Google claims quantum advantage with Willow breakthrough

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Google said its Willow quantum computing chip has achieved quantum advantage. Google's breakthrough hit pure play quantum computing companies.

In a post on X, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Willow ran an algorithm called Quantum Echoes 13,000x faster than the world's faster supercomputer. The Quantum Echoes algorithm explained interactions between atoms in a molecule using nuclear magnetic resonance.

Google's breakthrough was published in Nature.

2025 is the year of quantum computing | Constellation ShortList™ Quantum Computing Platforms | Quantum Computing Software Platforms | Quantum Full Stack Players

The company explained:

"This implementation of the Quantum Echoes algorithm is enabled by the advances in quantum hardware of our Willow chip. Last year, Willow proved its power with our Random Circuit Sampling benchmark, a test designed to measure maximum quantum state complexity. The Quantum Echoes algorithm represents a new class of challenge because it models a physical experiment. This means this algorithm tests not only for complexity, but also for precision in the final calculation. This is why we call it “quantum verifiable,” meaning the result can be cross-benchmarked and verified by another quantum computer of similar quality. To deliver both precision and complexity, the hardware must have two key traits: extremely low error rates and high-speed operations."

Other key points.

• The current-generation Willow chip features fidelities of 99.97% for single-qubit gates, 99.88% for entangling gates, and 99.5% for readout across its 105-qubit array.
• Google said its next milestone will be a long-lived logical qubit.
• The company also showed its progress against its quantum roadmap.

The fallout

Quantum computing stocks, which have been on a tear of late, took a hit on the Google news.

Why?

Many of the pure play quantum computing companies are using different technology than Google, which is focused on superconductors for quantum. IBM, which is also focused on the same technology as Google, was up.

IonQ, Rigetti, D-Wave and others were down double-digit percentages.

The big question is whether quantum computing is nearing its VHS-Betamax moment when it's clear one type of technology will win out.

Here's a look at the types of quantum computing and the vendors in that category.

• Superconducting qubits are seen as general quantum computing options and vendors in this category include IBM, Google and Rigetti Computing.
• Trapped Ion quantum computing has high fidelity and long coherence times. IonQ is the big player in this category along with Quantinuum, which was created by the merger of Honeywell's quantum unit and Cambridge Quantum.
• Neutral atom quantum computing has the potential to scale better and QuEra is a player here.
• Quantum annealing is designed for optimization over general purpose computing and D-Wave has championed this approach.
• Topological quantum computing has the potential to be more fault tolerant and is an avenue being pursued by Microsoft. Topological quantum computing uses a concept similar to semiconductors using "anyons," which can arrange qubits into patterns.

Today, quantum computing chatter talks about the sector as if all the vendors are all using the same technique. Ultimately, CxOs will have to ponder use cases and how they align to the various flavors of quantum computing.

So long, annual IT budget. Hello, 6 month IT budget

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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The technology budget process is well underway at most enterprises and the time frames are getting shorter. Here's a few mileposts to consider as 2026 technology budgets are being sketched.

The discussion at Constellation Research Connected Enterprise 2025 was under Chatham house rules so we're not calling out enterprises, but they represent household names.

• Among CxOs, SaaS platform fatigue setting in
• Boomi, IBM point to AI agent orchestration inflection point
• Constellation Research’s sneak peak at 2026

Here's a look at the takeaways about 2026 budgets from the Constellation Research community.

Expectations

The 12-month budget process doesn't exist. Enterprises are working on 6-month time frames due to rapid changes.

Enterprises are expecting revenue to increase in the next six months.

Profits are expected to fall. Companies are investing in AI and there will be multiple variables working against profits in the next six months.

Overall budgets

IT budgets are expected to come back and accelerate in the second half of 2026.

2026 budgets are in stasis right now. One CxO said: "With everything that's going on, we're wait and see. We're pretty much on the hold to see what's happening. Officially, 2026 budget will be up, but I think it's going down."

Hiring

Hiring is expected to pick up, but how that scenario plays out will impact profits. "There's profit pressure to make sure that we can maintain profit. AI is also reducing the need to do some hiring that we would have done," said one decision-maker.

In addition, enterprises are not announcing layoffs, but quietly shedding jobs. "We are switching out the workforce so they are more AI ready in a discreet way," said one CxO.

A common complaint in the Constellation Research community was that it's hard to find the right people largely because the current processes are broken.

