Origin Quantum Computing Technology Co.

(This profile is one entry in my 2025 series on quantum hardware roadmaps and CRQC risk. For the cross‑vendor overview, filters, and links to all companies, see Quantum Hardware Companies and Roadmaps Comparison 2025.)

Introduction

Origin Quantum Computing Technology Co. (本源量子计算科技) is China’s first and most prominent quantum computing startup, building a vertically integrated superconducting quantum computing platform that spans from chip fabrication through operating system to cloud delivery. Headquartered in Hefei, Anhui Province – the heart of China’s “Quantum Avenue” – the company occupies a unique position in the global landscape: no other quantum computing company in the world builds the entire stack in-house, from quantum processor chips and dilution refrigerators to control electronics, an operating system, a programming framework, and a cloud platform.

Founded in September 2017 as a spinoff from the CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Origin Quantum was born from the recognition that China’s quantum computing ambitions could not be realized through academic research alone. Its co-founders – Professor Guo Guoping, who established China’s first semiconductor quantum chip research group in 2005, and Academician Guo Guangcan, widely regarded as the founder of quantum optics and quantum information science in China – set out to build not just a quantum computer but an entire domestic quantum computing industry.

The company has raised approximately $150–165 million in funding entirely from domestic Chinese investors – a deliberate policy reflecting its positioning as a national security asset. Key backers include the China Internet Investment Fund (under the Cyberspace Administration of China), Guoxin Fund (State Council), Shenzhen Capital Group, CITIC Securities, and multiple state financial institutions. Based on a 2025 secondary transaction, the company’s implied valuation stands at approximately 6.88 billion RMB (~$950 million), and it initiated IPO counseling in September 2025 targeting the Shanghai STAR Market – which would make it the first quantum computing company to list on a Chinese exchange.

Origin Quantum’s flagship system is the Origin Wukong, a third-generation superconducting quantum computer built on a 72-qubit chip launched in January 2024. Named after Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of Chinese mythology, the system has attracted over 30 million cloud visits from 145 countries since launch, with US users consistently among the most active – an irony not lost on observers, given that Origin Quantum was added to the US Entity List in May 2024.

In February 2026, Origin Quantum released its Origin Pilot operating system for free public download – described as the world’s first publicly downloadable quantum computer operating system. This move, analyzed in depth in our article China’s Quantum OS Play: Origin Pilot and the Battle for the Integration Layer, signals a strategic pivot from closed-door development toward open ecosystem building, with potentially far-reaching implications for Quantum Open Architecture and global Quantum Systems Integration.

The company currently employs over 200 people (roughly 75% in R&D), holds 234 quantum computing patents (ranked 6th globally, 1st in China) along with 527 total patents, and generated approximately 99.4 million RMB (~$14 million) in 2024 revenue – still operating at a loss, as is the case for all pure-play quantum computing companies worldwide.

Milestones & Roadmap

Origin Quantum’s development has followed an ambitious trajectory across three generations of quantum hardware and a full software stack, though not without roadmap slippages.

• 2017 – Founding and First Cloud Platform: Origin Quantum founded on September 11. Launched the world’s first silicon-based semiconductor quantum computing cloud platform and released QRunes, a quantum programming language.
• 2018 – First Control System and Programming Framework: Released QPanda (China’s first quantum computing programming framework) and Origin AIO, China’s first quantum computer measurement and control system – making China only the third country (after the US and Canada) capable of manufacturing such systems. Established the Origin Quantum Industry Alliance (OQIA).
• 2019 – First Quantum Chemistry Application: Released ChemiQ, described as the world’s first practical quantum chemistry application software.
• 2020 – First-Generation Wuyuan (6 qubits): Launched China’s first superconducting quantum computer to operate outside a laboratory environment and connected it to the Origin Quantum Cloud for global access. This marked a transition from laboratory prototype to operational system.
• 2021 – Origin Pilot OS and Second-Generation System (24 qubits): Released Origin Pilot V1.0, described in an arXiv paper detailing modules for quantum task scheduling, resource management, program compilation, and automatic qubit calibration. Delivered the 24-qubit second-generation Wuyuan system – China’s first commercially delivered quantum computer, making China the third country to deliver a complete quantum computing system. Published a roadmap targeting 64 qubits by end of 2021, 144 qubits by early 2022, and 1,024 qubits by 2025.
• 2022 – Major Funding and Patent Leadership: Completed a ~1 billion RMB (~$148 million) Series B – reportedly the largest quantum computing funding round globally that year. Ranked 1st in China for quantum computing patents.
• 2024 (January) – Origin Wukong Launch (72 qubits): Launched the 72-qubit Origin Wukong third-generation superconducting quantum computer, opening it to global cloud access. Within months, it attracted users from 145 countries and over 20 million cloud visits. Received first export order from a European country.
• 2024 (May) – US Entity List Designation: Added to the US Commerce Department’s Entity List alongside USTC and 20 other Chinese quantum entities. Within one week, Origin Quantum announced domestic production of a high-density microwave interconnect module previously sourced exclusively from Japan.
• 2025 – Tianji 4.0, Commercial Deployments, and IPO Preparation: Unveiled the Tianji 4.0 measurement-control system supporting 500+ qubits. Achieved three confirmed commercial Wukong deployments (a supercomputing center, a university, and a government agency). Claimed the world’s first fine-tuning of a billion-parameter AI model on a quantum computer. Signed an agreement with ChinaLink ESGt to develop what could become Europe’s largest integrated computing center in Malaga, Spain. Initiated IPO counseling targeting the Shanghai STAR Market.
• 2026 (February) – Origin Pilot Public Release: Released Origin Pilot V4.0 for free public download — an integrated quantum-classical-AI computing operating system supporting superconducting, ion trap, and neutral atom hardware platforms. Guo Guoping framed this as a shift to open-source ecosystem development.

