Quantum News Nexus

It’s World Quantum Day 2026! Please celebrate responsibly.

WQD is always a busy day for quantum news, and among today’s breaking headlines, the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) announced its latest report on the status of the sector: “State of the Global Quantum Industry 2025.”

This report surfaced one day before the QED-C Quantum Summit in Washington, D.C., which is expected to draw representatives from the White House, the National Science Foundation, Nvidia, and others, according to the QED-C. 

The data is mostly very positive and unsurprising: The global quantum technology market, including both quantum computing and quantum sensing, reached $1.9 billion last year, and is expected to more than double by 2028, surpassing $4 billion. 

Meanwhile, investment in the sector continues to be strong, too, as public funding commitments for quantum research and innovation hit an estimated $56.7 billion total in 2025, representing an increase of more than $12.7 billion over the previous year. The evidence of this rise could be seen in numerous announcements over the last year by governments in the US, UK, Japan, Italy, and more.

On the private sector side, venture capital investment in quantum reached $4.9 billion in 2025 There were 219 companies reporting venture funding, up from 194 in 2024, and a larger percentage of the deals involved later-stage funding. US quantum companies alone raised more than $2.7 billion in venture capital in 2025, about $1 billion more than in 2024.

The QED-C report identified 7,418 quantum-engaged organizations worldwide at the end of

2025, including 556 pure-play quantum companies. The quantum workforce also grew by 14% in 2025 to more than 16,000 professionals, as the sector filled some 2,000 jobs. There were also more than 8.200 new jobs added, however, so building up the quantum workforce continues to be an area of need.

There are a couple of things in the report that could be seen as negatives from a US point of view: China continues to be the king of public quantum funding, with about $15.3 billion last year, compared to $7.9 billion in Japan and $7.7 million in the US. Public funding in Japan jumped last year by more than $7 billion, while in the US it actually declined by $30 million, and though total public quantum funding in the US was higher than in places like the UK and Germany, both of those countries saw increases in public funding. 

This would seem to go against any narrative suggesting the Trump administration accelerated US government quantum funding last year, although a couple of announcements of future funding by government departments did come near the very end of 2025.

Also, China continues to have more robust quantum patent activity than the US or elsewhere, with more than 54% of worldwide quantum patents registered in China. Some reports earlier in the decade had the US ahead in this area.

You can slice these things in a number of ways: China’s public sector spends more because all of its goals are state-driven and controlled, while the US is free enterprise, and thus, more of its innovation dollars should be expected to come from the private sector. Or China has more patents, but US companies have more “broader impact” patents. Still, if quantum is another global space race, as so many have suggested, it remains a very close race.

Image by freepik

Quantum News Nexus is a site from freelance writer and editor Dan O’Shea that covers quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networking, quantum-safe security, and more. You can find him on X @QuantumNewsGuy and doshea14@gmail.com.