"The system of search and hiring is completely broken," said an IT leader. "We need a new platform. We need people who knows how to think and solve problems, not the usual It person right now. We also need diversity of talents."

Another CxO noted: "Technology has taken us too far by using AI to write resumes and match people. That's something that has to be fixed. We need to think holistically about hiring the right human."

Priorities

One CxO said her company is doubling down on cybersecurity. However, cybersecurity spending isn't driving the total technology budget higher because it is taking from other categories.

In this case, cybersecurity is taking budget at the expense of networking spend.

AI is also an obvious priority for enterprise, but there's nuance to consider. "I've noticed that communities are getting smarter about where they want to put their money as it relates to AI, and moving out of migration modernizations much more quickly," said one CxO.

GM to integrate Google Gemini, delivered unified software defined vehicle architecture

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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General Motors will integrate Google Gemini into its vehicles, introduce eyes off, hands off autonomous driving systems in the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ and move to a unified software defined vehicle architecture.

The announcements, made at GM Forward in New York, highlights how large language models will be entering the vehicle cockpit. GM added that it will introduce a software defined vehicle unified architecture for both its electric and internal combustion vehicles.

GM's new architecture will also appear in the 2028 Escalade IQ. The software defined vehicle architecture includes a central compute unit, simpler edge components and wiring as well as easier software development.

The automaker has been retooling, adding AI talent and integrating Super Cruise into its operations. The technology plans land a day after GM reported third quarter earnings. GM outlined a partnership with Nvidia to use the Nvidia Omniverse platform and Nvidia Drive AGX.

• GM's Q2: A look at the technology, AI takeaways

In a letter to shareholders following earnings, GM CEO Mary Barra said that software and services will be part of the plan for growth. 

"Our software and services business is also expanding rapidly. Deferred revenue from OnStar, Super Cruise, and other offerings grew 14% from the second quarter to almost $5 billion, supported by a base of 11 million OnStar subscribers, including over 500,000 Super Cruise customers. We expect robust, double-digit revenue growth from OnStar and Super Cruise through the end of the decade, with gross margins of approximately 70%. 

We are also making significant progress on our autonomous vehicle strategy and our next-generation software-defined vehicle platform, which will deliver smarter, more personalized vehicles, reduce complexity, improve stability, and unlock new revenue streams." 

Dave Richardson, SVP of Software at GM and an Apple alum, said the decision to use Google Gemini was a broader plan to simplify. "We already have a voice assistant and companion in vehicle, but this will be a replatforming around Gemini so that you can have much better natural conversations. You can ask questions about your vehicle. You can learn more about a destination. We strongly believe that it is an enabling platform technology that's going to let us, over time, bring a whole bunch of new AI companion customized offerings," said Richardson.

Richardson added that GM is planning to leverage insights from its OnStar service as well as vehicle telemetry and meld it with Gemini models for everything from predictive maintenance and route planning.

GM's plan is to create AI that's custom-built for your vehicle and fine tuned based on telemetry and personal preferences.

GM is leveraging a hybrid cloud approach with its data and AI strategy, but most workloads will be in the cloud including on Microsoft Azure and platforms like Databricks.

Regarding autonomous driving, GM said its Super Cruise technology will roll out for highway driving across North America with the 2028 Escalade IQ. Richardson said GM has about 600,000 miles of road mapped and customers have driven more than 700 million miles on Super Cruise. "We're starting with the highway because the average commuter spends between four and five hours a week there," said Richardson. "It's an obvious area to give people a lot of time back."

The expectation is that highway eyes off, hands off driving will lead to faster additional steps to complete autonomy. Richardson said Super Cruise with eyes off, hands off driving will run on Nvidia's platform.

Other items from GM Forward include:

Software defined vehicles. Richardson said the new unified architecture goes beyond zonal approaches. Infotainment, continuous learning and advanced features will be delivered by one computing core. GM estimates the unified architecture will deliver the following:

• 10 times more over-the-air software update capacity;
• 1,000 times more bandwidth;
• And up to 35 times more AI performance for autonomy and advanced features.

"In our current vehicle architectures, we have a lot of components spread around the vehicle. In our new architecture, we'll have a central compute unit and then a lot simpler components on the edge. The logic, the software, the orchestration work happens in that central unit," said Richardson. "And this will allow us to greatly simplify the wiring inside the vehicle. It simplifies doing OTAs and updates and software development."

