John Prisco, Security CEO & founder of Safe Quantum Inc., working with data-driven companies to develop and deploy quantum-safe technologies
If you only watch the headlines about the National Science Foundation’s “unfunding,” you could come away with the wrong conclusion about where quantum networking in the United States is headed.
Yes, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been through a period of disruption, including terminated awards and proposals to sharply reduce the agency’s overall budget. But at the same time, NSF recently launched a new $1.5 billion, decade-long X-Labs initiative designed to back independent, milestone-driven teams working outside traditional academic and industrial models, with an initial focus that explicitly includes quantum systems, interconnects and integrated photonics.
That tension matters. It tells us the federal picture is not simply “less money for science.” It is a more strategic and more selective reshaping of where money goes, who gets access to it and what kind of outcomes are expected.
For quantum networking, that is a meaningful distinction. Regional networks and testbeds are no longer fringe experiments. They are becoming the closest thing the United States has to a practical on-ramp for the quantum internet.
The pattern in the infrastructure is already taking shape.
For example, in Chicago, the Chicago Quantum Exchange helped expand a 124-mile, six-node quantum network that became one of the nation’s first publicly available testbeds for quantum security technologies. It was built to let academia, industry and government collaborate in a real-world environment rather than a purely theoretical one.
At Berkeley, the QUANT-NET testbed is building a three-node distributed quantum computing network between Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley to test entanglement swapping and the protocol stack required for distributed quantum computing.
Now that model is spreading.
In Florida, IonQ and Florida LambdaRail announced a nearly 100-mile corridor linking research and education institutions over existing fiber as the first phase of a broader statewide quantum-safe network.
In New Mexico, Qunnect and Roadrunner Venture Studios launched ABQ-Net, described as New Mexico’s first quantum network and the first open-access, full-stack quantum networking user facility in the United States. It is aimed at helping researchers and entrepreneurs test and scale technologies in a live environment.
Clearly, quantum networking is moving from isolated prestige academic or government projects toward regional platforms.
Why does that matter? Because testbeds do more than prove a physics concept. They consolidate talent. They give startups, component makers, software teams and applied researchers a place to validate ideas against live infrastructure. They create a bridge between national-lab science and commercial deployment. And they help the ecosystem solve one of its biggest bottlenecks: too few people with hands-on quantum experience.
Chicago offers a useful proxy for where this could go. The Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) has developed one of the nation’s longest quantum networks and built a collaborative ecosystem spanning universities, national labs and industry partners. A 2024 analysis by Boston Consulting Group and published by CQE projected as many as 191,000 quantum technology jobs across Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana by 2035 if investment continues, with more than 70% of those roles open to people without graduate degrees and nearly a third open to workers with associate degrees or technical training.
In other words, the workforce challenge is real, but it is also addressable if regions create places where talent can train, work and commercialize.
This is also where the NSF X-Labs announcement becomes more important than it may look at first glance. X-Labs is not a direct promise to fund every regional quantum network. But it is a strong signal that the agency is willing to support more autonomous, milestone-oriented teams working on the kinds of enabling technologies quantum networks need most: interconnects, integrated photonics and adjacent instrumentation.
That opens the door for a broader set of builders to participate rather than leaving the field concentrated in a handful of elite institutions and legacy federal centers.
What To Watch Next
• Whether X-Labs money reaches network-enabling infrastructure. The biggest tell will be whether early awards back interconnects, photonics and instrumentation that can plug directly into regional testbeds, not just standalone lab science.
• Which regions turn pilots into shared infrastructure. Chicago, Berkeley, Florida and Albuquerque now represent different models of scale. The winners will be the ones that make these environments accessible to startups, universities, public agencies and corporate partners.
• How fast workforce programs follow the hardware. If regional networks are going to matter commercially, they must become training grounds, not just demonstrations. The CQE job projections suggest the demand signal is already there.
• Whether supply chains begin to localize around testbeds. As more regions stand up live environments, component validation, integration and procurement should become less dependent on a very small number of labs and vendors.
• How quickly quantum networking shifts from security use cases to broader utility. Quantum-safe communications will lead, but distributed sensing, clock synchronization and, eventually, distributed quantum computing are what will determine long-term strategic value.
The directional trend in quantum networking is still expansion. The next phase of competition will not be won by the region with the best press release. It will be won by the regions that can combine fiber, photonics, testbeds, workforce development and commercialization into one operating system.
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