Is there a recipe for a Quantum Valley? 

Quantum Hubs

JUL 4, 2026 / BY YLAN TRAN

The opinions, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers, affiliated institutions, or any organizations with which they are associated. The author(s) bear full responsibility for the content.

As investors search for the next quantum champion and governments compete to secure their place in the industry’s emerging value chain, the race is on. For some, the goal is to uncover the next Nvidia with outsized returns and for others, it is about securing a strategic position in a technology that could reshape the global balance of power.

This growing momentum is giving rise to quantum hubs across the globe. From Chicago to Tokyo, via Paris, Munich, and beyond, several hubs are positioning themselves at the forefront of the quantum revolution. On the surface, they seem to follow a playbook: a leading research university, substantial public investment, and a vibrant venture capital ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, many have begun branding themselves as the « Quantum Valley. »

The comparison with the Silicon Valley is deliberate. Today, California is the world’s fifth-largest economy, with a nominal GDP of $4.25 trillion, a status mostly owed to the innovation engine that emerged south of San Francisco. Yet despite decades of ambition and billions of dollars in investment, Silicon Valley has never been successfully replicated elsewhere. Its success was the product of a unique convergence of talent, capital, entrepreneurship, and timing.

Quantum technologies offer sovereign nations a rare opportunity to build the next great innovation ecosystem from the ground up. If quantum computing delivers on its promise of transforming modern computing, the region that succeeds in concentrating talent, capital, industry, and research could become one of the defining economic engines of the twenty-first century.

But what does it actually take to create such an ecosystem? Is there already a location with the right ingredients to become the world’s quantum capital? Or does quantum’s fundamental different nature make the very idea of a single dominant hub obsolete? Rather than one Quantum Valley, the future may well belong to a network of interconnected centres, each specializing in different parts of the quantum value chain.

Applying Silicon Valley’s Lessons to Quantum

First, one fundamental distinction between the rise of the semiconductor industry, which ultimately gave birth to Silicon Valley, and today’s quantum industry lies in their respective stages of development. A brief look at history makes this clear: the invention of the transistor predated Silicon Valley itself.

The transistor was developed at Bell Labs in December 1947, on the U.S. East Coast, within a research laboratory funded by AT&T. Following antitrust action, AT&T was required to license the technology broadly. It was under these circumstances that William Shockley, one of the transistor’s inventors, moved to Mountain View with a license in hand, long before Silicon Valley had established itself as the world’s leading technology cluster.

The region’s transformation accelerated during the 1960s. Under the influence of Stanford administrator Fred Terman, a culture of academic entrepreneurship and spin-offs began to take root. Fairchild Semiconductor spawned an extraordinary generation of companies, the so-called « Fairchildren », including Intel, AMD, and many of the industry’s future leaders. Silicon Valley did not invent the transistor; rather, it became the ecosystem that scaled the technology, concentrated talent and capital, and helped establish silicon, rather than germanium, as the industry’s dominant material, largely because it proved better suited to mass manufacturing.

Quantum technology stands at a much earlier stage today. The industry has yet to converge around a dominant technological approach, a clear commercial model, or even a settled industrial architecture. Yet history offers valuable clues. While no one can predict where the quantum industry’s center of gravity will ultimately emerge, the lessons of Silicon Valley, and the early signals already visible today, provide a useful framework for identifying the regions most likely to become tomorrow’s « Quantum Valley. »

Public funding: why it mattered and will matter?

According to Stanford historian Margaret O’Mara, Silicon Valley’s rise in the decades following World War II, what she describes as an « entrepreneurial Galápagos », was driven above all by the sustained backing of the U.S. federal government. Against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Space Race, public funding created an intensely competitive environment in which companies and universities competed for research contracts from DARPA and other federal agencies. The government also became the innovation ecosystem’s first major customer, accelerating the commercialization of emerging technologies such as the earliest integrated circuits.

The parallels with today’s quantum landscape are striking. As geopolitical tensions intensify, from the war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East to the strategic rivalry between the United States and China, public investment is once again flowing toward technologies considered critical to national security, among them quantum technologies. Many are inherently dual-use, with both civilian and military applications, while the prospect of a cryptographically relevant, fault-tolerant quantum computer (CRQC) has elevated quantum computing from a scientific ambition to a strategic imperative.

