When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a four-part series.

The world is in the early stages of the next industrial revolution: quantum technology. The quantum-enabled technology market could be worth over $2 trillion within the next few years. Multiple sectors — chemicals, materials science, life sciences, finance, transportation, computing, security, and defense — will each benefit, making (it is hoped) the United States stronger, safer, and wealthier.

To lead and not fall behind, America should take stock of its current quantum capabilities and build upon previous efforts to accelerate quantum research and development and leadership. Aligning incentives for government, private industry, and higher education to support strategic workforce development, infrastructure partnerships, and supply chain resilience is vital to this effort and should be a priority of the federal government. We should be upfront that we’re not neutral on this. One of us is an active scientist in the field, a technologist trying to commercialize these technologies, and an operating partner at deep technology fund DCVC, with investments in quantum.

Two high-value problems are being solved by quantum technology right now, and both reveal what America should do to maintain its lead: quantum navigation and the use of quantum simulation to discover novel medical treatments.

In April 2025, an Australian quantum navigation system flew 500 kilometers without GPS while maintaining positioning accuracy within 150 meters — a 50-fold improvement over the strategic-grade inertial systems currently backing up military and commercial aviation. The technology, developed by Sydney-based Q-CTRL (a DCVC portfolio company), uses quantum sensors to detect Earth’s magnetic field variations as navigational landmarks, a capability impossible with conventional hardware. Reports from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency have documented industrial-scale GPS spoofing affecting commercial and military flights worldwide, with incidents concentrated in conflict zones. A single day without GPS service costs the U.K. economy an estimated £1 billion. Within weeks of Q-CTRL’s demonstration, Lockheed Martin, AOSense, and Q-CTRL secured a Defense Innovation Unit contract to deploy similar systems on U.S. military platforms. The Defense Innovation Unit intentionally chose a mixture of start-ups, non-traditional Department of Defense solution providers, as well as traditional defense contractors to build out these platforms.

In August 2025, Pfizer joined the Quantum^BW initiative to leverage quantum simulations to discover next-generation antibiotics and treatments for chronic diseases. The problem: simulating molecular interactions with sufficient accuracy to predict drug candidates requires computational power that scales exponentially with molecular complexity — a wall that classical computers hit quickly. JPMorgan Chase and Amazon’s Quantum Solutions Lab demonstrated in a peer-reviewed paper published in May 2025 that quantum systems could reduce portfolio optimization problem sizes by 80 percent, cutting what would take classical systems days into hours. A Chinese fintech subsidiary, Longying ZhiDa, deployed a quantum neural network with SpinQ that achieved 99 percent accuracy in predicting ATM asset reallocation across 2,243 machines — outperforming traditional algorithms in both speed and precision.

Not Mere Laboratory Curiosities

These aren’t just fascinating. They are working systems with paying customers, deployed on timelines measured in months, not decades. The quantum sensing applications are furthest along: Q-CTRL’s systems achieved 99.97 percent uptime during flight tests. Boeing partnered with California-based AOSense to complete the first in-flight quantum inertial measurement unit test in 2024, cutting navigational drift from kilometers to meters. Quantum computing applications remain earlier-stage — most still don’t beat classical computers on cost, speed, or ease of use — but the gap is closing faster than forecasts predicted even two years ago.

The quantum computing industry generated between $650 million and $750 million in revenue in 2024, with projections to exceed $1 billion in 2025. But revenue figures obscure what matters: which companies can deliver working hardware, where they manufacture it, and whether America controls the pathway to production.

American corporate ownership doesn’t guarantee American control — the semiconductor industry provides a cautionary tale. While Apple captured enormous profit and retained design expertise in Cupertino, the company’s reliance on People’s Republic of China manufacturing created dependencies that eventually became strategic vulnerabilities for the company and the free world.

Redefining Technological Leadership

Advancing quantum technologies is not like typical technology development, whether electric cars, mobile phones, or even generative AI. The difference is between common innovation and sweeping historical change. Quantum falls into the latter category because it’s not just a new tool but a new form of leverage. The quantum leader won’t just have better technology — it will have technology that makes everyone else obsolete. Such potential harkens to the economic power of general-purpose technologies, technologies that spur advancements in existing fields, as well as create new ones. This isn’t just another technological race. It’s a winner-take-all competition that will determine global power structures for the next century.

Quantum, a foundation of the universe, has increasingly become an underpinning of modern life for more than a quarter of a century. The Nobel Prize in Physics in 2025 was awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.” This mid-1980s discovery underpins all superconducting quantum technology today. Atomic power, nanoscience, semiconductor manufacturing, steel manufacturing, and AI all embrace different facets of quantum. The concepts have become important drivers of communications, computing, supply chains, numerical analysis, medical research, and so much more.

The Companies Building Quantum Systems Today

Trapped-ion quantum computers lead in gate fidelity and system maturity. IonQ, headquartered in College Park, Maryland, opened the first dedicated U.S. quantum manufacturing facility in Bothell, Washington, in February 2024 — a 105,000-square-foot plant designed to produce replicable, rack-mounted systems deployable in customer data centers. The company’s Forte system offers 35 algorithmic qubits and has secured contracts with Hyundai, Airbus, GE Research, and a $25.5 million project with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to deploy two systems at Rome, New York. IonQ’s systems are accessible via Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, with 2025 plans to release Tempo, a 64-qubit system. IonQ is guiding toward $82 million to $100 million in revenue for 2025, though the company does not break out system sales from research contracts and cloud access fees.

