Quantum annealing (analogue evolution) g_anneal

Continuous-time Hamiltonian evolution — sweeping a transverse field, laser detuning or blockade radius — carrying a many-body system toward a ground state with no discrete gate. Kadowaki–Nishimori (1998) and Farhi et al. (2000) gave it its form; D-Wave commercialised it from 2011, and Rydberg arrays run it with optics instead of flux.
Fabricated carriers; ~4 ns characteristic quench, no deterministic entangling operation; no readout of its own — a mechanism, not a qubit.
Long-range interaction; low-frequency or optical control at mK or in vacuum; coherent plus Pauli error; superconducting lithography or tweezer optics.

Two clocks bound the schedule. From below, control bandwidth — DAC slew for flux, AOM switching for Rydberg: D-Wave's fastest coherent quenches run 3.6–27 ns across 1,222–5,627 qubits D[221]. From above, decoherence. Between them sits the adiabatic condition, which for hard instances demands time scaling inversely with the square of a gap that itself closes exponentially — so the useful regime is a fast diabatic quench whose output is a sample, not a certified minimum. Rydberg adds spontaneous emission, flux adds 1/f noise. The floor moves not with faster electronics but with a way to certify the sample.

Dominant limitation: no accepted certificate that analogue output matches the Hamiltonian.

QuEra's cumulative funding (">$250 M") and its fuller investor list (Valor Equity, Rakuten, Commonwealth of Massachusetts) appear only in secondary reporting; the primary release of 2025-09-09 names Google, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and NVentures. Pasqal's 2025 revenue of €16.5 M is from trade press, not a filed statement. Not published: the date of Pasqal's Aeponyx acquisition, in any primary source, and a further classical test of D-Wave's "most frustrated instances" beyond Tindall and Mauron/Carleo.

Two supply chains carry one mechanism: Nb/Al superconducting lithography (D-Wave) and vacuum/laser/AOM tweezer stacks (QuEra, Pasqal). The I/O burdens scale oppositely: flux annealers push everything through one mK stage on multiplexed on-chip DACs, while tweezer machines add laser power, deflectors and imaging per atom — the optical table is the constraint. Pasqal has begun displacing bulk optics with a silicon-nitride photonic IC: four traps from one chip, atom lifetime ~27.5 s Cfact. No export rule names analogue evolution: exposure is inherited from the carrier — ECCN 4A906 and 3A904 for the flux line, nothing for tweezer optics.

Architecture: quantum annealer — flux qubits, where it is the only gate mechanism. The register lists 4 machines using it, among them D-Wave's Advantage2 and Advantage and Qilimanjaro's AQPU. It runs on the flux-qubit carrier only — Rydberg arrays use the separate analogue Rydberg Hamiltonian evolution — and provides nothing to a gate-model stack; the field's standard error is reading an analogue sampling claim as gate-model advantage. Quantinuum's magnetism result is quoted alongside these but is Trotterised digital simulation competing for the same budget D[227]. No derived clock applies; the figure is quench time, ~4 ns to µs, plus one measurement. Verification is comparison against classical solvers, never randomised benchmarking, and the target moves: D-Wave's March 2025 claim was eroded within weeks [222], [223], its counter arguing the tensor-network scaling used against it is unvalidated P[224]. Unresolved as of 4 Sep 2026.

Who.
| Organisation | Role | Country | What they do | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-Wave Quantum | developer | US/Canada | Coherent-quench annealer; the disputed claim | D[221] |
| QuEra Computing | developer | US | Aquila Rydberg on Braket (analogue Rydberg evolution, not annealing); Libra 2028 | D[226] |
| Pasqal | developer | France | Analogue Rydberg arrays; Nasdaq since 2026-08 | P[156] |
| Google Quantum AI | developer | US | Analogue-digital simulator; atom track 2026-03 | fact |

Money. 2025-09-09 · QuEra · Series B expansion · $230 M+ USD · Google, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, NVentures · closed C[153]. 2026-08-28 · Pasqal · SPAC merger · ~$360 M USD cash · Nasdaq PSQL · closed P[156]. 2026-08-06 · D-Wave · H1-2026 revenue $5.9 M (−67% YoY) · reported Cfact.

Market & supply chain. Rydberg buys lasers, deflectors, vacuum and cameras from a thin supplier base; flux buys foundry runs and refrigerators. Money here is G1 instrument spend plus D-Wave's hybrid-solver G5 line; G3/G4 pay nothing.

IP & standards. No mechanism-specific patent family or standards body apart from the carrier hardware.

Roadmaps & track record. (2024-01 · for 2026 · QuEra 100 logical qubits · missed, replaced by Libra 2028 at >256 logical) R[162]; (2024 · for 2026 · Pasqal 10,000 physical · missed, restated to 2028) P[156]; (2025-05 · for 2029 · D-Wave 20,000 qubits · open) Rfact. Both atom vendors slipped a flagship target by two years; only D-Wave delivers on schedule.

Strategic reading. If one analogue claim survives a full classical round, the tweezer vendors capture the value, holding a path to digital; otherwise this is a bridge product and whoever reaches gate operation fastest wins. Laser and cryoplant suppliers keep the pricing power.

Confirm if any platform defends an unchallenged claim through 2028; demote if erosion repeats. Best case 2029: Rydberg vendors convert analogue arrays into error-corrected digital machines. Worst case: analogue stays a physics instrument. Open: does Pasqal reach 10,000 physical by 2028; does Libra hold at >256 logical?