The world’s deepest commercial quantum market, a Canadian policy push to keep headquarters at home, and a Mexican landscape that is research and teaching — not a startup scene.
United States
Commercial leader
Superconducting, trapped-ion, neutral-atom, photonic, and topological efforts all have serious US contenders, plus the hyperscaler clouds researchers elsewhere actually log into. The 2025–26 shift the brief describes is from research grants toward industrial policy: DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, CHIPS equity stakes, executive order 14413, and IBM’s purchase of HRL.
Programmes
National Quantum Initiative (2018 statute, coordinating role through December 2029) via NQCO, SCQIS, ESIX, and NQIAC. Public trackers cite about $1.2 billion cumulative; treat that total as approximate.
NSF FY2026: about $231 million requested for quantum information science. NQNI user-facility sites, roughly $60–100 million anticipated over FY2026–2030.
EO 14413 (June 2026), “Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation.” Updates the national strategy within 180 days. Creates QC–ADDS: at least one large-scale scientific quantum computer at a DOE facility. A White House fact sheet notes about $625 million in major national quantum research institutes.
NIST PQC: FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), 204 (ML-DSA), and 205 (SLH-DSA) finalised August 2024. HQC selected as a backup KEM in March 2025.
DARPA QBI: path toward industrial fault tolerance around 2033. About 11 Stage B companies reported as of November 2025, including Canadian firms.
CHIPS equity awards (letters of intent May 2026; final awards reported September 2026): a Commerce/NIST package reported at about $2.013 billion across nine companies, minority non-controlling stakes. Reported split: IBM about $1 billion; GlobalFoundries about $375 million; about $100 million each to D-Wave, Rigetti, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, Atom Computing, and Infleqtion; up to about $38 million to Diraq. Verify against Commerce releases.
Labs
DOE centres renewed in 2025 — see the table. Leads: Brookhaven (C2QA), Argonne (Q-NEXT), Berkeley with Sandia (QSA), Oak Ridge (QSC), Fermilab (SQMS).
NIST Gaithersburg and Boulder; Sandia; LANL; LLNL.
Chicago Quantum Exchange and the Duality accelerator. Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, UCSB, Maryland/JQI, CU Boulder/JILA, Caltech with AWS.
QED-C, the NIST-affiliated industry consortium.
DOE quantum centres
As listed on DOE pages in the North America brief. Directors were current as of that sourcing.
Centre
Lead
Director
Focus
C2QA
Brookhaven
Charles Black
Superconducting materials; modular superconducting and neutral atom; diamond
Early-stage names in the brief (EeroQ, Atlantic Quantum, Qolab, Logiqal, QC82) are a secondary list without enough public detail for a directory card. Foreign firms with a US footprint — OQC in New York, Alice & Bob in Boston, Q-CTRL, Classiq, Riverlane — are profiled under their home region.
Canada
Industrialising
Canada punches above its weight: D-Wave’s annealing first, 1QBit’s early software, Quantum Valley in Waterloo, and a Quebec superconducting cluster. The 2025–26 policy turn is about keeping headquarters in the country after D-Wave’s gravity pulled corporate offices south. The private-capital market is smaller than the US, which is the constraint the brief names.
Programmes
National Quantum Strategy (January 2023), envelope commonly cited at CAD $360 million. Three missions: computing hardware, cyber/PQC and sovereign communications, sensing. Historical government figure: more than $1 billion in quantum research, 2012–2022.
Budget 2025 / CQCP: CAD $334.3 million over five years. Phase 1 up to CAD $92 million — up to CAD $23 million each for Xanadu, Photonic Inc., Nord Quantique, and Anyon Systems, with Canadian HQ-retention conditions.
Xanadu Project OPTIMISM (August 2026): CAD $195 million via the Strategic Response Fund toward an about CAD $893 million manufacturing project, completing a federal portion of up to CAD $390 million announced in March 2026.
Quebec investments into Institut quantique / DistriQ (about CAD $131 million cited in secondary sources). Ontario’s historic Quantum Valley support. DRDC was an early Anyon customer. Calcul Québec runs MonarQ.
NRC benchmarking platform under CQCP. Three Canadian firms in US DARPA QBI Stage B: Xanadu, Nord Quantique, Photonic.
Labs
Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo.
Perimeter Institute and PIQuIL.
Institut quantique, Université de Sherbrooke; DistriQ.
Simon Fraser University (T-centre / photonic research with Stephanie Simmons).
CIFAR, Quantum Valley Investments, Creative Destruction Lab Quantum stream.
Quantum Bridge and QEYnet (QKD), Quantum eMotion (QRNG), and a sensing bench (SBQuantum and others) are named in the brief. Quantum Benchmark is no longer independent — see Keysight.
Mexico
Research & education
Honest assessment from the brief: the commercial quantum industry is minimal. No venture-scale hardware or software vendor comparable to US or Canadian peers. Online directories that list dozens of Mexican “quantum companies” mostly misclassify ordinary IT consultancies. No NQI-scale industrial strategy with large company awards was identified as of September 2026.
Policy and non-companies
SECIHTI, the science secretariat under the Sheinbaum administration, works with UNAM, CINVESTAV, and INAOE on semiconductor design capacity (Plan México / Proyecto Kutsari in Puebla, Jalisco, and Sonora). That is adjacent to quantum computing, not the same industry.
UNAM hosted QUANTUM@UNAM during the 2025 International Year of Quantum.
Detailed quantum line-item budgets were not clearly published in the English secondary sources reviewed. Treat any large “Mexico quantum company funding” claim as unverified.
SpinQ México distributes SpinQ teaching systems. It is not a domestic hardware developer. BitQ is an AI and embedded SME with marketing-stage quantum interest, not a scaled vendor — omitted from the directory on purpose.
Labs
UNAM (physics, nuclear sciences) — quantum optics and information; desktop teaching processors reported in 2023.