The rollout of quantum devices faces major difficulties, stuck in the bottleneck where "a professor needs two weeks to manually assemble a single device": Origin Quantum integrates quantum functions into chips, and solves this problem via the "chip-based design + AI" approach.
Optical quantum chips address the pain points of quantum devices, and Guoguang Quantum is seeking financing
The "difficult implementation" of quantum devices: triple thresholds of performance, cost and scenarios
Quantum technology has been included in the forward-looking layout of future industries in the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan, but there are still several thresholds between the physical advantages in laboratories and products that can be delivered on a large scale. Beijing Zhongke Guoguang Quantum Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Guoguang Quantum") chooses to "embed" quantum functions into chips, and finds solutions through the route of "quantum chip + AI". The company's new round of financing is currently in progress.
The policy direction is clear. The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan proposes to make forward-looking arrangements for future industries, and promote quantum technology, bio-manufacturing, hydrogen energy and nuclear fusion energy, brain-computer interface, embodied intelligence, the 6th generation mobile communication and other fields to become new economic growth points.
The reality on the demand side is more complicated. Zhao Yibo, founder and chairman of Guoguang Quantum, said in an exclusive interview with *Xinhua Quantum Interview* that the biggest bottleneck in the industrialization of quantum technology is to prove that it is superior to traditional technical routes in comprehensive performance, cost and security. Taking information security encryption as an example, there are many post-quantum encryption algorithms available outside the RSA system, and quantum encryption is not the only solution. If its comprehensive performance is inferior to mature schemes, no matter how advanced the theory is, it will be difficult to gain market recognition. The second obstacle comes from the fragmentation of demand: quantum measurement covers a wide range of scenarios with diverse customer demands, and how to converge scattered demands to limited product lines is an unavoidable problem for industrialization.
The obstacles on the supply side are also specific. Traditional quantum coding and decoding, modulation and demodulation devices need to be built with a variety of discrete components such as phase modulators, amplitude modulators, circulators, polarizers, Faraday mirrors, and parametric conversion crystals. The accuracy requirement reaches the micron level and is highly dependent on manual processes, which usually takes full-time professors or doctoral students one to two weeks to complete, featuring low efficiency, poor consistency and large volume, directly restricting the implementation of downstream applications.
"Embedding" quantum capabilities into chips: three core chips and the integration of quantum and intelligence
Guoguang Quantum was founded in December 2021 by a doctor team from University of Science and Technology of China, positioning itself as "quantum technology chipization", deeply cultivating core fields such as quantum communication, quantum measurement and quantum computing, and claiming to be the first domestic provider of "optical quantum chip" solutions.
The company's solution is to decompose the technology into common layers. After disassembling the three product lines of quantum encryption, single-photon radar and quantum measurement, Guoguang Quantum found that their underlying layers are highly common: single-photon detection, quantum light source, optical signal modulation and demodulation, and basic optical signal processing. By modularizing and chipping these four types of capabilities and adding AI-assisted development, the marginal cost of product diversification will decrease accordingly. Zhao Yibo's judgment is that the era of AI is exactly the time to pursue diversification, because AI endows the ability to achieve diversification.
At the hardware level, the company independently developed three core chips and an ion trap module, covering quantum communication, quantum measurement, quantum countermeasures and quantum computing. Among them, the vacuum noise quantum random number chip integrates the functions of vacuum noise signal generation, modulation, transmission, demodulation and detection into one chip. The company calls it the world's first of its kind, and says that this chip is the only quantum chip in China that can resist side-channel attacks such as power supply ripple. The product was successfully developed in May 2023 and entered the mass production and application stage, and the iterative version was launched in 2024.
Quantum coding & decoding and modulation & demodulation chips form another technical base. In October 2023, Guoguang Quantum developed the first domestic quantum coding & decoding and modulation & demodulation chip, with a volume of only 3cm × 4cm × 0.2cm, whose consistency and stability are significantly better than those of manually built discrete devices. In February 2024, the chip obtained a number of patent certifications issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
On the software side, the company launched an AI-driven intelligent experimental platform for quantum computing covering the whole process of quantum scientific research, which does not require manual code writing, can complete a quantum computing experiment in a few minutes according to a natural language demand, and can be directly connected to a real quantum computing supercomputer. The supporting multi-agent operating system QuantaMate OS and Xuanmi large model, together with the hardware, form a technical chain of "Hardware - System - Intelligence".
