Where the money and the demand actually are.
Quantum is no longer short of capital or attention. It is short of companies that can convert either. Below is our reading of the published 2026 market data, and what it means for where a venture studio should stand.
All figures on this page are drawn from McKinsey & Company, Quantum Technology Monitor 2026: A commercial tipping point, April 2026. Charts are Quascade's own visualisations of those published figures.
The prize is concentrated in a handful of industries.
Quantum computing is projected to create between $1.3 trillion and $2.7 trillion of economic value for companies worldwide by 2035. Chemicals, financial services and logistics account for the majority of it — which is where a commercialization studio should aim first.
Estimated value at stake from quantum computing by 2035
$ billion, low to high estimate
Total across all industries: $1,280–2,700 billion by 2035. Source: McKinsey & Company, Quantum Technology Monitor 2026, April 2026 (Oxford Economics; McKinsey analysis). Value estimates are approximate and not definitive projections.
Investment stepped up sharply, and turned private.
Funding into quantum technology start-ups reached $12.6 billion in 2025, more than six times the previous year. At the same time the source of that capital changed character: public money, which had been a third of the total, all but disappeared as a share.
Investment raised by quantum technology start-ups
$ billion
2024 figure derived from the stated 6.3× increase. Roughly 90 percent of 2025 investment went to quantum computing start-ups.
Share of investment from public sources
Governments, sovereign funds, universities
About 60 percent of total 2025 investment was concentrated in the ten largest deals.
Source: McKinsey & Company, Quantum Technology Monitor 2026, April 2026 (PitchBook data).
Projected size of the market for quantum technology itself by 2035 — hardware, software and services — of which quantum computing accounts for $43–71 billion. This is the addressable market for companies selling quantum, as distinct from the far larger economic value it creates for those using it.
Budgets are real, and they are being spent on exactly what we do.
A third of large companies surveyed were already committing more than $10 million a year. Critically for a services-funded studio, that money flows to use-case development, integration and capability building — not to buying hardware.
Annual quantum computing budget
% of companies analysed
How that budget is allocated
Average share across companies analysed
Source: McKinsey & Company, Quantum Technology Monitor 2026, April 2026 (anonymous survey; expert interviews).
Adoption is broader than the headlines suggest.
Of the organisations analysed in detail, Europe leads on adoption and roughly three quarters of activity now sits with privately owned companies rather than public research bodies — a reversal from a few years ago. Demand is enterprise demand.
Headquarters location of analysed quantum computing customers
% of 162 organisations analysed
Source: McKinsey & Company, Quantum Technology Monitor 2026, April 2026 (expert interviews; press search, October 2025). Figures may not sum to 100 due to rounding.
What this means for how we're built.
Four conclusions we've drawn from the data above, and the design decisions they led to.
Sell services before products
Enterprise budgets already flow to use-case development, integration and capability building. That is a services market today, and it funds a venture engine that would otherwise need patient capital.
Hybrid, not replacement
The credible near-term path applies quantum selectively inside existing high-performance computing and AI environments. We build for integration, not for greenfield quantum systems.
Source globally, sell where the clock runs
Capital is concentrating in a few large deals, leaving credible research undercommercialized everywhere else. We source without geographic constraint and sell into markets with budget and deadlines.
Start where regulation creates demand
Post-quantum migration is not a bet on adoption curves. Compliance timelines through 2027–2030 create the requirement, which is why it is our first commercial vertical.
All market figures on this page are published in McKinsey & Company, Quantum Technology Monitor 2026: A commercial tipping point (April 2026), and are reproduced here as data with attribution. Charts are Quascade's own visualisations. Quascade is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by McKinsey & Company. Interpretation and conclusions are Quascade's own.