Region 05 · Full brief

Oceania

Australia is a globally significant commercial and research ecosystem. New Zealand contributes optics and a small photonics industry. Pacific island states are not quantum-industry participants on the evidence in the brief.

Australia

Globally significant

Silicon is the distinctive technical brand: atom-precision donors at SQC and CMOS quantum dots at Diraq, both in DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative Stage B. Utility-scale photonics is being anchored by PsiQuantum in Queensland rather than grown only from a domestic photonic headquarters. Software and sensing — Q-CTRL, QuintessenceLabs — punch above hardware headcount. Room-temperature diamond (Quantum Brilliance) and Archer’s listed 12CQ concept diversify the bet. Capital is a mix of NRFC equity, state money, Telstra and CBA, deep-tech venture, and US defence pathways.

Policy

National Quantum Strategy (May 2023, Industry department). Vision: a recognised leader by 2030. Five themes over seven years. Consultation led by then Chief Scientist Cathy Foley. Financing channel: the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, with at least $1 billion earmarked for critical technologies.
CSIRO roadmap scenarios, not forecasts: commonly cited ~$2.2 billion and ~8,700 jobs by 2030, and ~$6 billion and ~19,400 jobs by 2040–45.
Quantum Australia growth centre (2024). CEO Petra Andrén, appointed around March 2025. Conference in Adelaide, 29–30 April 2026.
Defence. DSTG, AUKUS Pillar II / AQuA with an early focus on positioning, navigation, and timing. An April 2025 ground-to-satellite optical timing project with CSIRO, ANU, and UWA. ASCA awards in August 2025 included SQC and CSIRO. Programme context cited about $60 million over three years for emerging tech — verify the cumulative on defence.gov.au.
PsiQuantum package. April 2024: Commonwealth and Queensland about A$470 million each. Secondary trackers cite A$940 million. Groundbreaking at Moreton Bay Central on 18 June 2026. A parallel US groundbreaking at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park was 30 September 2025. Series E above $1 billion was announced around September 2025.

Poles and labs

Sydney: SQC, Diraq, Q-CTRL, Iceberg, Emergence, Eigensystems. UNSW (silicon; ARC Centre QPI, Andrea Morello), University of Sydney, Sydney Quantum Academy, UTS, Macquarie.
Brisbane / Moreton Bay: PsiQuantum, Analog Quantum Circuits, Griffith test lab, UQ.
Canberra: QuintessenceLabs, ANU diamond and optics lineage, CatQ, Defence adjacency.
Adelaide: QuantX Labs, Archer, University of Adelaide. Quantum Australia 2026 host.
Melbourne: Nomad Atomics, University of Melbourne IBM Quantum Hub, reported diamond-foundry activity.
CSIRO, ANSTO (isotopic silicon), Main Sequence as an investor.

Notable companies

PsiQuantum (AU site) Silicon Quantum Computing Diraq Q-CTRL Quantum Brilliance QuintessenceLabs Archer Materials Iceberg Quantum Emergence Quantum Analog Quantum Circuits QuantX Labs DeteQt Nomad Atomics Eigensystems

CatQ (ANU photonic spinout) is early-stage and not carded. Telstra is an investor and trial partner, not a QC vendor. QDX is drug-discovery software with an ANU presence.

New Zealand

Research-led

No known standalone quantum-computer hardware companies as of mid/late 2026. Strengths are quantum optics, precision atomic physics, superconductivity and cryogenic research, and a photonics commercial layer. Cloud access and overseas partnerships stand in for domestic builders.

Quantum Technologies Aotearoa (2024–2028), led by Te Whai Ao — Dodd-Walls Centre, hosted at Otago. MBIE Catalyst grant of NZ$12 million. Collaborators cited include JQI, CQT Singapore, DLR, a UK quantum hub, and KAIST.
There is no single MBIE “quantum strategy” white paper equivalent to Australia’s 2023 document. NZIAT ran a NZ$1.35 million discovery phase (December 2025–June 2026) and by September 2026 was described as moving into design. That is a process step, not a decision to build a national lab.
Dodd-Walls and the Jack Dodd Centre; University of Auckland; Otago; Victoria University of Wellington and the Robinson Research Institute (superconducting components).
Quantifi Photonics (Auckland) — photonic test equipment, acquired by Teradyne in 2025. Southern Photonics — optical test instruments since 2001. Neither builds quantum computers. They are omitted from the directory so a photonic filter does not imply a New Zealand QPU.

Papua New Guinea and the Pacific

No industry identified

No commercial quantum hardware or software industry, no national QC strategy, and no university-scale experimental programme comparable to Australia or New Zealand showed up in the sources reviewed. What exists at the margin is curriculum advocacy and regional cybersecurity training that sometimes covers post-quantum cryptography. That is crypto-agility, not a quantum computer. Anything claiming a Papua New Guinea “quantum computing company” should be checked carefully; name collisions exist without evidence of qubit R&D. Absence of evidence is not a proof of absolute zero, and the brief’s finding is still: no credible industry presence.