On January 23, 2020, the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation adopted Moonshot Goal 6: “Realization of a fault-tolerant universal quantum computer that will revolutionize economy, industry, and security by 2050.” MEXT was designated the responsible ministry, with JST as the R&D promotion agency.
The goal set an interim milestone of developing a certain scale of NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) computer and demonstrating the effectiveness of quantum error correction by 2030, with large-scale integration required for fault-tolerant universal quantum computers targeted for around 2050. R&D projects were organized across four categories: quantum computer systems, error correction theory, communication networks, and applications.
The Moonshot R&D Program subsequently funded multiple hardware approaches, including superconducting qubits, optical quantum computers, trapped-ion systems, silicon quantum dots, and cold-atom arrays. The R&D concept was revised in June 2022.