Most technological advances in the 20th century originated in scientific discoveries that changed our perception of nature. One of the most important of such discoveries was the quantum theory, which permitted us to understand atoms and molecules and gave us a description of macroscopic systems such as metals and semiconductors. All those discoveries led to the appearance of transistors and lasers which marked a technological revolution that explains our present society. The turn of the century witnessed a new wave of discoveries, both theoretical and experimental, which opened the door to controlling the quantum state of individual quantum systems. In this so-called second quantum revolution it is possible for us to envision a new generation of technologies based on quantum coherence and entanglement, the so-called quantum technologies. In this talk, I will introduce one of the most promising quantum technologies that has been developed to date: superconducting quantum circuits. Using the nonlinear properties of Josephson junctions, superconducting devices can be designed, fabricated and measured to behave as artificial atoms with a controllable quantum state. The versatility of these circuits has boosted them to be serious contenders as building blocks of quantum processors and other related quantum devices. I will first present the progress made so far in this field to focus later on the project we are currently starting at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, together with the theory group of Prof. J. I. Latorre, to build a quantum processor to perform optimization tasks.