Quantinuum, the quantum computing company spun out from Honeywell, said this week that it had made a breakthrough in the technology that should help accelerate commercial adoption of quantum computers.

It has to do with real-time correction of errors.

One of the biggest issues with using quantum computers for any practical purpose is that the circuits in a quantum computer are highly susceptible to all kinds of electromagnetic interference, which causes errors in its calculations. These calculation errors must be corrected, either by using software, often after a calculation has run, or by using other physical parts of the quantum circuitry to check for and correct the errors in real time. So far, while scientists have theorized ways for doing this kind of real-time error correction, few of the methods had been demonstrated in practice on a real quantum computer.

The theoretically game-changing potential of quantum computers stems from their ability to harness the strange properties of quantum mechanics. These machines may also speed up the time it takes to run some calculations that can be done today on supercomputers, but which take hours or days. In order to achieve those results, though, ironing out the calculation errors is of utmost importance. In 2019, Google demonstrated that a quantum computer could perform one esoteric calculation in 200 seconds that it estimated would have taken a traditional supercomputer more than 10,000 years to compute. In the future, scientists think quantum computers will help make the production of fertilizer much more efficient and sustainable as well as create new kinds of space-age materials.

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That’s why it could be such a big deal that Quantinuum just said it has demonstrated two methods for doing real-time error correction of the calculations a quantum computer runs.

Tony Uttley, Quantinuum’s chief operations officer, says the error-correction demonstration is an important proof point that the company is on track to being able to deliver a “quantum advantage” for some real-world commercial applications in the next 18 to 24 months. That means businesses will able to run some calculations—possibly for financial risk or logistics routing—significantly faster, and perhaps with better results, by using quantum computers for at least part of the calculation than they could by just using standard computer hardware. ”This lends tremendous credibility to our road map,” Uttley said.

There’s a lot of money in Quantinuum’s road map. This past February, the firm’s majority shareholder, Honeywell, foresaw revenue in Quantinuum’s future of $2 billion by 2026. That future could have just drawn nearer.

Uttley says that today, there is a wide disparity in the amount of money different companies, even direct competitors in the same industry, are investing in quantum computing expertise and pilot projects. The reason, he says, is that there are widely varying beliefs in how soon quantum computers will be able to run key business processes faster or better than existing methods on standard computers. Some people think it will happen in the next two years. Others think these nascent machines will only start to realize their business potential a decade from now. Uttley says he hopes this week’s error-correction breakthrough will help tip more of Quantinuum’s potential customers into the two-year camp.