open. |
| Cybersecurity open | The question has the shape the engine reads. Open for a first engagement. |
| Maritime and logistics mapped | The same constrained landscape as the grid work, on the photonic lane that already carries it. The mapping is written. |
| Manufacturing and industrial operations mapped | The same object as the grid work: a coupled system read for what happens when one part moves. The mapping is written. |
| Healthcare delivery open | The question has the shape the engine reads. Open for a first engagement. |
| Climate and sustainability mapped | Two routes reach this: the flown grid lane for networks, and the flown materials lane for capture and storage chemistry. |
| Space and frontier systems open | The field-solve lane reaches this directly. Open for a first engagement. |
| Semiconductors flown | The resist work sits here as well as in materials. |
One engine, four stages of engagement:liveon quantum hardware today,readyfor hardware with the problem already solved,mappedand ready to start, oropenfor a first engagement. The industry label is not the boundary; the shape of the question is.