Who is building quantum technology, and where is the money going?

• Tech giants: IBM, Google, Microsoft and Amazon run quantum research labs and rent machines over the cloud. Nvidia builds the ordinary computing that sits alongside them.
• Specialist companies: firms focused on one approach (chapters 9 and 10), such as Quantinuum and IonQ (trapped ions), Rigetti (superconducting), QuEra and Pasqal (neutral atoms), PsiQuantum and Xanadu (light), and D-Wave (annealing).
• Software and error-correction companies: they write the programs and the error-fixing layers, for example Riverlane and Phasecraft in the UK.
• Sensing and networking companies: quantum clocks, gravity sensors, brain scanners and secure links (chapters 12 and 13).
• Universities and national labs: where most of the ideas start, and where many companies spin out.
• Governments and defence agencies: funders, customers and testers, such as DARPA's benchmarking programme (chapter 11).

Private investors put in about $12.6 billion in 2025, 90% of it into quantum computing. A handful of very large rounds made up much of that: PsiQuantum raised $1 billion in September 2025, for example.

Stock markets joined in. Several quantum companies listed shares in 2026, including Infleqtion (February), Xanadu (March) and Quantinuum, whose June listing raised about $1.7 billion and valued it at about $15 billion.

Big companies buy smaller ones. IonQ bought the Oxford start-up Oxford Ionics for about $1.08 billion in 2025 (page 15c).

Governments fund research, buy machines and, increasingly, take stakes. In May 2026 the US government signed letters of intent for about $2 billion in nine quantum firms in return for minority shares. The EU published a quantum strategy in July 2025. China's state venture fund, announced in 2025, covers quantum alongside other technologies.

Some. Quantum computing companies earned just over $1 billion in 2025, according to McKinsey, which expects up to about $4.4 billion by 2028. That's small next to the investment. Investors are betting on the future, not paying for today's results. Bets like that can pay off, and can also go wrong.

• A ten-year plan. The National Quantum Strategy (March 2023) committed £2.5 billion over 2024 to 2034, with five missions: quantum computers running a trillion operations by 2035; the most advanced quantum network at scale by 2035; quantum sensing benefiting every NHS trust by 2030; quantum navigation on aircraft by 2030; and networked quantum sensors in critical infrastructure by 2030.
• Research hubs. Five quantum hubs, led from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford and London, received £106 million in 2024.
• A national centre. The National Quantum Computing Centre at Harwell, Oxfordshire, opened in October 2024 with room for 12 quantum computers. Companies have installed test machines there, including Oxford Ionics, Quantum Motion and Infleqtion.
• More funding. In June 2025 the government announced £670 million for quantum computing, and in March 2026 a £2 billion package, including £1 billion to buy large quantum computers. It hasn't said how these overlap with the 2023 plan, so we don't add them up.

• OQC (Oxford and Reading, 2017): superconducting quantum computers. Raised £260 million in June 2026.
• Riverlane (Cambridge, 2016): error-correction systems that work with many types of machine (chapter 8).
• Quantum Motion (London, 2017): silicon qubits made with ordinary chip-factory methods. Raised $160 million in May 2026.
• Phasecraft (London and Bristol, 2019): software for simulating materials and chemistry.
• Universal Quantum (Brighton, 2018) and Oxford Ionics (Oxford, 2019, now part of IonQ): trapped ions controlled by electronics.
• Nu Quantum (Cambridge, 2018): links to network quantum computers together.
• ORCA Computing (London, 2019) and Aegiq (Sheffield, 2019): photonic computing and light sources.
• Quantinuum: part of its roots are British, through Cambridge Quantum, founded in 2014.
• Sensing: Delta.g (Birmingham) and Cerca Magnetics (Nottingham), from chapter 12.

Not directly. Share prices move on headlines, not just results. In December 2024 Google's Willow chip set off a rally in quantum shares. In January 2025 Nvidia's chief said useful machines were 15 to 30 years away, and D-Wave's shares fell by about a third in a day. Neither event changed what any machine could do.

Funding does buy real things: factories, staff, bigger machines and long-term research. But a company's value tells you what investors expect, not what its machines achieve. For that, use chapter 11's scorecard and chapter 16's five questions.