Roadmap assessment: The ambitious 2021 roadmap targeting 1,024 qubits by 2025 was not achieved – the company reached 72 working qubits by January 2024. However, the Tianji 4.0 control system’s 500+ qubit capacity signals preparation for significant near-term scaling. China’s national goal targets a 1,000-qubit class quantum computer by approximately 2030. Origin Quantum’s commercial product pages now reference systems supporting “beyond 100 superconducting qubits,” suggesting a next-generation chip is in development.

Focus on Fault Tolerance

Origin Quantum has not published any significant work on quantum error correction – a critical gap compared to Western competitors and arguably the most important dimension on which the company trails the global state of the art.

The company’s development philosophy has focused squarely on NISQ-era scaling: increasing qubit counts, improving engineering maturity, building manufacturing capacity, and achieving commercial deployment. Error mitigation techniques are implemented on Wukong – the tunable coupler architecture allows dynamic adjustment of coupling strength between qubits, which improves two-qubit gate fidelity by reducing crosstalk. But error mitigation falls far short of the surface code experiments demonstrated by Google (below-threshold quantum error correction on Willow, December 2024) or IBM’s logical qubit error reduction demonstrations.

Zhang Hui, Origin Quantum’s General Manager and Guo Guoping’s first PhD student, has been candid about this challenge. He noted that solving error correction and fault tolerance remains one of the biggest obstacles to realizing a general-purpose quantum computer – and that without solving it, useful quantum computing may remain elusive for a long time.

The absence of published fault-tolerance work means Origin Quantum currently lacks a concrete, publicly articulated path from its NISQ hardware to fault-tolerant quantum computing. The company’s Tianji 4.0 control system – with its modular architecture and sub-microsecond feedback latency – is a necessary infrastructure component for future QEC implementations, but the QEC research itself appears to be at an early stage compared to Google, IBM, Quantinuum, or even China’s own USTC academic research groups.

This is worth monitoring closely: Origin Quantum’s full-stack vertical integration means that when it does invest in error correction, it will have the advantage of co-optimizing across the entire stack – from chip design through control electronics to the Origin Pilot OS. That kind of tight hardware-software integration is precisely what QEC benefits from. But as of early 2026, this remains a theoretical advantage rather than a demonstrated capability.

CRQC Implications

Origin Quantum’s Wukong system, at 72 physical qubits with no demonstrated error correction, poses no threat to modern cryptography and is extremely far from constituting a cryptanalytically relevant quantum computer (CRQC).

Breaking RSA-2048 is estimated to require roughly 1,400 logical qubits running for about a week, translating to approximately 1 million physical qubits under current error correction overhead estimates. Origin Quantum has demonstrated neither quantum computational advantage nor error correction on its hardware. The gap between Wukong and a code-breaking machine is measured in orders of magnitude, not incremental improvements.

However, Origin Quantum matters for CRQC threat assessment for reasons beyond its current hardware specifications.

First, as a full-stack company that controls every layer from chip fabrication to OS, Origin Quantum could theoretically optimize for cryptanalytic workloads in ways that component-specialist companies cannot. If the Chinese government were to direct resources toward building a CRQC – a scenario impossible to rule out given quantum technology’s explicit designation as a national security priority in the 15th Five-Year Plan – Origin Quantum’s vertically integrated platform would be a natural foundation.