Richardson added that it will also build its own hardware components to boost efficiency and have more control over the software stack.

Cobots and robotics. Richardson said GM is deploying cobots in its factories. GM today has robots in big cages away from humans because they're not safe. Cobots are robots that are safe to operate near humans.

"There's a lot of hype around humanoids. That's not our focus. Instead of we're looking at building specific cobots to handle tasks that are either that can be dangerous or really hard ergonomically so that they're right next to the humans inside our manufacturing plants," said Richardson. "Humans can then spend more of their time working on the stuff that humans are great at, and more of their craft."

Richardson was bullish on cobot deployments given its manufacturing at scale expertise, data and ability to leverage AI to build multiple use cases.

GM's robotics efforts come from the company's Autonomous Robotics Center (ARC) in Warren, Michigan, and a sister lab in Mountain View, California. GM employs more than 100 robotics experts and hardware specialists.

Home energy systems. GM has offered home energy systems for a while and the batteries work with solar. EV batteries can also do bi-directional charging to power your house. In 2026, GM will start a leasing option for home energy systems.

Among CxOs, SaaS platform fatigue setting in

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Every enterprise software vendor likes to talk about its platform as a way to enable AI transformation, automation and AI agents. But there are signs that platform fatigue is setting in among buyers.

These technology buyers are continuously hearing platform pitches from software as a service vendors in multiple categories. At Constellation Research's Connected Enterprise, platform fatigue was a clear topic. One audience member even said that the word "platform" should be eradicated from software lingo.

More from Connected Enterprise:

• Boomi, IBM point to AI agent orchestration inflection point
• Constellation Research’s sneak peak at 2026

Here's a look at some of the platform weariness from enterprise buyers.

The platform pitch

Fiona Tan, CTO of Wayfair, said the platform pitch from SaaS is something enterprise customers need to be wary about. She said:

"We're looking for a horizontal platform partner that we can work with. Some of those integrations we will do directly, and then some of them we will look for with SaaS partners. The difficulty right now with SaaS is that they're also trying to go horizontal. We want to access enhanced capabilities of each of the SaaS partners, but control it. We may not want that necessarily."

• Wayfair starts to reap rewards from optimization, tech replatforming efforts

Tan is like most CxOs that have to navigate through multiple vendors touting platforms that are pitched to be an AI easy button. A few recent examples:

• Oracle’s application strategy: Industries, AI, automation, integrated stack
• Salesforce makes its Agentforce 360 case to be your AI agent platform
• Amazon Bedrock AgentCore generally available
• Google Cloud launches Gemini Enterprise, eyes agentic AI orchestration
• ServiceNow launches Zurich release, inserts process, task mining into AI agent workflows

Cut SaaS costs to fund other projects

Constellation Research CEO R "Ray" Wang frequently notes that CxOs often complain that the two costs that never fall are SaaS and healthcare. The SaaS budget is eating up more of the IT budget.

"If you want to go get money, build a legal lab. We're testing it. It took about three weeks loaded up a million plus contracts worth $3.5 million of annual SaaS spend. Look at your SaaS cost, because most of it you can replace, and self-fund every funding venture you want," said David Giambruno, VP of Tivity Health.

Worries about SaaS costs aren't new and moves to consumption models have only amplified those concerns. SaaS providers are moving to offer more pricing options, but enterprise buyers say vendors should move toward more outcome-based pricing.

• For AI agents to work, focus on business outcomes, ROI not technology
• Neptune Insurance highlights AI exponential, data, build vs. buy trends
• Soul of the Machine: AI proof of concepts a waste of time
• AI agents, automation, process mining starting to converge
• BT150 zeitgeist: AI agent questions, SaaS ate the opex and job woes

"Contract to outcomes that have shared risk. Make sure that you're not the only one with the seat at the table that's taking on majority of the risk for the money that you're trying to drive," said Kim Smith, Chief Revenue Officer at Clinical AI.

Revisit history, don't repeat it

Enterprises are looking toward AI agents and thinking they can collapse software platforms. After all, how many software platforms can a company support? How many platforms should they support?

Aiaz Kazi, Founder and CEO at rtZen Inc., said enterprises should be careful not to repeat previous platform mistakes. "We've been having the same conversation for 30 to 40 years. That's how SaaS came about," said Kazi. "I'd argue the difference now is that you should not be buying a platform. You're not buying agents. You're buying services. The entire point of an AI agent is that your end-to-end workflow should be more efficient and controllable. Why are you buying disparate agents? We will wind up managing them the same way we manage disparate applications today."

