As the United States and China deepen their competitive standoff over cutting-edge quantum technology, private sector players across the global quantum ecosystem are rapidly reshaping their operational models to avoid being swept up in geopolitical crossfire. Tactics range from building localized domestic manufacturing hubs to splitting regional operations into independent units that can serve non-Western markets without triggering regulatory penalties.
While physicists in laboratories race to master quantum entanglement – the bizarre physical phenomenon that binds particles across unlimited distances – corporate leaders in boardrooms are working overtime to avoid a far messier entanglement: the geopolitical split between Washington and Beijing.
The most recent major escalation came this week, when US President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating that federal agencies reinforce domestic quantum supply chains and manufacturing capacity, update the country’s national quantum development strategy, and beef up counterintelligence protections for the emerging technology. The order frames international competitors, specifically labeled adversarial nations, as direct threats to America’s goal of retaining global quantum leadership.
Against this shifting regulatory and geopolitical backdrop, quantum firms are adopting vastly different strategies based on their geographic positioning. US-headquartered companies are prioritizing local customers and localized supply chains, while European and British industry players are positioning themselves to capture market share in both allied and non-aligned nations. For Taiwanese companies, stuck between the world’s two largest superpowers, the priority is to build sovereign domestic quantum capabilities before tightening export controls close off the window for development entirely.
Industry leaders gathered at the 2026 Commercializing Quantum Global conference in London, hosted by Economist Enterprise, shared their adaptive strategies with Asia Times on the event’s sidelines. Participants included executives from Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI), Infleqtion, and ORCA Computing, alongside a board advisor from major manufacturing giant Foxconn.
Yuping Huang, chairman and CEO of publicly traded US quantum photonics firm QCI, explained that his company has prioritized building out domestic US manufacturing to mitigate geopolitical risk. “Right now, we are not subject to export control restrictions, but that could change. When there are restrictions, we just have to follow the rules,” Huang said in the interview. “Quantum technology is open. We should use the open approach to studying and commercializing quantum. The quantum industry can benefit from reduced interference from geopolitical factors.”
QCI is currently expanding a thin-film lithium niobate foundry in Tempe, Arizona, to produce both active and passive photonic chips, part of a planned domestic manufacturing footprint that spans multiple US states. When asked about plans to launch a separate overseas division for non-Western markets, Huang noted the company has not yet considered that structure. A US citizen who graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2004 before earning his PhD in quantum physics from Michigan State University, Huang founded quantum photonics startup QPhoton in 2020 before merging it with QCI in 2022, and he remains the firm’s largest single shareholder.
For Infleqtion, a US-based neutral atom quantum technology firm, the strategy centers on clear alignment with allied security frameworks. Ryan Hanley, the company’s UK chief technology officer, told the outlet that Infleqtion only partners with allied nations, aligned with shared national security values, and is well integrated into the AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the UK, and the US. He acknowledged that China boasts one of the world’s largest state-backed quantum investment programs and can scale technology rapidly thanks to its concentrated strategic focus, but Infleqtion has opted to align exclusively with allied blocs rather than attempt to straddle both sides of the rivalry.
To balance market access and regulatory compliance, Hanley added that the firm has structured its UK and US operations as fully independent entities. This split structure allows products developed in the UK to be sold to a wider range of markets than those permitted under US export control rules. “That is a conscious business decision to do things separately, such that we can serve different parts of the market because of that export control,” he explained.
The trend of US export restrictions on quantum technology has built incrementally over the past two years. During the Biden administration, Washington moved to cut off China’s access to advanced quantum tools, implementing export controls on quantum computers, critical components and related software in September 2024, followed by a ban on most US investments in China’s quantum sector that took effect in January 2025. In March 2025, the Trump administration added roughly 80 companies to its US export blacklist, more than 50 of which are Chinese, including six subsidiaries of Inspur Group that were accused of acquiring US technologies to advance military AI and quantum development. On May 21, 2026, the administration announced $2 billion in federal incentives through the CHIPS and Science Act for nine domestic quantum companies, including $1 billion for IBM to build a quantum-grade superconducting wafer foundry and $375 million for GlobalFoundries to establish a domestic quantum manufacturing facility.
