As the United States and China escalate their rivalry over quantum technology, companies across the sector are already repositioning to navigate the geopolitical storm, from building domestic manufacturing bases to creating standalone units for non-Western markets.
In the laboratory, physicists race to achieve entanglement, the phenomenon in which particles are inextricably linked regardless of distance. In the boardroom, quant firms are doing everything they can to avoid getting embroiled in another kind of entanglement between Washington and Beijing.
This week, US President Donald Trump signed a executive order directing federal agencies to strengthen domestic quantum supply chains and manufacturing capabilities, updating the national quantum strategy, and expanding counterintelligence protections for quantum technologies.
The order frames competing nations, including adversary countries, as a direct threat to US quantum leadership.
Against this background, the strategies of quant firms vary significantly by geography. US-based companies are focusing on local customers and supply chains, while UK and European players see an opening to serve allied and non-allied countries.
Taiwanese firms, caught between two superpowers, are racing to build sovereign quantum capabilities before tightening export controls close that window.
Executives from Quantum Computing Inc (QCI), Infleqtion and ORCA Computing, along with a board advisor from Foxconn, spoke to Asia Times on the sidelines of the Commercializing Quantum Global 2026 conference in London, organized by the Economist Enterprise, showing how they are navigating the intensifying US crackdown.
“To mitigate the risk imposed by geopolitics, we have been working on building up our manufacturing capabilities in the US. Right now, we are not subject to export control restrictions, but that may change. When there are restrictions, we just have to follow the rules,” said Yuping Huang, chairman and chief executive of QCI, a public interview at QCI, an Asian company listed in US public photos.
“Quantum technology is open. We need to use the open approach to quantum research and commercialization. The quantum industry can benefit from reduced interference from geopolitical factors,” he said.
QCI is expanding a thin-film lithium niobate foundry in Tempe, Arizona, to produce active and passive photonic chips, part of an intentional domestic manufacturing footprint spanning multiple US states. When asked if the company planned to set up a separate overseas unit to serve non-Western markets, Huang said the company had not yet considered that approach.
Huang graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2004 and received his PhD in quantum physics from Michigan State University. He founded QPhoton, a quantum photonics innovation firm, in 2020, before merging it with QCI in June 2022. He is the single largest shareholder in QCI and a US citizen.
Ryan Hanley, UK chief technology officer at Infleqtion, a US-based quantum atomic neutral technology company, said the firm works exclusively with allied countries given their shared values of national security and infrastructure development. He said Infleqtion is well positioned within the AUKUS framework of Australia, the UK and the US.
He said China has one of the largest state investments in quantum technology globally and can develop the technology rapidly because of its concentrated focus, but Infleqtion’s response is to align with allied nations rather than engage with either side of the rivalry.
He added that the company has structured its UK and US operations independently, allowing products developed in the UK to be offered to a wider range of markets than those covered by US export controls.
“This is a conscious business decision to do things separately so we can serve different parts of the market because of that export control,” he said.
The US tightens the screws
During the Biden administration, Washington moved to stifle China’s access to quantum technology, introducing export controls on quantum computers, critical components and related software in September 2024, followed by a ban on most US investment in China’s quantum sector that took effect in January 2025.
In March 2025, the Trump administration added about 80 companies on its export blacklist, more than 50 of which were Chinese, including six subsidiaries of the Inspur Group accused of buying American technologies to develop artificial intelligence and quantum technologies for the Chinese military.
On May 21 of this year, the Trump administration DESIGNATED $2 billion in federal CHIPS and Science Act incentives to nine quantum companies, including $1 billion for IBM to build a quantum-scale superconducting metal foundry and $375 million for GlobalFoundries to create a domestic quantum foundry.
Ann Dunkin, a distinguished professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and former chief information officer at the US Department of Energy, told the London conference that the US faces a structural weakness in the quantum race that goes beyond funding.
