Maryland’s year of major quantum investments shows no signs of slowing.
At the Quantum World Congress on Wednesday, Gov. Wes Moore announced a partnership with Microsoft to establish a quantum research center at the University of Maryland’s Discovery District.
“This is not a fad, or a one-year thing,” Moore said during his speech from the stage of Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia. “This is a core part of economic strategy.”
The center will draw on funding through the Capital of Quantum Initiative, a public-private partnership the governor launched in January. The project aims to put $1 billion in combined state, private, philanthropic and matching federal funds toward the quantum industry over the next five years. Moore pledged $52.5 million in his 2026 fiscal year budget to the initiative, with other unnamed partners contributing $70 million, according to a press release.
The facility will serve as a “development hub” for new quantum technologies, per the announcement. Located in the Discovery District on the eastern edge of the university’s College Park campus, it will join the National Quantum Lab (QLab), a research center run in partnership with IonQ, a publicly traded quantum computing company and University of Maryland (UMD) spinout also based in College Park.
“The launch of Microsoft’s advanced quantum lab in our Discovery District is a testament to the incredible momentum we’ve built in quantum science and innovation,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines in a press release. “It reflects years of world-class research, visionary investment, and bold collaboration that together have made Maryland and the greater DC region the true Capital of Quantum.”
The center will live in an existing building and span about 15,000 square feet of office and lab space, according to Sara Gavin, director of research communications at UMD.
Where state priorities, defense funds and private success meet
Since the Capital of Quantum Initiative’s inception in January, close to a dozen startups have joined UMD’s quantum ecosystem, per the release. This includes Nanofiber Quantum Technologies, a quantum hardware startup, and Xanadu, which will provide QLab with access to its quantum computing tools.
One of the center’s initial partners is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the Department of Defense, which President Trump recently renamed the Department of War. DARPA, which funds technologies with national security applications, selected Microsoft for its quantum computing evaluation program under its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), per a February Microsoft release.
In April, the governor signed an agreement with DARPA to establish Maryland as a quantum hub where the federal government can test and evaluate quantum technologies. The deal also secured federal investment for the state’s quantum initiative. While some of this funding will go towards the center, QBI program manager Joe Altepeter could not confirm a specific amount.
“DARPA’s collaboration with the State of Maryland does not establish or require specific funding levels. Depending on results achieved, however, DARPA and Maryland have agreed to provide matching contributions of up to $100 million each over a four-year period,” Altepeter wrote in an email to Technical.ly.
The period since the initiative’s public launch also saw IonQ, the most prominent of UMD’s quantum spinouts, hit multiple commercial benchmarks. They included commissioning a networking system for the US Air Force, establishing a quantum research hub in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a $1 billion equity offering. Earlier this year, IonQ had threatened to leave the state if the General Assembly did not approve $10 million in funding for a new headquarters.
On Wednesday, the company also announced its latest acquisition of several this year, as well as a new memorandum of understanding with the Department of Energy.
Microsoft’s quantum commitments and critiques
At the center, government and university researchers will gain access to Microsoft’s latest quantum prototypes, including the Majorana 1 quantum computing chip, which was also on display at the Quantum World Congress. Microsoft’s announcement of the chip’s February 2025 launch said the chip, which uses a new kind of quantum information to reduce errors in computing, marks a major step forward — though some physicists remained wary of its utility.
“The data was incredibly unconvincing,” said Henry Legg, a scholar from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, to Science News after a talk about Microsoft’s quantum findings during the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in March. “It is as if Microsoft Quantum was attempting a simultaneous Rorschach test on hundreds of people.”
Charles Tahan, a partner at Microsoft Quantum, declined to share details about its financial contributions or a staff headcount for the center. He instead noted that the center is intended to connect government agencies, academia and quantum companies.
“The new space is designed for collaboration and training the next generation of quantum expertise,” Tahan wrote in an email. “Microsoft is committed to hiring staff for the lab and the space will support hands-on research, test and evaluation activities, and provide direct access to DARPA’s test and evaluation team, enabling rapid prototyping, validation, and benchmarking of quantum technologies in collaboration with federal programs.”
Technical.ly reporter Kaela Roeder contributed to this report.