Speaking at the London conference, Ann Dunkin, a distinguished professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and former chief information officer at the US Department of Energy, argued that the US faces structural challenges in the quantum race that go far beyond a lack of funding. “The US is very good at innovation, but not scaling things, and so we need to get in early to scale, or China will outpace us,” she said. “China is very good at scaling things, and you have seen industries where we have lost that battle.”
Dunkin added that Western control of quantum manufacturing capacity is a critical strategic priority: “We want to be in a position where if there are going to be a handful of global foundries, we want the West to have that handful, or at least some of that handful. From a geopolitical standpoint, we run the risk otherwise of the same problem we have right now in many technologies, where we are dependent upon China for high-tech goods.”
Multilateral cooperation among Western aligned nations has already formalized in recent years. In July 2024, the US and nine allied nations launched the Quantum Development Group (QDG) to coordinate quantum policy and build resilient cross-border supply chains. The bloc expanded to 13 members during its fourth meeting in Tokyo in September 2025, and at its fifth meeting in London in March 2026, members committed to deeper collaboration on research security, supply chain resilience, and global quantum standards development. Current QDG members include Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.
Manjari Chandran-Ramesh, a partner at global deep-tech investment firm Amadeus Capital, expressed hope that geopolitical rivalry would remain background noise rather than a permanent barrier to industry progress, pointing to the QDG as proof that multilateral quantum cooperation remains achievable. She noted that European firms are uniquely positioned to benefit from the US-China split, thanks to robust research and manufacturing clusters across the continent that can support multiple qubit technology modalities. The existing foundry ecosystem anchored by institutions like Belgium’s imec, France’s CEA-Leti, and Finland’s VTT gives Europe the flexibility to serve a wide range of quantum hardware developers across different technology paths, she added.
London-based photonic quantum computing firm ORCA Computing embodies the European open market approach. Co-founder and CEO Richard Murray noted that US policy has increasingly prioritized domestic firms and focused investment on homegrown players, while the UK’s framework is far more open to global participation. “The UK’s approach is better because it’s much more open,” Murray said. “The UK’s target is to attract globally leading quantum companies to build their systems in the UK, as well as supporting UK companies.”
ORCA positions itself as a competitive global player in this open market, with existing customers spanning allied nations across Europe, North America, and Asia, including the UK Ministry of Defense, the UK National Quantum Computing Center, Poland’s Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, and Montana State University in the US. The firm recently notched a major commercial milestone, deploying its PT-2 photonic quantum system at a major Japanese enterprise in partnership with trading house Toyota Tsusho. The company calls the installation the world’s first commercial deployment of a quantum computer in a live enterprise setting; the PT-2 fits in standard 19-inch server racks, requires no specialized cryogenic cooling, and was fully deployed in less than a week.
While the US builds restrictive regulatory frameworks to limit Chinese quantum progress, Beijing is investing heavily to build out a fully domestic quantum ecosystem, from academic research to commercial deployment. Guo Guoping, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and secretary-general of the Chinese Computer Federation’s quantum computing committee, noted last year that tightened export controls on quantum chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment from the US and Netherlands have made full indigenous development of the entire quantum technology chain a core strategic necessity for China.
No region faces a more complicated balancing act than Taiwan, which is cut off from China’s quantum ecosystem by political tensions and excluded from the QDG’s allied framework, forcing it to pursue quantum development largely independently. Ching-Ray Chang, a board member at Taiwan-based manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry (better known as Foxconn) and director of the quantum information center at Taiwan’s Chung Yuan Christian University, said the geopolitical context for quantum development is fundamentally different from the era when Taiwan built its world-leading semiconductor industry.
“Fifty years ago, when Taiwan started to make semiconductors, there was no classification at all. Everybody shared the knowledge with each other. But right now, even though you can pay money, sometimes you cannot get any technology transfer,” Chang explained. “Every country is trying to build its own quantum technology because this is some kind of sovereignty issue. You need to develop and control many things yourself; you cannot rely on others. Not only the patents, but also the production.”
Chang acknowledged that Taiwan was late to enter the quantum race, as all of its top talent, capital, and resources remained tied to its dominant semiconductor industry, but the Taiwanese government and major local firms including Foxconn have already begun pouring investment into the sector. While Foxconn remains in an early development stage relative to global leaders, the firm plans to launch a prototype quantum computer as early as 2027.