D-Wave Quantum (NASDAQ: QBTS) and AT&T (NYSE: T) announced on July 27, 2026 that the US telecom giant has signed an agreement to expand its use of D-Wave's quantum computing technology and plans to apply it to complex optimization challenges across its network operations. The Palo Alto- and Dallas-headquartered companies said AT&T's initial focus is on layering D-Wave's annealing quantum computing technology into the tools already powering AT&T's agentic AI stack.
240x speed-up on a live network workload
In an early application, AT&T used D-Wave's technology to reduce the processing time for a network optimization workload from approximately one hour to less than 15 seconds — a roughly 240x acceleration. Agentic tools in AT&T's network are already improving operations like outage detection and management, cutting customer downtime by 12 million hours in 2025. Quantum acceleration is meant to compound those benefits as AT&T scales its converged fiber and 5G network to meet AI-driven demand.
What comes next
Building on the initial work, AT&T plans to explore D-Wave's quantum systems for outage response, technician routing, network build planning and traffic management. The telco is also evaluating D-Wave's forthcoming gate-model systems for quantum security and quantum communications applications. "AT&T has incredibly complex optimization problems across its network operations, understands where classical computing is challenged, and is moving quickly to explore where quantum can make an impact," said Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave.
A telecom sector going quantum
The deal builds on D-Wave's push to move enterprise quantum from marketing decks to production tooling. It also lands alongside a broader industry pivot: D-Wave transferred its Nasdaq listing just this week, Quantinuum demonstrated non-Abelian anyons, and ESA installed Equal1's Bell-1 at Frascati. "The speed we're seeing with D-Wave challenges what's currently possible," AT&T's Lucus Haugen, director of Data Science, said in the announcement.
Reporting based on coverage from D-Wave Quantum, AT&T, HPCwire, Forbes and TipRanks.