• Citigroup AI agent pilot underway for 5,000 workers
• Goldman Sachs eyes next AI transformation from position of strength

What AI agents can do is collapse various software suites and give enterprises the ability to focus on services and processes. In other words, AI agents have the potential to realize the business process outsourcing dream with much lower costs.

Boomi, IBM point to AI agent orchestration inflection point

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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It's easy to build an AI agent and even scale them. It's much harder to orchestrate them to drive returns. AI agents need a manager pronto.

Those are the takeaways from Boomi CEO Steve Lucas and IBM's Bruno Aziza, Group VP of Data, BI and AI. Aziza also is a member of IBM Ventures' investment committee.

Both tech leaders spoke at Constellation Research's Connected Enterprise conference where AI agent sprawl and orchestration was a recurring theme.

Boomi calls BS on inflated AI agent numbers

Boomi CEO Steve Lucas said enterprises are moving to AI agents as they shift from deterministic processes to probabilistic processes, but be wary of inflated claims about how many are being deployed.

"We live in this world called reality," said Lucas. "We've deployed roughly 50,000 agents in our customers that are real with code and grounding for business processes. That's not millions and anyone that tells you millions is full of shit. It's not true."

Lucas added that AI agents need to be judged on returns and real business process impact. "We're seeing real ROI," said Lucas, who noted Boomi is deploying internally and with customers.

He added that there's a ground game to consider. "When we walk into a client today we start with a workshop. You can build a new agent with a chat interface, but do they have the right data and process?" asked Lucas.

Next up will be the orchestration of agents, which is often more of a vendor talking point. "How do I monitor for effectiveness and ROI? You have to determine the ROI and whether agents are overlapping all day," said Lucas.

Boomi has an agent builder that includes governance, but will extend the tool to monitor ROI and orchestrate multiple AI agents. "What we're going to be announcing next year is the multi agent orchestration extension. We're not building an agent control towers. We don't just watch AI agents work. You need to orchestrate multiple agents and figure out do you have the right model and what are the costs."

Lucas said 2026 will be about creating an AI activation layer and moving beyond automation. "It's not just about creating agents it's going to be about orchestrating," said Lucas.

• For AI agents to work, focus on business outcomes, ROI not technology
• Boomi acquires Thru, makes case for AI orchestration, automation platform
• Boomi World 2025: Agentstudio, AWS pact, 33,000 AI agents deployed
• Boomi launches AI Studio, makes its move on AI agent orchestration

IBM's Aziza: AI agents have no manager right now

Aziza said it's easy to create an agent--he has five or six GPTs to serve up answers to his kids.

He said:

"Building an agent of agents is really simple. The problem stuff that's going to get us in trouble is you're going to have multiple agents built across multiple platforms, and no single vendor will have the incentive to just help you manage and  orchestrate across multiple platforms. AI has no manager right now."

The state of play today is the following:

• Vendors are making it easy to build agents for developers as well as business users.
• Enterprises can choose to stay on one platform for agentic AI, but that's limiting.
• The challenge will be finding the vendor that's horizontal and "coming to help you orchestrate and operationalize these agents."

IBM TechXChange 2025: Big blue connects agentic AI, mainframe dots, partners with Anthropic

"The key word for us in the next 10 years is going to be multi-agent orchestration," said Aziza.

Constellation Research’s sneak peek at 2026

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Constellation Research analysts were split on whether we're in an AI bubble or not, recapped 2025 in AI agents and gave a hint of what's to come in 2026 around decisions, automation and exponential efficiency.

Here's a look at what Constellation Research analysts said about 2025 and 2026 at the opening panel of Connected Enterprise 2025.

Michael Ni

2025: The great divide between enterprises is not about digital. "It's actually a decisional divide and it will decide winners and losers," said Ni. "Winners and losers will really be about who can actually get to decision velocity while keeping compliance control."

2026: "You'll see a massive shift toward a decision centric architecture. Unified data foundations will need to extend to context and grounding. You'll see process and workflow automation incorporate decisions and governance."

Chirag Mehta

2025: "The biggest adoption barrier for AI is security, control and trust. It's not a lack of use cases. It's not a lack of money," said Mehta. "Enterprises want control. They want a specific outcome system and that's driving a lot of innovation and spend in cybersecurity, which was traditionally considered a cost center. Now people are looking at ROI for security and it's amazing."

