What does the UK government’s quantum standards push mean to the sector?

When the National Physical Laboratory launched the National Quantum Standards Network (QSN) in June, its chief executive Dr Peter Thompson said it would “accelerate technology adoption, boost UK competitiveness and support the safe and ethical development of quantum technologies.”

It’s an ambitious statement and an attempt by the UK to set its stall out early in the increasingly fast-paced global quantum sector. Of course, the UK is no stranger to setting up standards bodies and frameworks. Stephen Temple, a senior civil servant at what was then the Department of Trade and Industry, was one of the founding figures of ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) in 1988. He also co-authored the GSM Memorandum of Understanding, the agreement that locked European operators into a common mobile standard and set the template for every generation of mobile technology since. Also, the British Standards Institution (BSI) remains an organisational partner in 3GPP, which develops 5G standards today.

The QSN is an attempt to repeat that kind of early, decisive engagement in a technology where the standards race is only just beginning. Backed by a £10 million government fund, it is bringing together DSIT, the BSI, UKRI’s National Quantum Computing Centre and the National Cyber Security Centre. It is clearly the UK’s attempt to write the quantum rules, or at least to ensure that British researchers, companies and institutions have a serious voice whoever does.

Whether it achieves that will depend less on the network’s existence than on how it is governed.

The case for acting now is not hard to make. According to McKinsey’s Quantum Technology Monitor 2026, private investment in quantum technology start-ups reached $12.6 billion in 2025, which is 6.3 times higher than the year before. In 2024, a third of investment came from public sources. By 2025, that share had fallen to 3%. Capital markets appear to have come to the conclusion that quantum technologies have legs.

Markets need agreed rules, however, not just about safety or ethics, but about the mundane engineering basics that allow products to work together, be compared against each other and bought at scale with confidence. A quantum sensing company needs its instruments trusted and comparable. A quantum computing firm selling cloud access needs its security credentials verifiable against recognised benchmarks. Without that kind of agreement, procurement teams in defence, healthcare or finance will struggle to specify what they are buying.

“For investors, the QSN is best read as a de-risking measure rather than a commercial catalyst”

That is where standards come in. And that, says Professor Michael Lewis, professor of operations management at the University of Bristol Business School, is where the complications can start.

“Firms with money have the laboratories, the installed equipment, the test data, the patents and the committee representation,” he says. “They are simply better placed to shape the choices.”

Benchmarks, Lewis argues, are rarely as neutral as they appear. His example is the IEC/ISO JTC 3 committee currently drafting standards for quantum gravimeters based on free-falling cold atoms, a specification that inherently suits some sensing approaches over others. Engaging with a standards process costs time and money now, but the penalty for not engaging could be felt down the line. Building a product or business around the wrong architecture is costly and time-consuming to change.

Lewis points to the history of US railroad gauges as a lesson in what disengagement costs. Southern lines that stayed out of the gauge-setting process were eventually forced to convert more than 11,000 miles of track over two days in 1886. There was no deliberate exclusion. The standard was set without them, and they had to live with it.

The same dynamic operates at the level of consortium labels. Lewis notes that the colour television standard adopted by the FCC was branded under a neutral-sounding consortium name, but RCA held most of the controlling patents. A BSI or NQCC badge on a quantum benchmark carries the same structural risk: a wrapper that looks open but may encode advantage for whoever held the pen in the first place.

Katia Moskvitch, communications director at quantum control systems company Quantum Machines, argues that the answer lies in keeping standards technology-neutral. This means focusing on common engineering challenges such as interfaces, control, and interoperability rather than any single hardware architecture.

“Quantum computing is advancing across multiple hardware modalities,” she says. “Standards should make it easier for different technologies to evolve together.”

It is a reasonable position. Whether the QSN is structured to deliver it is another question, and one the network’s governance will need to answer.

The international dimension adds further complexity. Three weeks before the UK’s announcement, on 28 May, the OECD adopted what it describes as the first intergovernmental standard establishing shared principles for the responsible development of quantum technologies, with 38 member governments signed to it. The backdrop is not encouraging. 

According to OECD research published in January 2026, international collaboration on quantum research has already been declining. Cross-border co-authorship on quantum publications once approached 40% in some countries but has fallen across the board as geopolitical tensions, export controls, and research security concerns reshape how countries work together. The UK is entering a process already under strain.

However, the OECD also identifies public procurement as one of the most powerful tools governments have to shape quantum development, using purchasing power to build early markets and set performance expectations before commercial standards exist.

That points directly to what Lewis argues is the UK’s strongest card, the government’s £2 billion quantum computing procurement programme, backed by NPL reference testing. Anchor buyers, not committee secretariats, typically determine how standards bed down. Lewis points to AOL’s position in the 56k modem standard and the film studios’ role in shaping the DVD format as illustrations of how purchasing power, rather than committee representation, determines outcomes.

For investors, the QSN is best read as a de-risking measure rather than a commercial catalyst. According to PitchBook data cited in McKinsey’s Quantum Technology Monitor 2026, Series B and later-stage rounds now account for around 63% of venture quantum investment, which is a shift towards companies demonstrating commercialisation readiness. A UK quantum company that can show compliance with internationally recognised benchmarks is a stronger late-stage proposition than one that cannot.

For start-ups, the picture is less straightforward. The cost of engaging with a standards process is real and falls disproportionately on smaller firms with limited time and capacity for committee work. If the QSN does not find a way to bring early-stage companies meaningfully into the process, it risks producing standards shaped by established players that newer entrants then have to retrofit to, paying later for not engaging now. That is precisely the dynamic Lewis warns about.

The QSN sits alongside a parallel regulatory move the government announced in July. The Regulating for Growth Bill will introduce sandboxing powers allowing companies to test products in controlled real-world environments before full market approval. Quantum is not named explicitly, but the intent is there. Standards tell buyers what they are purchasing; sandboxing gives companies a faster, lower-risk path to demonstrating it works. Together they suggest at least some coordination across government.

The government’s claim (drawn from Oxford Economics research cited in its March 2026 quantum investment announcement) that quantum could add £212 billion to the UK economy and 100,000 jobs by 2045 is a projection, not a forecast, and rests on sustained productivity gains that are far from guaranteed at this stage. What is less speculative is that the decisions being made in standards bodies over the next three to five years will shape which hardware approaches, which national industries, and which companies find themselves well-positioned when the market reaches scale.

The QSN is a sound move but whether it becomes a genuinely open process or a coordination mechanism for the already well-resourced will depend almost entirely on governance decisions that have not yet been made public.