In this new technological race, DARPA is once again playing a role reminiscent of its contribution to the early semiconductor era, partnering with quantum hubs to test and evaluate quantum computing prototypes and also directly funding a broad portfolio of competing approaches at a time when no technological path has yet emerged as the clear winner. Although the United States has yet to commit to large-scale procurement of quantum processors, Europe and Japan have already taken initial steps through initiatives such as EuroHPC and G-QuAT, which are beginning to integrate quantum systems into high-performance computing infrastructure.

That said, U.S. policy appears to be gathering momentum. The White House has signaled that quantum technologies should become a national priority through a new Executive Order; the Department of Energy has announced its ambition to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2028; and the Department of Commerce has outlined plans for up to $2 billion in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act to strengthen the domestic quantum ecosystem. Yet despite this accelerating policy support, the federal government has not yet become the large-scale customer that proved so decisive during the early years of the semiconductor industry.

Attracting and training talents: a decisive political move to build the future quantum valley

Beyond direct public funding to companies via public procurement for example, the American government also fostered the free movement of talent, one of the defining characteristics of Silicon Valley’s rise. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the discriminatory national-origin quotas introduced in the 1920s, opening the door to highly skilled scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs from around the world. California’s labor laws reinforced this dynamic. Because non-compete agreements were largely unenforceable, engineers could move freely between companies such as Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, and Hewlett-Packard, allowing ideas, expertise, and professional networks to circulate at an exceptional pace.

At the same time, decades of sustained investment in higher education and academic research, from the 1950s through the 1980s, provided the intellectual foundation on which the region’s innovation ecosystem was built. Universities were not merely suppliers of talent; they became engines of discovery, entrepreneurship, and company formation.

Viewed through this historical lens, some recent developments in the United States appear to run counter to the very conditions that once enabled Silicon Valley to flourish. The Trump administration’s proposed 2027 budget would reduce funding for the National Science Foundation by more than 50%, while tighter immigration policies, including stricter rules for H-1B visas, risk making it more difficult to attract the highly skilled international workforce that has long fueled American technological leadership.

By contrast, the Netherlands, as an example, has quietly positioned itself as one of Europe’s most attractive destinations for global talent. Its Kennismigrant (« highly skilled migrant ») visa is widely regarded as one of the continent’s most effective immigration schemes for recruiting international experts. Combined with favorable tax incentives, including the well-known 30% tax ruling for eligible expatriates, and policies designed to facilitate the hiring of world-class researchers, the Dutch ecosystem offers many of the ingredients that have historically underpinned successful technology clusters.

Private funding: what is still missing?

Venture capital is inseparable from the history of Silicon Valley. It was not merely a by-product of the region’s success, it was one of its principal engines. Early firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, both headquartered just minutes from Stanford University, played a pivotal role in turning laboratory breakthroughs into global companies. They provided far more than capital: they brought industry expertise, strategic guidance, extensive networks, and, perhaps most importantly, a willingness to finance technologies whose commercial potential remained highly uncertain.

This unique partnership between scientific innovation and patient private capital did not emerge by chance. It was enabled by a series of structural reforms introduced in the United States during the 1970s. The relaxation of restrictions on institutional investors, most notably through the 1979 reinterpretation of the « prudent man rule », together with a favorable capital gains tax regime, created the regulatory conditions for venture capital to flourish. The result was a financing model capable of supporting high-risk, long-horizon innovation and bringing breakthrough technologies to market at scale.

Although venture capital has since become a global industry, proximity still matters. Successful innovation clusters rely on investors who are deeply embedded in their local ecosystems and able to work closely with researchers as they transform scientific discoveries into commercially viable spin-outs.

