Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the plan during today's I/O stream, and in a blog post, quantum AI lead engineer Erik Lucero further outlined the company's goal to "build a useful, error-corrected quantum computer" within the decade.

Executives also revealed Google's new campus in Santa Barbara, California, which is dedicated to quantum AI. The campus has Google's first quantum data centre, hardware research laboratories, and the company's very own quantum processor chip fabrication facilities.

"As we look 10 years into the future, many of the greatest global challenges, from climate change to handling the next pandemic, demand a new kind of computing", Lucero said. 

"To build better batteries (to lighten the load on the power grid), or to create a fertiliser to feed the world without creating two per cent of global carbon emissions (as nitrogen fixation does today), or to create more targeted medicines (to stop the next pandemic before it starts), we need to understand and design molecules better. That means simulating nature accurately. But you can't simulate molecules very well using classical computers."