Voting & Awarding VSD 2

This short segment closes the second Vendor Showdown at ISC 2026, covering the final audience voting and the announcement of the winner. While votes are tabulated, the moderators reflect on the session's eight vendor presentations, remarking on the notable progress of quantum computing and how it now sits alongside HPC. One moderator recalls chairing the 2021 Gordon Bell Prize, when the award went to a Chinese group whose work showed that Google's quantum supremacy claim did not hold, attributing that outcome to Google having chosen too easy a problem, and speculates that 2026 may be the year someone properly claims quantum supremacy. The moderators also preview the immediately following first-time exhibitor pitch session, in which each new exhibitor receives one slide and one minute, with the whole sequence planned to run in roughly twenty minutes. The segment concludes with the announcement that the Vendor Showdown 2 winner is Stuart Wilson of Bull, who accepts the award on stage, after which the session hands over to the first-time exhibitor pitches.