Second, the open-source release of Origin Pilot creates a pathway for other institutions to build quantum systems that might eventually contribute to a distributed CRQC effort. If Origin Pilot becomes the default integration layer for quantum computers built outside the Western ecosystem, the resulting hardware-software co-evolution could accelerate progress in ways that are difficult for Western analysts to track.

Third, Chinese private-sector estimates place the US quantum computing lead at 3–5 years. But USTC’s academic Zuchongzhi 3.0 processor (105 qubits) achieves single-qubit gate fidelities of 99.90% and two-qubit fidelities of 99.62% – competitive with Google’s Willow. While this is an academic demonstration rather than an Origin Quantum product, it signals that the talent and know-how exist within China’s quantum ecosystem. The gap may be narrower than qubit counts suggest.

For security professionals, the takeaway is straightforward: Origin Quantum’s current hardware is not a cryptographic threat, but the company sits at the center of a national quantum program backed by an estimated $15 billion in cumulative government investment, explicitly framed around national security. Organizations should incorporate Chinese quantum ecosystem progress – not just Origin Quantum’s roadmap alone — into their threat models and PQC migration timelines.

Modality & Strengths/Trade-offs

Origin Quantum’s primary modality is superconducting transmon qubits – the same fundamental approach used by IBM, Google, and Rigetti. The 72-qubit Wukong chip uses a planar architecture with 198 total physical elements: 72 working qubits plus 126 tunable coupler qubits that mediate interactions between neighbors. This tunable-coupler design, similar to approaches used by Google on Sycamore and Willow, allows dynamic adjustment of coupling strength – effectively turning interactions between qubit pairs on and off – which reduces always-on crosstalk and improves two-qubit gate fidelity.

Origin Quantum also maintains a secondary research track in semiconductor (silicon-based) quantum computing, having released a 2-qubit semiconductor chip (XW B2-100) and China’s first commercial semiconductor quantum chip carrier board. This dual-track approach makes Origin one of very few companies pursuing both superconducting and semiconductor paths.

Strengths:

• Full-stack vertical integration. Origin Quantum is the only company globally that builds the quantum processor, the cryogenic infrastructure (SL400 and SL1000 dilution refrigerators), the measurement-control system (Tianji), the operating system (Origin Pilot), the programming framework (QPanda), and the cloud platform- all in-house. This provides tight optimization across the stack and eliminates dependency on external vendors for any single component. For a Chinese company operating under Entity List restrictions, this self-reliance is both a strategic choice and a survival necessity.
• Domestic supply chain achievement. Guo Guoping has reported that Chinese suppliers now provide 80% of Wukong’s hardware – a remarkable localization feat given that dilution refrigerators and high-frequency microwave components were historically sourced from Western and Japanese suppliers. This includes domestically produced dilution refrigerators and a micron local laser annealing machine for tuning qubit frequencies.
• Open software ecosystem. The public release of Origin Pilot and the open-source QPanda framework position Origin Quantum as a platform that other institutions can build on – a significant differentiator versus Western companies that keep their quantum operating systems proprietary. As we analyzed in China’s Quantum OS Play, this positions Origin Pilot as a potential top-down integration layer for the global Quantum Open Architecture movement.
• Proven commercial deployment. With three confirmed Wukong deployments and an export order from a European country, Origin Quantum has demonstrated the ability to deliver and operate quantum computers outside laboratory settings – a threshold many quantum companies have not yet crossed.

Trade-offs:

• Performance gap. Published coherence metrics – T1 of 15.22 μs and T2 of 2.23 μs – lag significantly behind leading Western systems. Google’s Willow achieves T2 times of approximately 98 μs. Gate fidelity numbers have not been independently published by Origin Quantum, which is a notable transparency gap.
• Qubit count behind Western leaders. At 72 working qubits, Wukong trails IBM’s current processors (1,000+ qubits) and is comparable to Google’s 2019-era Sycamore (53 qubits) or 2024-era Willow (105 qubits) in scale, though direct qubit-count comparisons across architectures are unreliable without fidelity data.
• No error correction demonstrations. The absence of published QEC work is the most significant technical gap, as discussed in the Focus on Fault Tolerance section.
• Closed hardware despite open software. While the software stack is being opened, the hardware itself is not available through an open-architecture component model. Origin Quantum does not sell QPU chips or control electronics as standalone components for others to integrate — it sells complete systems. This means it operates as a full-stack vendor in hardware while pursuing an open-ecosystem strategy in software.

Track Record

Origin Quantum’s track record shows a consistent pattern of delivering on engineering milestones – building China’s first quantum computer, first control system, first programming framework, first quantum OS, first commercial delivery – while missing aggressive qubit-scaling timelines.