Chicago offers a compelling example. The Chicago Quantum Exchange, the largest university-led quantum initiative in the United States, is anchored by the University of Chicago and backed by strong support from the State of Illinois, including the creation of the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park. On the private side, Duality, the country’s first quantum-focused accelerator, supported by partners including IBM Ventures, has already helped launch more than 25 quantum start-ups. A similar model has emerged in Sherbrooke, where public institutions such as Investissement Quebec work alongside the Université de Sherbrooke and specialized investors including Quantacet and Quantonation to nurture a growing quantum ecosystem.

The financing challenge, however, is becoming increasingly acute. Quantum technologies, and deep tech more broadly, require significantly larger amounts of capital and much longer investment horizons than traditional software ventures. As late-stage financing remains scarce, policymakers and investors across Europe are seeking ways to channel more long-term institutional capital into venture investing. In particular, there is growing support for directing a larger share of pension and insurance assets toward high-growth technology companies.

France’s Tibi Initiative exemplifies this shift. Its first phase mobilized more than €6 billion in institutional commitments, followed by a second phase that increased the total to nearly €7 billion. At this year’s VivaTech conference, a third phase was announced with an even stronger emphasis on breakthrough innovation: half of all new commitments will now be directed toward deep-tech companies, including quantum start-ups, supported by an expanded pool of institutional investors.

Quantum Hubs: Between National Strategy and Local Policy

Finally, none of these public policies would likely have had the same impact without a broad political consensus on the strategic importance of technology. Throughout the rise of the semiconductor industry, dialogue between Washington and industry was facilitated by organizations such as the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), which helped policymakers recognize the economic and national security implications of microelectronics long before they became widely understood.

A similar dynamic can be observed in today’s quantum ecosystem. Industry organizations such as the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) in the United States, UKQuantum in the United Kingdom, and Q-STAR in Japan play an increasingly important role in shaping public policy. By bringing together industry, academia, and government, they help build political support for quantum technologies as drivers of economic competitiveness, industrial leadership, and technological sovereignty.

Equally important is the alignment between national strategy and local initiatives. Thriving innovation clusters rarely emerge in isolation; they depend on a national framework that enables regional ecosystems to develop organically and specialize in the highest-value segments of the technology stack. Scotland’s experience with Silicon Glen illustrates the risks of failing to achieve this alignment. At its peak in the 1990s, the cluster employed nearly 50,000 people, accounted for roughly 35% of Europe’s PC production, and produced around 12% of the world’s semiconductors. Yet despite these impressive figures, Silicon Glen never secured a lasting position in the industry’s most profitable segments. Its economy remained heavily concentrated in computer assembly, while chip design, advanced manufacturing, and the highest-value activities were carried out elsewhere. The region’s factories were tellingly nicknamed « screwdriver shops », reflecting their limited contribution to technological innovation.

This outcome was, in part, the consequence of a deliberate policy choice. Rather than fostering a domestic technology ecosystem, the British government prioritized attracting foreign multinationals as a response to deindustrialization and rising unemployment. While successful in creating manufacturing jobs, this strategy did little to cultivate indigenous technological capabilities or locally rooted innovation.

Governance models differ considerably across the United States, Europe, and China, and the American federal system gives individual states greater latitude to shape their own innovation policies. Yet one lesson appears remarkably consistent across jurisdictions: no region is likely to become a true Quantum Valley without a national strategy that actively supports the development of a self-sustaining ecosystem, particularly in the most technologically sophisticated and value-generating segments of the quantum supply chain.

Rethinking the Silicon Valley Model for Quantum

The previous analysis highlights several defining characteristics of what could constitute a successful « Quantum Valley. » Much like Silicon Valley became the global center of semiconductor and computing innovation, a thriving quantum ecosystem is likely to depend on the convergence of several key ingredients: a long-term, bipartisan political commitment to supporting breakthrough innovation at the local level; substantial public investment in research, infrastructure, and workforce development; policies designed to attract talent and foster entrepreneurship; and strong private-sector engagement, from venture capital and private equity to corporate R&D and strategic investment by future industrial users of quantum technologies.

Yet quantum technologies also present a number of distinctive characteristics that fundamentally challenge any attempt to replicate historical models. The conditions that enabled Silicon Valley cannot simply be transplanted into the quantum era.