Quantinuum, based in Broomfield, Colorado, operates the H2 system with 56 physical qubits and a record quantum volume of 2,097,152. In 2024, working with Microsoft, Quantinuum demonstrated 12 fully error-corrected logical qubits — a milestone toward fault-tolerant systems. The company claims a direct path to a universal, fully fault-tolerant gate set with repeatable error correction. They raised $600 million at a $10 billion valuation in 2025.

Superconducting quantum computers lead in qubit count but face steeper error-correction challenges. IBM, manufacturing in Poughkeepsie, New York, has deployed approximately 80 quantum systems since 2016 — more than the rest of the world combined, according to company data. The firm operates 13 utility-scale systems (100+ qubits) across New York, Germany, and client locations worldwide. IBM’s cumulative quantum revenue from quarter one 2017 through quarter four 2024 approached $1 billion — though reported as “signings,” not recognized revenue — with the company shipping its Heron processor (133 qubits) and planning Kookaburra (1,386 qubits across three linked chips) for 2025. IBM announced in April 2025 a $150 billion U.S. investment over five years, including over $30 billion in research and development for quantum and mainframe computing. IBM’s Quantum System Two, the world’s first modular quantum computer, runs on a Bluefors KIDE Cryogenic Platform — a Finnish-designed dilution refrigerator now manufactured in both Europe and Syracuse, New York.

Google Quantum AI, operating from Santa Barbara, demonstrated its Willow chip in December 2024: 105 qubits arranged to achieve exponential error reduction as qubits scale — the first clear evidence of crossing the fault-tolerance threshold for quantum error correction. Google has not disclosed commercial revenue or customer deployments, but collaborates with research institutions and has integrated quantum offerings into Google Cloud.

Rigetti Computing (also a DCVC portfolio company) manufactures superconducting systems accessible via Amazon Braket but reported just $1.8 million in second quarter 2025 revenue with no annual guidance. The three publicly traded pure-play quantum computing companies — IonQ, Rigetti, and D-Wave — posted combined third-quarter 2024 revenues under $20 million.

Photonic and neutral atom platforms got a later start in commercial deployment but promise room-temperature operation and potentially easier scaling, with a chance to surpass superconducting and trapped-ion technologies. PsiQuantum has closed over $2 billion in funding and announced significant government investments for its fault-tolerant quantum computer project, with a $1 billion Series E round at a $7 billion valuation in September 2025 from big-name investors like BlackRock, Nvidia’s venture arm, NVentures, and the Qatar Investment Authority. PsiQuantum announced its Omega silicon-photonic chipset in January 2025, published its manufacturing roadmap to achieve an ambitious target of a fault-tolerant, million-qubit system by late 2027. Xanadu (Toronto) demonstrated quantum computational advantage on a programmable task in 2022 using its Borealis photonic processor, entangling up to 216 modes. Atom Computing (Boulder) is raising $300 million at a valuation between $1 billion and $2 billion, collaborating with Microsoft on error correction demonstrations. Through the Microsoft-Atom Computing partnership, the Danish government acquired “Magne,” a powerful commercial neutral atom quantum computer.

Quantum sensing is generating the clearest commercial traction. Space companies are exploring how quantum technologies can enhance space-based operations and satellite capabilities. Capella Space, a synthetic aperture radar satellite operator, represents the type of advanced space-based sensing that could benefit from quantum precision timing and navigation systems as the technology matures. Vector Atomic is already demonstrating quantum sensors aboard naval vessels. Q-CTRL’s quantum magnetometers operated successfully through takeoff, landing, and maneuvers — performance unthinkable for laboratory quantum systems even two years ago.

Both companies’ optical atomic clocks and quantum inertial measurement units are being designed with space deployment in mind, where the extreme precision and stability of quantum sensors could revolutionize satellite operations, deep space navigation, and space-based Earth observation. SandboxAQ’s AQNav system delivered real-time navigation data in just six months from development to airborne testing with Boeing. These systems address GPS vulnerability with technology that cannot be jammed, spoofed, or denied — but only if we can manufacture the underlying components reliably and at scale.

The question is whether America controls the supply chains to do so. A lead in deploying quantum technologies shows great promise for scientific discovery, economic innovation, and national security. Private capital and industry-led innovation have and will continue to be critical to operationalizing quantum technologies across the economy. But ensuring American companies can access the necessary inputs reliably, both on a per-unit cost basis and from secure suppliers, should be a focus of any broader quantum strategy.

What roles do our allies play? Collaboration with allies — especially Five Eyes and Indo-Pacific partners — should anchor America’s quantum strategy. Bilateral and multilateral agreements with the United Kingdom, Denmark, South Korea, Japan, and Australia can advance shared progress, but alliance-based efforts bring risks. Political friction can cause delays, joint programs can introduce new supply chain vulnerabilities, and coalition strategies may merely swap dependence on adversaries for dependence on allies. The answer is not isolation, but strategic primacy: The United States should lead core initiatives while engaging partners as integrated contributors. This strengthens the U.S. industrial base, secures decision-making authority, and ensures alliances complement, not replace, American technological leadership.

Can American companies lead in quantum technology and raise sufficient capital? Absolutely. We ask if American manufacturing capacity and secure supply chains can ensure that leadership translates to strategic advantage. In our next installment of this series, we will provide a breakdown of what raw materials and inputs are necessary for a quantum supply chain, what it means for such supply chains to be “secure,” and how this advances American quantum competitiveness.

Prineha Narang, PhD, is an American scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur. She is a professor at UCLA, operating partner at DCVC, and a non-resident fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation.

Joshua Levine is a research fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation.

Image: Graham Carlow for IBM via Flickr