The company has achieved genuine firsts in the Chinese context: it built and delivered a functional quantum computer before any other domestic entity, created the foundational software infrastructure (QPanda, Origin Pilot, ChemiQ) that the broader Chinese quantum ecosystem now builds on, and established a domestic supply chain that has proven resilient to US export controls. The open-source release of Origin Pilot in February 2026 represents a strategic escalation – moving from serving Chinese customers to positioning Chinese quantum software as a global platform.

On the other hand, the 2021 roadmap’s 1,024-qubit target for 2025 was missed by a wide margin – reaching 72 qubits instead. Detailed technical metrics (gate fidelities, error rates, quantum volume) are not routinely published, making independent assessment difficult. Revenue of ~$14 million against a ~$950 million valuation represents a significant gap between market expectations and commercial reality – though this is characteristic of the pre-revenue phase that all quantum computing companies currently occupy.

The company’s cloud platform has proven genuinely popular: 30+ million visits from 145 countries and 530,000+ quantum computing tasks demonstrate real demand. Three commercial deployments in 2025 and an international partnership in Spain show the beginning of a commercial pipeline. The pending STAR Market IPO will be the most significant test yet of whether the market believes Origin Quantum’s full-stack bet will pay off.

Credibility assessment: Origin Quantum is a serious quantum computing company with real hardware, real deployments, and a defensible strategic position as China’s quantum computing national champion. It is not vaporware. But it trails the global state of the art by 3–5 years on most technical metrics, and its public communications – heavily amplified by Chinese state media – tend toward the optimistic end of what the evidence supports. Independent verification of performance claims remains limited.

Challenges

Origin Quantum faces a distinctive set of challenges that reflect both the general difficulties of building useful quantum computers and the specific dynamics of operating as China’s quantum computing champion under escalating geopolitical pressure.

• The fault-tolerance gap. This is Origin Quantum’s most consequential technical deficit. While the company has scaled qubit counts and engineering maturity, it has not published any significant quantum error correction work. Google, IBM, Quantinuum, and others are investing heavily in demonstrating logical qubits and below-threshold error correction. Until Origin Quantum demonstrates a credible path to fault tolerance, its hardware – however well-engineered – remains confined to the NISQ regime with limited practical utility. The Tianji 4.0 control system provides the infrastructure for QEC, but the QEC algorithms, decoders, and logical qubit demonstrations are missing.
• Export controls and supply chain risk. The May 2024 Entity List designation restricts Origin Quantum’s access to US-origin components, and broader BIS controls create a “presumption of denial” for quantum-related exports to China. Allied nations have enacted parallel restrictions. While Origin Quantum has responded with impressive localization – 80% domestic components, domestically produced dilution refrigerators – the remaining 20% represents potential chokepoints. Advanced cryogenic components, high-frequency signal generators, and certain fabrication tools may still require foreign sourcing. Each tightening of export controls forces further localization investment that diverts resources from R&D.
• Talent constraints. Zhang Hui has acknowledged that Chinese quantum companies cannot match the laboratory-to-industry talent pipeline that Google and IBM benefit from – where academic researchers seamlessly transition into corporate R&D. A prominent Chinese academic has warned of destructive intra-industry competition (“nei juan”) where researchers chase paper publications over genuine engineering capability. The company’s ~200-person team is small for the extraordinary breadth of its full-stack ambition.
• Commercial viability uncertainty. Revenue of ~$14 million against operating losses of ~$34 million reflects the universal reality that quantum computing is not yet commercially viable. But Origin Quantum’s pending IPO will subject these economics to public market scrutiny. The STAR Market’s fifth listing standard accommodates loss-making hard-tech companies, but investor patience for pre-revenue deep-tech is finite – particularly if a global quantum winter narrative takes hold.
• Performance transparency. The absence of routinely published gate fidelities, quantum volume measurements, or standardized benchmarks makes it difficult for external observers to independently assess Origin Quantum’s hardware capabilities. This transparency gap – common among Chinese quantum companies – complicates both competitive analysis and CRQC threat assessment.
• Geopolitical positioning as double-edged sword. Origin Quantum’s status as a national champion backed by state-aligned investors provides financial security and policy support, but it also makes the company a lightning rod for Western suspicion and export controls. The Spain partnership, while commercially logical, has already drawn scrutiny from European security analysts. International expansion will face regulatory hurdles that purely commercial quantum companies do not encounter.
• Open-source strategy execution risk. The decision to release Origin Pilot for public download is strategically bold but creates execution challenges. If the software proves unreliable, poorly documented, or incompatible with non-Origin hardware in practice, it could damage rather than enhance the company’s reputation. True open-source community building requires sustained investment in documentation, developer relations, and responsiveness to external contributors — capabilities that Chinese technology companies have historically found difficult to develop for international audiences.

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