NVIDIA on Tuesday released Ising, a family of open-source AI models it describes as the world’s first designed to accelerate the path to practical quantum computers. The launch, timed to coincide with World Quantum Day on April 14, targets two persistent bottlenecks in quantum development: processor calibration and error correction.
What Ising Does
The Ising family comprises two components. Ising Calibration is a vision language model that automates quantum processor calibration, a labor-intensive process that currently takes days but can now be compressed to hours. Ising Decoding uses two variants of a 3D convolutional neural network optimized for real-time quantum error correction. According to NVIDIA, the decoding model delivers performance up to 2.5 times faster and three times more accurate than pyMatching, the current open-source standard.
The models integrate with NVIDIA’s existing CUDA-Q software platform for hybrid quantum-classical computing and the NVQLink interconnect that links quantum processors directly to GPUs. They are available on GitHub, Hugging Face, and NVIDIA’s developer platform, alongside workflow documentation, training data, and NIM microservices for customizing models to specific hardware.
Early Adoption Across the Quantum Ecosystem
A broad coalition of quantum companies, universities, and national laboratories has already moved to adopt the models. Ising Calibration is being used by IonQ, Atom Computing, IQM Quantum Computers, Infleqtion, Academia Sinica, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Quantum Testbed, and the U.K. National Physical Laboratory. IQM said its implementation builds on the Ising models to enable “agentic calibration” that removes manual bottlenecks, making quantum systems ready for AI factories without requiring on-site quantum expertise.
Ising Decoding has been deployed by Cornell University, Sandia National Laboratories, Infleqtion, IQM, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Chicago, the University of Southern California, and Yonsei University.
Quantum Stocks Rally
The announcement sent quantum computing shares sharply higher. Rigetti Computing rose 12%, IonQ climbed 14%, and D-Wave Quantum gained 11%, while Quantum Computing Inc. jumped 9%, according to Investing.com. The rally reflected investor optimism that NVIDIA’s direct involvement in open quantum tooling could shorten the timeline to commercially viable quantum systems. Analyst firm Resonance projects the quantum computing market will exceed $11 billion by 2030.