There are three completely different ways to build a quantum computer and they are all racing each other right now

[Upsilon]

Most quantum news lumps all quantum computers together as if they are the same thing, but there are actually three very different approaches competing to win. Gate-based machines, used by IBM and Google, work a bit like a classical computer but with qubits instead of transistors. Annealing machines, pioneered by D-Wave, take a totally different approach and are better suited to a narrow class of optimisation problems. Photonic machines use particles of light as qubits and can potentially run at room temperature, which is a massive practical advantage since most other approaches need to be cooled to near absolute zero. Nobody has won yet and it is genuinely unclear which approach, or which combination, will matter most in ten years.

[Amy96]

The room temperature thing for photonics is undersold. Cooling quantum hardware to near absolute zero costs a fortune and is a massive engineering headache.

[Jeffy]

D-Wave has been quietly doing real commercial work for years while everyone obsesses over gate-based machines. Annealing gets too little credit.

[TommyB_20]

My money is on hybrid approaches winning rather than any single architecture. Classical computers did not beat everything either, we just use them together.

[Megan34]

It would be nice if tech journalists would specify which type of quantum computer they are talking about instead of just saying quantum computer every single time.