What Executives Need to Know About Quantum Computing and AI - with Daniel Lidar of the University of Southern California and Izhar Medalsy of Quantum Elements Inc.

**Matthew DeMello** (0:17)
Welcome, everyone, to The AI in Business Podcast. I'm Matthew DeMello, Editorial Director here at Emerge AI Research. Today's guests are Daniel Lidar, holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering at USC, Director of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology, Co-Founder and CSO of Quantum Elements, Inc., and Izhar Medalsy, Co-Founder and CEO of Quantum Elements. Quantum Elements develops tools to reduce noise in quantum computers for scalable performance. Daniel and Izhar join us on today's show to explore why quantum computing is entering enterprise strategy now, explaining qubits, quantum simulation, and practical applications beyond hype. Our conversation also covers workflow changes, like quantum simulation for accurate material and drug design, optimization for financial portfolios, and post quantum encryption to protect data centers. But first, are you driving AI transformation at your organization, or maybe you're guiding critical decisions on AI investments, strategy, or deployment? If so, the AI in Business Podcast wants to hear from you. Each year, Emerge AI Research features hundreds of executive thought leaders, everyone from the CIO of Goldman Sachs to the head of AI at Raytheon and AI pioneers like Yoshua Bengio. With nearly a million annual listeners, AI in Business is the go-to destination for enterprise leaders navigating real-world AI adoption. You don't need to be an engineer or a technical expert to be on the program. If you're involved in AI implementation, decision-making, or strategy within your company, this is your opportunity to share your insights with a global audience of your peers. If you believe you can help other leaders move the needle on AI ROI, visit emerj.com and fill out our thought leader submission form. That's emerj.com and click on be an expert. You can also click the link in the description of today's show on your preferred podcast platform. That's emerj.com/expertone. Again, that's emerj.com/expertone. We'll be back after a quick message from our sponsors. AI agents accelerate workflows, but errors can multiply fast. Rubrik Agent Cloud provides full visibility, enforces policies and rewinds actions in minutes. It runs continuously, giving guardrails, tracking activity and providing a safety net so teams can scale AI without risking critical operations. This segment is sponsored by Rubrik Agent Cloud. If your business relies on AI agents, you can get exclusive early access to monitor, govern and rewind their actions at rubrik.com. That's rubrik.com, rubrik.com. Without further ado, here's our conversation with Daniel and Izhar.
Izhar and Daniel, welcome so much to the show. Thanks for being with us this week.

**Izhar Medalsy** (3:18)
Thanks for having us, Mitch. Thanks, Matt.

**Matthew DeMello** (3:21)
Absolutely. A very, very hot topic, I think, going into 2026 We're recording this a couple of weeks before that gets started, but I think especially on the highest of high level conversations that we've had, both on microphone and off microphone here at Emerge. I think quantum is more or less becoming the AI word of the year, if we can call it already, for 2026 The same way, agentic and then maybe especially to the hardcore infrastructure really became the buzzwords at least of 2025 We want to bring clarity ahead of that hype cycle and those buzzwords, and I think definitely the expertise we're bringing to today's show has a lot to do with that, especially as we're seeing AI-driven modeling becoming critical to R&D. We're seeing organizations are hitting limits in compute scale, data generation and situation realism, especially for things like digital twins. Classical systems are struggling to fully represent complex physical processes, and that's in many ways pushing leaders, at least on the offset from what we hear from a lot of guests on the show, to re-examine what things like quantum could unlock in practical terms. But this is a very, very sophisticated technology. Even for ones, especially if you've been in this industry a long time, this has been something that's been talked about as coming for many, many years, but is only really starting to touch those practical work flows and needs that we're seeing in the market right now. Daniel, we'll start with you, especially on the professorial side. But what are you seeing as the market forces or the why of why quantum computing is entering enterprise strategy now?

**Daniel Lidar** (4:57)
Yeah, quantum computing has been around since, depending on exactly when you want to count, either the early 80s or the mid 90s, mostly in those early days as a paper and pen type intellectual exercise. But around 95 or so, Peter Shor discovered an algorithm that allows one to break RSA encryption, and the field really took off from there. But it took a long time for quantum computers to be built and reach the point where they are now approaching practical utility, able to solve problems that is very hard to solve using classical means. We've had the first few demonstrations of so-called quantum supremacy, where a quantum computer is able to solve a task that literally would take the age of the universe to solve on a classical computer. And we're now entering an era where it seems feasible to start to think about quantum computers actually solving practical problems of interest to industry. And I think this explains why we're seeing very large companies pouring a lot of money and a lot of talent into the field now.