On October 28, 2026 PsiQuantum announced a new product — an Optical Circuit Switch (OCS) for the data center market.
PsiQuantum is a quantum computing company founded in 2016 that is building large-scale photonic-based quantum computers. They have received over $4.1B investment from both private and state funds. Notably A$940M from the Australian government (a mix of equity and loans), and up to $250M from the US gov (DARPA and US Commerce department). Private investors have invested over $3.24B since 2016, with a $1.5B E round closed in May of 2026. Their ultimate goal is to build two large-scale quantum computers in Brisbane, Australia and Chicago, Illinois. Near-term goals are site and facility development and smaller beta versions for testing at these locations. The company has major partners and high-profile investors and board members such as Lip-Bu Tan the CEO of Intel.
Their approach to building quantum computers is not one big and bold bet, it is many big and bold bets, including building two large sites across the world, complex refrigeration systems, and novel photonics. So why are they spending time and resources releasing a component for traditional data centers?
Some asked whether this announcement is a pivot.
Anthony Leverrier@letonyoPsiQuantum pivoting ?
PsiQuantum@PsiQuantumToday, PsiQuantum is unveiling its industry-leading Optical Circuit Switch initiative with an 8×8 OCS demo built on the company’s low-loss silicon photonics platform—the same platform we’ve spent
Chao-Yang Lu@chaoyanglu1/ PsiQ's $2.37B in cumulative funding is backing a long-term promise not yet experimentally validated. When competitors like Quantinuum and QuEra deliver reproducible results with dozens of logical qubits and logical error rates around 10⁻⁶ in 2028,
Chao-Yang Lu@chaoyanglu2/ PsiQuantum's "skip the intermediate steps and go straight to a million qubits" narrative will lose its most critical reference point—and the bubble will likely burst in just 2–3 years. The best outcome for PsiQ is to pivot into an optical switch company.
While questions of a pivot are provocative, there is evidence that this has been an idea for some time.
PsiQuantum alluded to orthogonal photonics technologies in their paper “A manufacturable platform for photonic quantum computing” published in Nature, February 2025, saying their platform suited “other photonic technologies.” Peter Shadbolt, Co-founder and CSO, during a recent interview says that the OCS is a “byproduct” of their work developing a low-loss platform for their quantum computer. The OCS is an 8x8 prototype designed for classical data center systems, with plans to scale it up. Tom’s Hardware reports that “PsiQuantum has a 64x64 version taped out with a 72x72 underway.”
In April 2024, the company announced its first site located in Brisbane, Australia near Brisbane Airport. At that time, the company said that they would have the site operational by the end of 2027. Since then that site has changed to a new location at Moreton Bay Central. CEO Victor Peng speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony on June 18, 2026 said “by 2030 we are confident that it will be up and running.”
The Chicago site was announced July 25, 2024 with Illinois contributing “$500M for the buildout of the Quantum Park, including $200M for the build-out of a Cryogenic Plant to serve the cooling needs for PsiQuantum and other potential users.” In February 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported, “PsiQuantum says it will have a commercially useful quantum computer available as soon as 2027.” Sixteen months later, in June 2026, the Journal reported, “By early next year, PsiQuantum expects to start running tests to evaluate the performance of its Chicago computer, scaling it up to larger and larger capacity over time. It will likely take till the end of the decade for PsiQuantum to build a big enough machine to use for commercial purposes,” citing Shadbolt.
The OCS product could de-risk the investment by generating revenues to sustain their efforts in quantum. In PsiQuantum’s October 28, 2026 announcement, CEO Victor Peng said, “As AI computing pushes infrastructure to its limits, we now have an opportunity to put our state-of-the-art technology to work today while continuing toward our ultimate goal: building and deploying the world’s first useful, fault-tolerant quantum computers.”
Many technology companies sell diverse sets of products. Alphabet, for example, has autonomous vehicles, Tensor and photonics chips, as well as home automation systems and mobile phones. Amazon makes its own chips, and has grocery stores. Yet, these are scaled businesses generating hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that only expanded into new product lines after their core business was generating meaningful revenues. One is left wondering why open a new front when the first one isn’t won?
There is evidence that PsiQuantum is progressing towards providing a useful quantum computer. DARPA’s QBI program has advanced the company to stage C, the final stage in their program to identify a quantum computer that produces more value than its costs by the year 2033. Of more than twenty companies QBI has evaluated, PsiQuantum is one of six companies that have progressed to stage C. In addition to the validation investors have given they have partners, including Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Mitsubishi Chemical. The 2025 Nature paper is promising in that it included tests on real hardware, although not a complete quantum computing system.
Shadbolt says that no useful quantum computer exists “in any modality.” Which is true. Most companies publish roadmaps and PsiQuantum has not. There is evidence of progress, such as the 99.22% two-qubit fusion fidelity provided in the 2025 Nature paper. But, the company has not provided enough specs as of yet. Xanadu, a Canadian photonics quantum computing company, published their roadmap in August of 2026, which describes their goal of delivering “up to 200 logical qubits by 2029, up to 500 by 2030, and 1,000+ by 2031.” Xanadu is a publicly listed company (NASDAQ: XNDU).
PsiQuantum expanding into the OCS market looks like a natural extension of their know-how and resources. It does raise new questions. Can they compete with other photonics companies, including Lumentum and Coherent? Will it distract from their mission to deliver large-scale quantum computers? Will the public and private investors appreciate the returns it provides?
If Q-Day is the day that a quantum computer can break commercial cryptography, I wonder if there is a PsiQuantum-Day, when they offer a quantum computer which customers will pay to use. In June 2026, CEO Peng said of their Brisbane machine, “by 2030 we are confident that it will be up and running.” Time will tell.
