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FROM THE EDITOR.
This week, some quantum plans are running into a decidedly nonquantum problem — Not everyone is convinced they want them.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is facing community opposition over the planned $9 billion Quantum Shore Chicago development. Community groups, including Southside Together, have called on the city to revoke permits, withdraw public funding and tax incentives, and oppose further development of the quantum campus.
There are issues specific to Chicago, including questions about public spending, environmental effects, jobs and who ultimately benefits. But I think we might want to pause as an industry to see if there is a broader lesson here.
I’ve covered science and technology for most of my career, and variations of this story appear whenever an emerging technology begins affecting ordinary people.
We saw it with personal computers, the internet, wireless networks and social media. We see it today with AI and data centers.
The pattern emerges when a technology develops inside laboratories and companies, surrounded by people who understand its possibilities and limitations. Eventually, it enters the wider world. Governments invest. Companies build facilities. Infrastructure appears. And don’t think I’m letting myself off the hook — the media hypes and inflates the possibilities… and also exaggerates the threats.
Communities then are suddenly asked to accept changes they had little role in shaping.
Quantum may be particularly vulnerable because it is difficult to explain. Imagine being told that billions of dollars are going toward a “quantum campus” in your neighborhood without a clear understanding of what that means for you.
This might be a wake-up call for quantum companies and public officials.
As quantum moves from laboratories into communities, communication must become part of the infrastructure. That means clearly explaining what is being built, what taxpayers are funding, what jobs will actually be created and how communities will benefit. It also means listening to legitimate concerns.
The quantum industry has spent years convincing people that the technology is moving into the real world.
Now it has to communicate with the people who already live there.
Have a great weekend!
— Matt, Chief Content Officer at The Quantum Insider
— Krista Elliott, Narrative Content Strategist at The Quantum Insider
Check out this week’s handpicked quantum research studies and news focusing on real-world impact: improving accuracy, reducing latency, using fewer resources, or solving problems that classical methods struggle with.
Researchers at Cornell University, led by Professor Valla Fatemi, developed a new fabrication process for tantalum, a corrosion-resistant metal used in high-performance superconducting quantum chips. By switching the sputtering process from argon to krypton gas, which transfers more momentum and knocks tantalum atoms loose with greater energy, the team stabilized the desired crystal phase on silicon at just 200°C. The resulting thin films showed substantially higher electronic conductivity and produced qubits the researchers describe as world-leading in quality.
OTI Lumionics and the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology published a new benchmark of OTI's Iterative Qubit Coupled Cluster (iQCC) method, testing it against 14 real OLED emitter materials and publishing the results in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The optimized version of the method ran simulations equivalent to systems exceeding 200 qubits using a single commercial AMD CPU chip with about 800GB of RAM, no supercomputing cluster required.
Physicist Guido Pagano's team at Rice University developed a new set of controls for their trapped-ion quantum simulator that let them independently tune both the temperature and the dissipation rate of an engineered environment surrounding trapped ions. The simulator is used to study molecular electron transfer, the process by which electrons move from a donor molecule to a recipient across a barrier.
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Quantum Headlines.
I was fascinated this week by the idea that quantum software has not two, not three, but 11 different user personas, each needing something different from a software interface. As someone who’s spent more than a few hours assessing how different users move through websites, it’s interesting to see that quantum technology is starting to reach the point where it’s asking, “What’s the UX like? How will different groups of people interact with this, and how can we make it intuitive and helpful for them?” This is the part where user psychology gets thrown into the mix, presenting a very human challenge for quantum software developers.
— Krista Elliott, Narrative Content Strategist at The Quantum Insider
U.S. Senators Chris Coons and Mike Rounds have introduced the bipartisan Quantum-GUARD Act to address quantum-related cybersecurity risks to the U.S. electric grid. The bill would direct FERC to consider quantum cybersecurity risks, establish a DOE testing environment for PQC adoption, and study vulnerabilities across the bulk electric power system.
Texas Quantum Partners and Samara announced Occam Foundry, a planned quantum technology campus on roughly 16.5 acres in the Austin area aimed at supporting quantum research, development and commercialization. The campus is designed to bring quantum companies, university teams, working quantum systems, fabrication, prototyping and characterization capabilities together at one site, with discussions underway with prospective anchor tenants and research partners.
Researchers identified 11 distinct quantum software user personas, suggesting the industry may need different interfaces and levels of technical detail for different users. Business users and early adopters generally favor high-level tools focused on results, while algorithm designers, HPC engineers and embedded developers require deeper access to hardware and system details.
Dirac Labs has raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding to prototype diamond-based quantum sensors and conduct field trials for positioning where GPS signals are unavailable. The company’s system combines quantum magnetometry with AI-based signal processing and sensor fusion to use Earth’s magnetic field for navigation in environments such as underwater and underground.
Other News:
GLOBAL QUANTUM + AI CHALLENGE!
The Global Quantum + AI Challenge is an international initiative designed to move quantum research closer to industrial use. In partnership with enterprises, technology providers, startups, and research teams, the program focuses on real-world problems where quantum computing may eventually create practical value, with AI and high-performance computing serving as key tools for testing, benchmarking, and deployment.
This week’s featured challenge comes from Airbus, which is seeking new approaches to predictive aerodynamic modeling. Accurately forecasting aerodynamic flows requires solving partial differential equations using state-of-the-art HPC, but current methods still face scaling limits and continued reliance on expensive wind tunnel testing under demanding acceleration and Mach conditions. Airbus is looking for more efficient PDE solvers that could help future product solutions meet strict quality, performance, and environmental requirements.