Silicon Valley was built around a technology platform that achieved early convergence: silicon became the dominant material, while the CMOS transistor architecture provided a widely accepted foundation for scaling the industry. Quantum computing, by contrast, has yet to reach a comparable technological consensus. At least six competing approaches remain under active development, superconducting qubits, trapped ions, photonics, neutral atoms, spin-based systems, and topological approaches, each requiring different infrastructures, skill sets, and supply chains.

In other words, there is not yet a « silicon of quantum. » This creates a strategic dilemma for emerging quantum hubs. Betting heavily on a single technology carries significant risk if that approach ultimately fails to dominate. Yet attempting to cover every technological pathway equally risks creating a broad but shallow ecosystem without a clear competitive advantage. This is a challenge that Silicon Valley largely avoided during its formative years.

Quantum technologies also depend on highly specialized physical infrastructure that is far more difficult to relocate or replicate. Superconducting approaches, for example, rely on dilution refrigerators operating at temperatures close to absolute zero, requiring sophisticated facilities, a secure supply chain for increasingly constrained helium resources, and buildings specifically designed to host such equipment. Similarly, advanced cleanrooms represent a critical strategic asset for quantum chip fabrication, with the construction of a single facility potentially requiring investments exceeding €50 million. For this reason, the supply chain have already seen super specialised hub emerging such as Finland for cryogenics with the presence of Bluefors.

These infrastructure constraints suggest that future quantum hubs may not emerge solely from the concentration of talent and capital. They may also depend on the ability to build and maintain highly specialized industrial capabilities, as is for example the case in Finland, a cryogenic hub with the presence of Bluefors, thereby making the geography of quantum innovation fundamentally different from the semiconductor era.

When Global Geopolitical Shifts Challenge the Idea of a Single Quantum Valley

The inherently dual-use nature of quantum technologies represents another major distinction. The prospect of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) capable of compromising today’s global encryption infrastructure transforms quantum from a purely technological opportunity into a matter of strategic security. This dimension creates a sense of urgency that was largely absent during the emergence of Silicon Valley: governments are seeking to secure a position in the quantum ecosystem proactively, rather than allowing a hub to emerge organically through gradual economic momentum.

This strategic race is also accompanied by increasingly restrictive approaches to technology control, including export control regimes, which are likely to contribute to the early fragmentation of the global quantum landscape. Unlike Silicon Valley, which emerged in an environment of relatively open technological diffusion, quantum development is taking place within a framework of strategic competition and geopolitical constraint.

The rise of quantum technologies is unfolding in a fundamentally different geopolitical context from the one that shaped Silicon Valley. During the Cold War, the United States and its allies formed a relatively cohesive technological bloc, providing the foundation for the global semiconductor supply chain. Today, however, technological competition involves several major powers pursuing increasingly divergent strategic interests. China has become a leading actor in quantum research and development, following a trajectory that is largely independent from that of the United States and driven by distinct national security priorities.

In this environment, and assuming the low probability of a major political disruption within China, it appears unlikely that a single territory will dominate the entire global quantum value chain. The emergence of several regional quantum hubs, each specializing in different technological, industrial, or strategic segments, may be a more realistic reflection of today’s geopolitical landscape.

This initial analysis reveals that the comparison is far more complex than it first appears. History may rhyme, but it rarely repeats itself exactly. The ingredients are different, the actors have changed, and today’s geopolitical, economic, and technological landscape bears only a superficial resemblance to the conditions that gave rise to Silicon Valley.

Yet the fundamental question remains: who will succeed in building a truly dynamic quantum ecosystem? What will this ecosystem look like? Will it take the form of a single dominant hub, or will multiple centers emerge, competing, collaborating, and specializing across the global quantum landscape? Will these regions seek to become vertically integrated ecosystems, controlling the entire value chain from hardware to applications, or will they instead become highly specialized centers of excellence, like Finland, home to Bluefors, a global leader in cryogenic technologies?

These are precisely the questions we will explore, one criterion at a time. Follow us on LinkedIn to make sure you don’t miss any episode of our series « Is there a recipe for a Quantum Valley? »

Ylan Tran is an investor at Quantonation. Previously she had business and strategy roles at Quandela and Alice&Bob.