Quantum annealing can be used to factor integers in the same way simulated annealing or genetic algorithms can: yes, you can reduce factoring to a SAT problem a

Quantum annealing can be used to factor integers in the same way simulated annealing or genetic algorithms can: yes, you can reduce factoring to a SAT problem and then give it to a genetic algorithm for SAT but it will probably take a geological era to factor even relatively small numbers. Quantum computers can factor N digit numbers with N^3 operations with Shor's algorithm, but no one has found a way to factor a number in polynomial time (in theory) with a quantum annealing scheme like the one allegedly implemented by the DWave. And I'm pretty confident that is neither possible.