Teams working in quantum algorithms, hybrid quantum-classical workflows, scientific machine learning, computational fluid dynamics, or quantum-inspired optimization are encouraged to take part. Phase I concept proposals are open until 15 September 2026.
Sign up now to participate in the Global Quantum + AI Challenge and help turn quantum research into industrial outcomes.
EDITOR’S SPOTLIGHT.
➡️ QpiAI has opened an expanded quantum manufacturing facility in Bengaluru capable of fabricating superconducting quantum processors with as many as 128 qubits, with plans to increase that capacity substantially by 2027.
➡️ The facility brings lithography, etching, patterning, assembly, packaging and testing under one roof, illustrating the specialized manufacturing infrastructure required to build quantum computers at scale.
➡️ QpiAI plans to expand the facility to support processors containing as many as 10,000 physical qubits, although qubit count alone does not determine the performance or commercial usefulness of a quantum computer.
➡️ The company is developing multiple superconducting processor designs while also researching photonic and semiconductor qubits, reflecting the technological diversity that continues to characterize quantum hardware development.
➡️ QpiAI is one of eight startups selected for support through India's National Quantum Mission and raised $32 million in 2025 in a round led by Avataar Ventures and the mission.
➡️ The Bengaluru expansion provides another example of India's effort to develop a domestic quantum ecosystem spanning research, startups, manufacturing, supply chains and eventually commercial applications.
Commentary:
We’re going to take QpiAI’s announcement as a broad example that India's quantum efforts appear to be paying off and the nation’s goals are starting to look increasingly tangible.
QpiAI announced this week that it inaugurated the second phase of a facility designed to manufacture superconducting quantum processors. The company says the facility can currently produce processors containing as many as 128 qubits and plans another expansion in 2027 that could support devices containing up to 10,000 physical qubits.
Those numbers will attract attention, particularly that 10,000-qubit target. But I think the more interesting part of this story is the factory itself.
Quantum computing is often discussed as a race to build more and better qubits, but we also have people tell us it’s increasingly becoming a manufacturing challenge. Superconducting quantum computers require specialized materials, fabrication equipment, packaging, control electronics, cryogenic systems and testing infrastructure. Building a promising device in a laboratory is one challenge. Producing increasingly complex devices reliably and repeatedly is another.
There are plenty of technical hurdles between a 128-qubit fabrication capability and useful 10,000-qubit processors. Manufacturing yield, qubit quality, error rates, connectivity, packaging and control become harder as systems grow. Physical qubit counts are also an imperfect way to judge quantum computers, particularly as the industry turns toward error-corrected logical qubits.
Still, the manufacturing strategy goes beyond this single company. To lean into the “it takes a village” theme, this is an example of India attempting to build a quantum ecosystem rather than simply participate in quantum research.
India launched its National Quantum Mission with government funding of about $730 million and ambitions spanning quantum computing, communications, sensing and materials. QpiAI is among eight startups selected for support through the mission and raised $32 million last year in a funding round that included National Quantum Mission backing.
India also has advantages that many aspiring quantum economies do not. It has a large technology workforce, established semiconductor and electronics ambitions, major research institutions and a substantial software and IT-services industry. Bengaluru already has the concentration of engineers, technology companies and investors that can help support an emerging deep-tech sector.
And India doesn't necessarily have to produce a company that beats IBM, Google or another established player in a straight quantum-computing race for its investment to pay off. Manufacturing equipment, control systems, photonics, sensors, software and specialized components could all become valuable pieces of a global quantum supply chain.
That's why the QpiAI facility may be more interesting than a number of the ol’ quantum scoreboard.
Whether the company eventually manufactures a useful 10,000-qubit processor remains to be seen. But facilities like this require equipment, engineers, suppliers and capital, forcing the transition from research projects toward repeatable production.
India has spent several years putting the pieces of a national quantum strategy in place. The next test is whether it can assemble those pieces into an industry.
DATA SPOTLIGHT.
PacketLight Networks and NEC demonstrated quantum key distribution over a 400G dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) network using a dual-fiber setup. They integrated NEC’s QKD system with PacketLight’s PL-4000M 600G Muxponder, achieving 100% data throughput and low latency, verified via a 100GbE tester. The QKD ran over a dedicated parallel fiber, maintaining quantum signal integrity. The result: a cost-effective, scalable quantum-safe model with zero performance tradeoffs on existing high-capacity infrastructure.
EVENTS.
August 24-28 -- AQIS 2026 will take place at KAIST in Daejeon, Korea, hosted by the Graduate School of Quantum Science and Technology.
August 31-September 4 -- EQAI 2026: European Summer School on Quantum AI will take place in Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy.
September 7-8 -- Nordic Chip Summit 2026 will take place at Dipoli in Espoo, Finland.
September 10 -- Quantum Security Awareness (Electricity Edition): Quantum-Safe Grid Operations will take place virtually.
September 9-10 -- Rice Quantum Frontiers Summit will take place at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
September 9-10 -- Q2B Copenhagen 2026 will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark.
September 15 – Quantum Leap Career Nexus 2026 will take place at the University of Maryland.
September 23-25 -- Quantum World Congress 2026 will take place at The Hotel at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland.
October 1 -- Quantum in Business (QiB) Conference will take place at The Westin Chattanooga in Tennessee and will be hosted by EPB Quantum.
October 7 -- City Quantum & AI Summit will take place at Mansion House in London.
October 20-22 -- NVIDIA GTC Berlin 2026 will take place in Berlin, Germany.
November 17-18 -- World Quantum Cannes Festival will take place at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France.
FEATURED RESOURCE.
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The Quantum Insider
Editor: Matt Swayne
Contributors: Krista Elliott
