Google just opened the door, slightly, to one of the most advanced pieces of computing hardware on the planet. The company announced this week that it is accepting applications from researchers who want to run experiments on its Willow quantum processor. For those unfamiliar, Willow is a 105-qubit chip i.e., one of the most capable quantum systems ever built. It is still largely inaccessible to everyone. However, now things might change.
Google is looking for a small, select group of research partners who can propose specific experiments designed to push the processor’s capabilities and produce results worth publishing. They call it the Willow Early Access Program. Researchers have until May 15, 2026 to submit proposals, and Google says it will announce selections by July 1.
The bar for entry is deliberately high. Each proposal must detail the exact quantum circuits the team wants to run and identify the measurable outcomes they expect to produce. Google wants experiments tailored specifically to Willow’s architecture, not generic quantum simulations that could be done on a classical computer.
Supporting numerical simulations are welcome, but the company is explicitly encouraging applicants to go beyond what traditional systems can replicate. Every team must also commit at least one dedicated researcher, such as a PhD student or postdoctoral fellow, to carry out the work, a signal that Google expects selected projects to move quickly from paper to practice rather than sit in a planning phase.
Unusually, proposals must be submitted anonymously at the initial stage, with no names, affiliations, or team biographies attached. That suggests Google wants the selection to rest purely on scientific merit and feasibility rather than institutional prestige. Once proposals pass that gate, evaluators will judge them on two criteria: first, whether teams can realistically execute the experiment on current Willow hardware given its noise levels and error rates; and second, whether a successful run could produce a meaningful scientific result or demonstrate a technique that no one has tried before.
Willow is a serious piece of hardware which Google unveiled back in December 2024. It has since become central to the company’s quantum roadmap. The processor can perform a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take a conventional supercomputer an estimated 10 to the power of 25 years to complete.
The chip retains quantum states for nearly 100 microseconds, roughly five times longer than Google’s previous Sycamore processor. Willow operates “below threshold,” meaning that as more qubits add, error rates actually decrease rather than increase. This is a property that has been a theoretical goal of quantum error correction since Peter Shor first proposed the concept in 1995.
The early access program is not Google’s first move toward sharing Willow with outside researchers. Earlier this year, Google partnered with the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre to give British researchers access to the processor. This push was backed by research grants of up to £250,000. That collaboration was part of a broader £5 billion Google investment in the UK’s AI and quantum technology ecosystem. The new program appears to be wider in scope, though Google has restricted applications from researchers based in certain countries including China, Russia, Iran, Ukraine, and Belarus.
For the quantum computing field more broadly, programs like this reflect a maturing approach to hardware access. Rather than opening processors to anyone, companies are curating small cohorts of researchers with clearly defined goals. Efforts like these try to extract the highest possible scientific value from machines that are still expensive to operate and limited in what they can do.
