New Delhi, June 9 -- For decades, quantum computing has been described as the 21st century's technological lodestar-with its unfathomable computational power poised to solve problems beyond the ken of classical machines. Quantum computers promise to crack cryptographic codes, simulate the quantum dynamics of molecules in material science, aid drug discovery and more. Yet, as the quantum race drags on, an unexpected challenger has emerged, not to dethrone but outpace it in precisely those domains where it was expected to shine the brightest: AI.

To grasp the possibility of this disruption, begin with what quantum computing is. Unlike classical computers that encode information in binary bits-0s or 1s-quantum computers use quantum bits, or...