China’s quantum computing sector is experiencing a funding surge that is beginning to rival the AI investment boom of the past two years. In the first quarter of 2026, Chinese quantum computing startups raised a combined CNY 2.2 billion, a figure that nearly matches the total raised across all of 2025, according to data compiled by The Quantum Insider. The acceleration is being driven by two landmark deals: SpinQ Technology’s CNY 600 million Series C+ round and QBoson’s CNY 1 billion Series B, both of which closed in late March and early April. Together, the two rounds represent a combined investment of approximately $220 million, making them among the largest quantum computing fundraises in global history.
SpinQ and QBoson: Two Approaches to Quantum Computing
SpinQ Technology, founded in 2018 and headquartered in Shenzhen, has built its business around nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum computers, systems that operate at room temperature rather than requiring the extreme cooling needed by superconducting quantum processors. This approach makes SpinQ’s systems significantly more practical for deployment in educational and research settings, and the company has sold its desktop quantum computers to universities and research institutions in more than 50 countries. The CNY 600 million Series C+ will be used to accelerate the development of more powerful NMR systems and to expand SpinQ’s international sales operations.
QBoson, by contrast, is focused on photonic quantum computing, a technology that uses photons rather than electrons as the basic unit of quantum information. Photonic systems have the potential to operate at room temperature and to be integrated with existing fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure, making them attractive for quantum networking and quantum cryptography applications. QBoson’s CNY 1 billion Series B, which values the company at several billion yuan, will fund the development of its next-generation photonic quantum processor and the buildout of a quantum cloud computing platform.
The 15th Five-Year Plan and the CNY 121.8 Billion National Venture Fund
The surge in quantum computing investment is not happening in a vacuum. China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, finalized in early 2026, explicitly names quantum technology as one of the country’s top “future industries”, a designation that comes with substantial government support in the form of research funding, procurement commitments, and access to the CNY 121.8 billion national venture guidance fund. This fund, which is designed to co-invest alongside private capital in strategically important technology sectors, has been a significant source of funding for both SpinQ and QBoson, and its involvement has helped to attract additional private capital by providing a government endorsement of the sector’s strategic importance.
The designation of quantum as a future industry also reflects Beijing’s recognition that quantum computing has the potential to be transformative for AI, particularly for optimization problems, materials discovery, and cryptography. Chinese researchers have been exploring the integration of quantum and classical AI systems for several years, and the government’s investment in quantum infrastructure is partly motivated by the belief that quantum-enhanced AI could provide a decisive advantage in the long-term competition with the United States.
China’s Quantum Ambitions in a Global Context
China’s quantum computing investment surge is occurring against a backdrop of intensifying global competition in the sector. The United States, the European Union, and Japan have all made significant public investments in quantum computing research and development, and major technology companies including IBM, Google, and Microsoft have their own substantial quantum programs. China’s advantage in this competition lies not in the maturity of its quantum technology, US and European systems remain more advanced in most metrics, but in the scale and speed of its investment and the degree of government coordination behind it.
For the AI industry specifically, the implications of China’s quantum push are still speculative but potentially significant. Quantum computers are not yet capable of running the kinds of large-scale machine learning workloads that drive today’s AI systems, but the pace of progress in the field suggests that this may change within the next decade. If China succeeds in building a world-class quantum computing industry, it will have created a potential source of computational advantage that could be extremely difficult for its competitors to replicate quickly. The CNY 2.2 billion raised in Q1 2026 alone suggests that Chinese investors believe this outcome is plausible, and are willing to bet heavily on it.
What makes China’s quantum investment particularly noteworthy is the diversity of approaches being funded simultaneously. SpinQ’s NMR systems, QBoson’s photonic processors, and other Chinese startups pursuing superconducting and trapped-ion architectures represent a broad portfolio bet on a technology where the winning approach is still far from clear. This diversity of investment, backed by both private capital and the national venture fund, mirrors the strategy China has employed successfully in other deep technology sectors, including electric vehicles and solar panels: fund multiple competing approaches at scale, allow the market to select winners, and use the resulting domestic industry as a platform for global competition.