CGI Partners With D-Wave to Bring Quantum Optimization to Rail, Energy and Logistics Clients
CGI, the Canadian IT services giant, has formed a strategic partnership with D-Wave Quantum to move enterprise clients from quantum experiments to production. It builds on more than a year of joint work.
Under the deal, CGI adds D-Wave’s quantum platforms to its advanced technology services. It will help clients find use cases worth pursuing, test them, and then deploy them. The two will also co-develop quantum-enabled solutions.
Where quantum is earning its keep
The focus is optimization, the kind of problem where the number of possible answers explodes, like schedules, routes and allocations. D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers are built for exactly that. Current projects include:
- Train scheduling and rail network optimization
- Industrial production planning
- Energy grid optimization
- Maintenance scheduling
- Supply chain planning and delivery routing
- Workforce scheduling and yard operations
CGI clients get access to D-Wave’s Advantage2 system and its hybrid solvers, which split problems between quantum and classical hardware. D-Wave also has a gate-model program, and it calls itself the only dual-platform quantum provider.
“Quantum computing is emerging as a practical complement to classical computing for selected use cases,” says CGI chief technology officer Dave Henderson. D-Wave’s chief revenue officer Lorenzo Martinelli goes further: “Quantum computing’s business value is no longer theoretical.”
Why the services channel matters
Quantum hardware companies have a distribution problem. The rail operator or grid company that could benefit won’t call a quantum startup. It calls the integrator that already runs its systems. CGI has 94,000 consultants and CA$15.91 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue, and it’s embedded in exactly those industries. For D-Wave, that reach is worth more than any single contract.