In August 2026, Guoguang Quantum released its self-developed ultra-large-scale optical fiber array, targeting the construction goal of millions of physical quantum bits. Aiming at the engineering problems such as multi-channel coupling of photon systems, low-loss optical path integration, and large-scale optical path stable management and control, the company optimized the coupling structure of optical fibers and photonic chips, and adopted integrated packaging technology and intelligent compensation algorithms to suppress the optical path deviation caused by temperature drift and mechanical vibration.
From quantum substation to financial encryption: business model and team progress
In terms of commercialization paths, Guoguang Quantum's current main business focuses on quantum communication and quantum measurement, serving industries such as electric power, energy, government affairs, finance, and meteorology. In the field of quantum computing, the company provides core components and basic technical support such as quantum chips and refrigerators for the full-stack quantum computing team. Quantum countermeasure products are oriented to scenarios such as security monitoring and airspace perception, and the company said that the market in this direction is still in the early cultivation stage.
A number of benchmark projects can illustrate the implementation progress. Guoguang Quantum, together with State Grid Beijing Electric Power Company and the Electric Power Research Institute, built the first quantum substation project in Beijing, undertook the upgrading service of the Gansu State Grid cloud dispatch cryptographic system, implemented the "quantum encryption and ultra-high loss optical communication system development and application" project in Haidian District, and jointly carried out 6G and Wi-Fi pre-research with ZTE and Huzhou Research Institute of Zhejiang University. According to the company's disclosure, seven of its recently won projects are national-level projects, three of which are national-level public listing of critical tasks to select the best candidates projects.
The financial scenario is a new direction that the company entered in 2026. In June 2026, Guoguang Quantum signed a tripartite strategic cooperation agreement with Gaoxinda (300465) and Weide Information (688171), taking "quantum + finance" as the starting point to build a trinity architecture of "quantum chip + quantum cloud platform + financial security application".
In terms of team and qualifications, Zhao Yibo, founder and chairman, was admitted to University of Science and Technology of China from Minqin, Gansu Province, adjusted his major from electronic engineering to quantum physics, and then engaged in post-doctoral research in the direction of quantum radar at Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is one of the earlier practitioners in the industrialization of quantum communication in China. The company's core team mainly comes from Tsinghua University, Peking University, University of Science and Technology of China, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China University of Geosciences and other universities. The company is a national high-tech enterprise and a "specialized, refined, differential and innovative" small and medium-sized enterprise, with qualifications such as commercial cipher product certification and Ministry of Public Security certification, and has participated in the formulation of the national standard *General Requirements for Device-Independent Quantum Random Number Generators* (GB/T 45240-2025).
In terms of operating data, according to the public information of Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area in February 2025, the sales revenue of Guoguang Quantum's core products such as quantum random number chips and quantum coding and decoding chips in 2024 increased by more than 30% year on year, and the revenue in 2025 is expected to exceed 60 million yuan. The company said in a public sharing in September 2026 that its annual revenue has doubled year on year since its establishment, and the revenue scale in 2026 is expected to exceed 70 million yuan, and it plans to launch the Science and Technology Innovation Board listing application in 2029-2030.
In terms of financing, the company has completed multiple rounds of financing since its establishment in 2021: it obtained angel round investment from Jingdao Fund in December 2021; completed nearly 100 million yuan of Series A financing in April 2026, led by Weide Information and followed by Xinhualian Group and other institutions; completed tens of millions of yuan of Series A+ round financing in May of the same year, led by Jinguan Electric; obtained investment from Zhiyuan Capital in June; completed tens of millions of yuan of strategic financing in August, led by the fund under the Management Committee of Zhengzhou Airport Economy Comprehensive Experimental Zone. At present, the company's new round of financing is in progress.