Asia & Israel

Quantum is a named “future industry” in the 15th Five-Year Plan (March 2026). The geographic centre is still Hefei: the national laboratory, USTC, and the spinouts. Commercial computing is narrower than the United States. Origin Quantum is the full-stack flagship. Quantum communication is the mature commercial layer — the Beijing–Shanghai backbone has operated since 2017, and longer national-network distances are company or state claims. China Telecom took control of QuantumCTek around January 2025. US and allied export controls on cryogenics and fab tools are the structural constraint the brief names.

Notable companies

Tencent Quantum Lab is active in algorithms and has no public full-stack hardware. MiQro Era is a smaller software house. XtalPi is quantum-adjacent chemistry, not a QPU maker.

Not a venture-startup market. Fujitsu with RIKEN, Toshiba and NTT on QKD, and a cryogenics and materials supply chain are the strengths. Policy language called 2025 the “first year of quantum industrialisation.” Moonshot Goal 6 aims at a fault-tolerant machine by 2050. Aggregated funding figures — including an SGQI booklet’s ~$7.9 billion — need a definition check before anyone treats them as a budget. Watch the 1,000-qubit Fujitsu installation: it was a 2026 target, not a confirmed operational machine at cutoff.

Notable companies

Also named: blueqat, Jij, Quemix, Fixstars Amplify, SoftBank (investor, including in QuEra), Hitachi’s annealing products. Labs: RIKEN RQC (Wako), AIST G-QuAT (Tsukuba), University of Tokyo, Keio, Osaka, Kyoto, NICT, QST, OIST. QuEra’s Gemini is a US machine on Japanese soil.

Ministers have described a late start. Funding rose from about KRW 128.5 billion in 2024 to about KRW 198.4 billion in 2025; longer “KRW 3 trillion” envelopes need a definition check. The industrial base in semiconductors and telecoms is world-class, and PQC/QKD products are real. There is no scaled indigenous gate-model OEM yet. Access runs through IBM (KQC) and IonQ (SK Telecom, and KISTI’s Tempo hosting). KRISS hardware targets for 2029 are secondary reporting — verify the primary.

Notable companies

Labs cluster in Daejeon: KAIST, KIST, ETRI, KRISS, KISTI. Qunova (chemistry software), SDT, and a security bench (EYL, Dream Security, ICTK) are early or component-scale. LG and KT run QKD pilots. “QuantaLab” was not verified.

The National Quantum Mission, approved April 2023, is ₹6,003 crore (about $735 million) through 2031. Strength is coordination, quantum-secure communications, and the IT-services layer. Indigenous fault-tolerant hardware is not the current story. QpiAI is the hardware flagship, at early qubit counts. QNu leads communications. TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, LTIMindtree, and Tech Mahindra run quantum practices — consulting and migration, not processors — and are left off the directory so they are not mistaken for OEMs.

National Quantum Office (2022), at A*STAR, implements a May 2024 strategy of nearly SGD 300 million over five years. Singapore is not a primary QPU manufacturing nation. The strategy is partnership, talent, safe networks, and fabless work. Quantinuum opened a centre in 2026; Helios onshore was described as later in 2026 and was not confirmed live at cutoff. Horizon Quantum listed on Nasdaq in March 2026.

CQT at NUS, NTU, and NSCC. Squareroot8 has a 2026 MoU with Quantinuum. NQO-cited foreign partners include NVIDIA, AWS, Quobly, Pasqal, Keysight, and Qolab.

The comparative advantage is control electronics, circuit synthesis, and error mitigation — complementary to US and European hardware — plus defence-driven sensing. The Israel National Quantum Initiative is about ILS 1.25 billion (around $370 million) committed through 2026, so renewal was a near-term question at the cutoff. Hardware startups are earlier-stage and treated as credible. Rafael and IAI are defence-adjacent; the brief says not to invent public QC products for them.

Labs: Weizmann, Technion, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University. HEQA, QuantLR, and Hub Security are the PQC/QKD layer. Tower Semiconductor has a reported photonic-chip partnership with Xanadu.

High strategic potential, early commercial vendors. TSMC’s cryogenic CMOS work and ITRI’s superconducting fabrication are the story, plus an NCHC procurement for a roughly 150-qubit hybrid system in Tainan around 2029 — a buyer’s plan, not a deployed machine. SGQI puts cumulative public funding near $248 million. SEEQC has an MoU on cryo-chip supply. No dense QPU startup cluster as of September 2026, so there is no Taiwan company card.

Saudi Arabia. Aramco and Pasqal inaugurated a commercial neutral-atom QCaaS platform in Dhahran on 18 May 2026, described as the Middle East’s first, with 200 programmable qubits as a company and Aramco claim. Initial deployment was November 2025. KAUST announced a Quantum Foundry in January 2026. This is buy-and-operate access, not a domestic OEM. The processor company is Pasqal.

UAE. The Technology Innovation Institute’s Quantum Research Centre in Abu Dhabi is pursuing in-house superconducting fabrication. Secondary sources cite devices from roughly 5 to 80 qubits and a cloud service from February 2026. Treat those counts as institute-asserted. Neither Gulf state has a startup density comparable to Israel or Singapore. Bahrain, Qatar, and neighbours: no material commercial industry found.

Honest sparse assessment. Malaysia’s MIMOS Quantum Intelligence Centre launched in February 2025; a national policy for 2026–2035 is cited in MIMOS materials and should be checked for gazette status. Indonesia’s BRIN runs talent programmes and a security roadmap is cited in secondary analyses. Vietnam’s VNQuantum network launched in August 2025. Thailand has a 2026 quantum club and roadmap mentions. No globally scaled QPU vendor was identified. Regional gravity sits in Singapore.

Rosatom’s quantum programme, the Russian Quantum Center, and Moscow State University are scientifically active under export controls in place since 2022. A 72-qubit atom-based system tested in late 2025 is state-asserted, with limited independent verification. Do not treat it as a peer of IBM, Fujitsu, or Origin commercial clouds. The brief includes this as Eurasian context only. No directory card.