Quantum Era Nears as China's 180-Qubit Wukong-180 Goes Global

Quantum Computing's Long Wait Nears Its End

For decades, quantum computing lived largely in theory. The question now, as CGTN's RAZOR science program asked in a new episode this week, is no longer whether it will work but how soon and for what. The answer is arriving from laboratories and companies across three continents. China's Origin Quantum has put a 180-qubit machine, the Wukong-180, into global service. Britain's ORCA Computing is betting on photons, particles of light, to make quantum machines practical. And Japan's RIKEN-Fujitsu partnership already operates a 256-qubit superconducting system that is the largest of its kind in Asia. Theory, engineering, investment and real-world impact are converging, and the quantum era may be closer than it looks.

Tags: Quantum Computing, Wukong-180, Origin Quantum, ORCA Computing, RIKEN, Fujitsu, Quantum Advantage

How Qubits Break the Classical Mold

Unlike conventional computers, which process information as ones and zeros, quantum computers use qubits, units that can exist in multiple states at once. A small number of qubits can represent an exponentially larger space of possibilities than the same number of classical bits, which is why researchers believe quantum machines will eventually crack problems that are effectively impossible for today's supercomputers.

There is no single way to build a qubit. Superconducting circuits must be cooled to near absolute zero inside dilution refrigerators; trapped ions are held in electromagnetic fields; photonic machines encode information in individual particles of light. Each approach carries its own trade-offs in speed, scale and resilience, and each has produced a stream of incremental breakthroughs. The milestone the field is chasing is called quantum advantage: the moment a quantum computer outperforms a classical machine on a task with real-world value. For years that moment was theoretical. The current generation of machines is testing whether it can be made practical.

China's Full-Stack Push: The Wukong-180

Hefei-based Origin Quantum, China's first quantum computing company, has emerged as the country's most visible commercializer of the technology. Its fourth-generation superconducting computer, the Origin Wukong-180, is equipped with a self-developed 180-qubit chip and was brought online for global users in May 2026, representing what the company describes as China's first export and commercial sale of domestically produced quantum computing power.

What distinguishes the Wukong-180 is not only its qubit count but its vertical integration. Origin Quantum says the chip, the measurement and control system, the environment support system and the quantum computer operating system are all self-developed at the full-stack level. The firm has also built China's first quantum chip production line and offers a publicly downloadable quantum operating system, and it works with nearly 100 universities nationwide on quantum education programs.

The company's earlier machine, the Origin Wukong, logged roughly 50 million remote accesses from users in more than 160 countries over two years of operation and completed about 900,000 global quantum computing tasks, evidence that demand for access to quantum resources extends far beyond the research lab.

A British Bet on Light: ORCA Computing

The RAZOR episode centers on a different route to the same destination. Its correspondent, Neil Cairns, meets Dr. Richard Murray, chief executive and co-founder of ORCA Computing, a British startup spun out of the University of Oxford in 2019 that is pioneering photonic quantum computers, machines that use light to process information.

ORCA's approach promises speed, scalability and resilience, and the company has tested its systems in early-stage trials. Because photonic systems can operate at or near room temperature, they avoid some of the engineering burden of superconducting machines, which demand extreme cooling. Murray's pitch is practical: build near-term quantum accelerators that work alongside classical supercomputers in hybrid workflows, while developing longer-term error-corrected machines. The company has said it believes quantum advantage in specific applications, including generative AI, could arrive within about two years, a timeline far shorter than the decade-plus forecasts often attached to fully fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Japan's Counterweight: RIKEN-Fujitsu's 256 Qubits

For Tokyo, the competition is not abstract. Japan's flagship effort, developed at the RIKEN RQC-FUJITSU Collaboration Center and unveiled in April 2025, is a 256-qubit superconducting quantum computer, built on the 64-qubit machine the partners delivered in October 2023. Fujitsu has offered the system to companies and research institutions through the cloud since the first quarter of fiscal 2025, positioning it as the centerpiece of a hybrid quantum computing lineup that pairs quantum processors with classical supercomputers.

The national picture is broader than one machine. Japan's government has committed roughly 1.05 trillion yen to quantum technology under its national strategy, and Japanese industry is spreading bets across architectures. NTT has backed OptQC, a startup pursuing a room-temperature optical quantum computer targeting one million qubits by fiscal 2030, a photonic bet that mirrors ORCA's thesis. In May 2026, Fujitsu and the Institute of Science Tokyo opened a joint quantum hardware research hub focused on AI-assisted gate calibration and talent development. Internationally, Tokyo signed a quantum technology cooperation pact with Australia in July, deepening its network of allied research partners.

The structure of Japan's effort pairs public research institutes with private industry, a model that has produced steady hardware milestones but slower commercialization; Tokyo is trying to close that gap with the Fujitsu-Science Tokyo hub, cloud delivery and international partnerships.

Quantum Advantage: From Lab Bench to Real World

The prize at the center of all three efforts is the same: machines that outperform classical systems on problems that matter. Chemistry is the most cited near-term target, because quantum computers can simulate molecules far more naturally than classical machines, potentially accelerating work on drugs, batteries and catalysts. Materials science, optimization and machine learning are close behind, and the emergence of post-quantum cryptography standards reflects a parallel race to protect systems before quantum machines can break today's encryption.

Realistic timelines still demand caution. Current machines are in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum, or NISQ, era: powerful but error-prone, and full error correction remains years away. The near-term path favored by both ORCA and Fujitsu is hybrid computing, in which a quantum accelerator handles the parts of a problem it excels at and a classical supercomputer manages the rest. That convergence of theory, engineering and investment, rather than any single qubit-count milestone, is what is pulling the quantum era forward.

Quantum technologies also extend beyond computing. Quantum sensing and quantum communication networks are moving into commercial use in China, Europe and Japan, which means the economic stakes of the race are wider than the machines themselves.

What to Watch For

For readers in Japan and across the Asia-Pacific, the quantum race now has three distinct storylines to follow. China is commercializing fastest, using the Wukong-180's global access and full-stack self-reliance to export quantum computing power and build an ecosystem of users and talent. Japan, for now, holds the regional lead in superconducting qubit count with RIKEN-Fujitsu's 256-qubit system, and it is hedging across photonic and optical approaches that could leapfrog the current generation. Britain and the wider West are betting that hybrid, application-first strategies will reach useful advantage first.

The metrics that will matter over the next 12 to 24 months are not simply qubit counts. Watch how quickly error rates fall, whether photonic systems close the gap with superconducting machines, which companies convert cloud access into paying workloads, and how governments respond as quantum moves from national-strategy documents to commercially delivered services. The era may not arrive on a single announced date, but the machines already in service suggest it is no longer a question of if, only of how soon and for what.

By Kenji Tanaka, Staff Writer

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Sources: CGTN, Origin Quantum, Quantum Zeitgeist, RIKEN, Fujitsu, NTT.