“The US is very good at innovating, but not at scaling things, and so we have to get to scale early, or China will overtake us,” she said. “China is very good at scaling things and you’ve seen industries where we’ve lost that battle.”
“We want to be in a position where if there’s going to be a handful of global foundries, we want the West to have that handful, or at least a fraction of it. From a geopolitical point of view, we otherwise risk the same problem we have now in many technologies, where we’re dependent on China for high-tech goods,” she said.
In July 2024, the US and nine allied countries established the Quantum Development Group (QDG) to coordinate quantum technology policies and promote resilient supply chains. The group expanded to 13 members at its fourth meeting in Tokyo last September. At its fifth meeting in London at the end of March 2026, members committed to deeper cooperation on research security, supply chain resilience and the development of quantum standards.
QDG membership includes Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA.
Manjari Chandran-Ramesh, a partner at Amadeus Capital, a global deep-tech investor, said she hoped geopolitical rivalry would prove to be background noise rather than a fundamental obstacle, pointing to QDG as evidence that multilateral quantum cooperation remains viable.
“European companies are in a position where we can take advantage of the fact that the US and China are doing a quantum race because we have good clusters across Europe and the UK and can offer a range of qubit modalities,” she said. A qubit, or quantum bit, is the fundamental unit of information in quantum computing.
It added that Europe’s existing foundry ecosystems around imec in Belgium, CEA-Leti in France and VTT in Finland give it the flexibility to serve a wider range of quantum hardware developers through multiple qubit technologies.
“The United States has tended to favor more American companies in their investments and increasingly have a US focus,” Richard Murray, co-founder and chief executive of ORCA Computing, a London-based quantum photonic computing company, told the Asia Times.
“The UK approach is better because it is much more open,” he said. “The UK’s objective is to attract leading global quantum companies to build their systems in the UK, as well as support UK companies.”
He said ORCA sees itself as competing with the leading global quantum companies in that open market.
ORCA’s existing customers span allied countries across Europe, North America and Asia, including the UK Ministry of Defence, the National Quantum Computing Centre, the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center in Poland and Montana State University in the US.
In its last commercial moment, ORCA placed its PT-2 system to a large Japanese enterprise through a partnership with trading house Toyota Tsusho, which it described as the world’s first commercial installation of a quantum computer. The PT-2, a photonic quantum computer housed in standard 19-inch server racks that did not require specialized cooling, was deployed in less than a week within a live enterprise environment.
Taiwan walks alone
While the US has export controls, Beijing is building its quantum ecosystem through heavy investments in academic research and commercialization.
Guo Guoping, a professor at USTC and secretary general of the quantum computing committee of the Chinese Computer Federation, said In the past year the US and the Netherlands have tightened export controls for quantum chips and semiconductor devices, making indigenous development across the full technology chain a strategic imperative.
Taiwan finds itself in a particularly difficult position, excluded from China’s quantum ecosystem by political reality and absent from the framework of the QDG allied nation, leaving it to navigate the quantum race largely on its own.
Ching-Ray Chang, a board member at Hon Hai Precision Industry, known as Foxconn, and director of the quantum information center at Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan, said the geopolitical environment for quantum technology is fundamentally different from the era when Taiwan built its semiconductor industry.
“Fifty years ago, when Taiwan started making semiconductors, there was no classification at all. Everyone shared knowledge with each other. But now, even though you can pay money, sometimes you can’t get any technology transfer,” he said.
“Each country is trying to build its own quantum technology because it’s a kind of sovereignty issue. You have to develop and control a lot of things yourself; you can’t rely on others. Not just patents, but also manufacturing,” he said.
Chang said Taiwan was late to develop quantum technology because all its talent, capital and resources remained tied up in the semiconductor industry, but the government and large companies, including Foxconn, have already started investing in quantum.
He said Foxconn remains at an early stage compared to global peers, but plans to launch a prototype quantum computer as early as next year.
Read: US and China escalate quantum race with rival investment incentives
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