Technology brief: Quantum communication

Patent landscape

Published patent documents per publication year in H04L 9/0852 Quantum cryptography; H04B 10/70 Photonic quantum communication (CPC version 2026.08, titles read on the CPC scheme pages on 2026-10-23), as counted by a search of EPO Open Patent Services.

Status: collected for every year shown.

A count is the number of published documents the search finds, not of patent families: one invention published in several countries or stages counts more than once. The last two years are incomplete, so a lower recent count is not a downturn. Counts show activity in these classes, not patent quality, market share, ownership or where anything is made.

Patent families of companies taking part

Status: 83 of 83 companies looked up, latest lookup 2026-10-28. 424 distinct quantum patent families across them (every quantum CPC group searched).

7 of these companies have at least one family in the group Quantum communication and cryptography.

Companies with families, by the country CORDIS records for them: Germany 6, Spain 1. This is where the company is registered in CORDIS, not the applicant residence of each patent or where anything is made.

Source: European Patent Office, Open Patent Services, under its terms of use; derived counts only. EPO Open Patent Services terms

Supply-chain stages and documented actors

Platforms and their parts

Platforms of the parts tree classified under the same CPC groups, from platform to subsystems, components and materials, each part sourced to a review article (tree compiled 2026-10-25, pending expert review).

• Parts tree: Quantum key distribution systems (15 parts down to materials, 3 of them critical raw materials)

Supply-chain segments of the projects

418 projects; a project counts in every segment whose keywords its title names. 83 companies (private for-profit organisations in CORDIS) and 369 organisations in all take part.

Documented here means taking part in an EU-funded project, as CORDIS records it. These organisations are not verified suppliers, and no customer or supplier relationship is inferred from shared projects.

Sources: CORDIS projects and organisations (Publications Office of the European Union), retrieved 2026-10-16; parts tree from public review articles. Supply-chain segments, projects and companies

Research and funding

418 projects in the sources used (CORDIS 59, EU Funding & Tenders Portal 42, Kohesio 14, ANR (France) 16, NWOpen API (Netherlands) 13, FWF Research Radar 19, OpenAIRE Graph (national funders) 80, Gateway to Research (United Kingdom) 155, ARAMIS (Switzerland) 11, Research Council of Norway 3, Research Ireland 6). A project belongs to this pillar when the portal classification has confirmed it there (an editor decision or a high-precision taxonomy rule on its title), as on the technology hub; this covers CORDIS, Funding & Tenders and national projects. Projects not confirmed in any pillar are not counted here.

Each project counts once. A total adds the amount each source states for its projects within one measure and one currency only: EU contributions, national awards and other measures are never added together. Total cost includes the award and is shown separately. A country filter keeps whole projects with a participant in the country, so its total is not the country's share. Programme envelopes, partner shares, co-funding and payments are separate layers and are never added to awards; payments are not published by the sources used. Outputs are linked only through an explicit project or grant identifier or reviewed documentary evidence, never by name alone; only a reviewed document can show a demonstrated contribution. CORDIS and Funding & Tenders amounts are one measure, the EU contribution (maximum grant agreed in the grant agreement, not payments). Country codes EL and UK are read as GR (Greece) and GB (United Kingdom). National and regional rows whose title names no quantum technology are left out unless asked for.

Largest awards in euro

• QIA-Phase2: Quantum Internet Alliance - Phase2 (EU contribution (maximum grant agreed) EUR 47,500,000, start 2026-04-01)
• QIA-Phase1: Quantum Internet Alliance - Phase1 (EU contribution (maximum grant agreed) EUR 24,000,000, start 2022-10-01)
• OPENQKD: Open European Quantum Key Distribution Testbed (EU contribution (maximum grant agreed) EUR 14,999,989.89, start 2019-09-02)
• QIA: Quantum Internet Alliance (EU contribution (maximum grant agreed) EUR 9,999,566.39, start 2018-10-01)
• UNIQORN: Affordable Quantum Communication for Everyone: Revolutionizing the Quantum Ecosystem from Fabrication to Application (EU contribution (maximum grant agreed) EUR 9,979,905, start 2018-10-01)

Includes rows from the ANR open data: ANR, data.gouv.fr, ODbL 1.0; those rows are shared alike under the Open Database Licence.

Sources and retrieval dates: CORDIS 2026-10-16; EU Funding & Tenders Portal 2026-10-21; national 2026-10-24. Every award of this technology in Follow the money

Facilities and deployment

32 entries of the infrastructure catalogue name this pillar.

Technical status and user access are separate: an inauguration does not prove that outside users can apply. Forecasts are never counted as milestones.

Sources: the infrastructure catalogue and the deployment tracker of this portal, each entry checked against official pages (dates per entry). Catalogue entries of this pillar · Deployment tracker for this pillar

Regional positions

Only figures that state their geography are shown. Figures for different regions, definitions or years are listed side by side and never combined, scored or ranked.

Participation in these EU-funded projects

349 participations from EU Member States and 229 from other countries (one per project and country). EU programmes fund mainly participants in the EU and associated countries, so this is not a comparison of regional strength.

Figures from published reports about this technology

Figures about quantum technologies as a whole

Context only: these figures cover every quantum technology, not this one.

Sources: approved figures of the report evidence store, each with its publisher, edition and page; CORDIS for participations. Registered reports and their figures · Public funding commitments around the world

Evidence gaps

What this page does not cover, so that missing evidence is not read as absence:

• Patent counts are published documents in a CPC group, not patent families, and no applicant country is available from the search used; the families of companies come from organisation lookups and are not a census.
• Supplier relationships are not documented: companies are participants of EU-funded projects, not verified suppliers, and no customer or supplier link is inferred.
• Projects are assigned to a technology by keywords (a pillar suggestion pending editorial review, or words of the title), so some projects are missed or misplaced.
• Funding covers EU programmes (CORDIS, Funding & Tenders) and the national sources the portal holds; national programmes outside them, private investment and payments are not included.
• No production location, capacity, market share or ranking of countries or actors is shown: the sources used do not establish them.
• Research output (publications) by technology is not collected: the portal counts publications by country for quantum as a whole only.

CPC mapping and method

CPC groups counted (CPC version 2026.08, scheme pages read on 2026-10-23; lower levels included):

• G06N 10/00 Quantum computing, i.e. information processing based on quantum-mechanical phenomena (read 2026-10-23)
• H04L 9/0852 Quantum cryptography (read 2026-10-23)
• H04B 10/70 Photonic quantum communication (read 2026-10-23)

Groups checked and not used:

• B82Y 10/00 Nanotechnology for information processing, storage or transmission, e.g. quantum computing or single electron logic: The title names quantum computing only as one example of nanotechnology for information processing, so the group also holds documents that are not about quantum computing.
• G01R 33/0354 SQUIDS (measuring magnetic fields using superconductive devices): Superconducting quantum interference devices are used in quantum sensing, but no CPC title in G01R 33 names quantum sensing, and the group is not limited to quantum sensors. Quantum sensing has no landscape series in this pilot.
• G01R 33/26 Measuring direction or magnitude of magnetic fields or magnetic flux using optical pumping: Optically pumped magnetometers include atomic quantum sensors, but the title does not limit the group to them. Quantum sensing has no landscape series in this pilot.

Each count is one search request to EPO Open Patent Services, sent by a scheduled job, never by a page. The landscape may use at most 12 of the 120 requests a day that the portal sends to the service, and at most 4 per run; organisation lookups keep that share free while counts are due. Earlier counts stay on display when a request fails.