2026: "Right now people are building AI agents, but they have no idea how to manage a life cycle of an agent, access and privileges. The innovation will be in AI agent identities."

Me

2025: "Agentic AI is the obvious trend and everyone and their mom wants to be a platform. And this game of musical chairs isn't going to go well."

I also noted that we need to start segmenting the AI market. AI infrastructure is bubblelike. Enterprise AI hasn't really started yet. It's time for nuance.

2026: "We're going to realize later in 2026 that all we did was scale mediocrity with the same LLMs and data. We're going to need to come up with ways to be creative and innovative."

Liz Miller

2025: "The challenge for marketing tends to be that you're always being sold a silver bullet," said Miller. "We've seen so many bubbles. The real trend is that marketing is actually using AI. We're really on the front line, but there's a gap between the expectation and the delivery."

2026: Marketing departments will start hiring people because they'll realize the limitations of agents.

Esteban Kolsky

2025: "The biggest trend right now is the commoditization of subsidized AI."

2026: "In the second half of 2026, we're going to start investing in what really matters. Private platforms with a distributed computing architecture.

Martin Schneider

2025: "Revenue ops will optimize using AI but there will be smaller models that are precise and can get better understanding of workflows," said Schneider.

2026: Revenue ops will continue to be revamped via AI agents.

Holger Mueller

2025: "There is a broad revival as everything is going agent with HCM." the disappearance of the divisional / Departmental HR people.

2026: "There will be frontline worker empowerment to complement the agents that are being built," said Mueller. He also said that AI agents will begin to replace divisional and departmental HR people. 

Ray Wang

2025: "There's a romantic notion that there will be an agent per persona. We're going to tell you that it's false. You're seeing automation push across the back office."

"We're seeing a manufacturing renaissance. It's supply chain, precision manufacturing, data centers, distribution and energy."

2026: "One of the biggest things we'll be talking about is the notion of exponential efficiency. You're seeing revenue per employee going from $100,000 to $1 million to $10 million," said Wang. "We're going to see the difference between winners and losers based on who adopted AI."

Microsoft Dynamics 365 expands sales AI agent roster

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Microsoft said its Dynamics 365 Sales Qualification Agent and Quality Evaluation Agent are generally available with its Sales Close Agent and Sales Research Agent in public preview.

The rollout follows a blistering pace for AI agent losses in recent days. Salesforce had its Agentforce heavy Dreamforce conference, Oracle layered AI agents throughout its Fusion applications, Google launched Gemini Enterprise as an agent orchestration platform and AWS said its Bedrock AgentCore is generally available.

You could say it's an agenteriffic time in enterprise technology.

For Microsoft the general availability of its agents come as the company is evolving Dynamics 365 from a system of record to a system of action. Dynamics 365's future will revolve around agentic business applications.

• Microsoft Build 2025: Agentic AI Meets Enterprise Data Decisioning
• Microsoft Keeps Pace in Multi-Agent AI Race
• Microsoft wants to be your agentic AI developer stack

Microsoft is starting its agent parade with sales functions. Sales Agents in Dynamics 365 Sales are mapped to "jobs to be done." These jobs are encompassed in various roles such as sales development reps, sales reps and sales leaders. Here's how it breaks down:

• Sales Qualification Agent is designed to assist a sales development rep who has a goal of generating pipeline. The agent will carry out tasks such as researching leads, customer outreach, qualifying leads and ultimately converting them. Sales Qualification Agent can engage hundreds of leads at once with personalized emails and follow-ups. It also identifies customer fit and stage and routes to seller after qualification.

• Sales Close Agent will assist sales reps trying to win deals and will cover handoffs, discovering use cases, proving value and negotiating and closing deals. Sales Close Agent can also autonomously engage customers, follow long-running deals and mitigate risks and provide insights to stakeholders.
• Sales Research Agent is for sales leaders on the hook for growing revenue and optimizing the business. Managing pipeline, team account and territory planning and sales ops are core tasks. Sales Research Agent automatically generates research plans and uncovers patterns.

These agents join various offerings covering customer intent, customer knowledge management and case management in Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Customer Service.

• Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI build out AI agent use cases
• Microsoft delivers strong Q4, Azure delivers $75 billion in annual revenue
• Microsoft 365 launches role-based Copilots