7 Quantum Cryptography Firms to Watch in 2026 for Post-Quantum Security

On August 13, 2024, the U.S. Commerce Department approved three post-quantum cryptography standards FIPS 203, 204, and 205 putting an official countdown on today’s vulnerable algorithms. According to NIST, organizations now have roughly 18 months to finish the switch, so budgets are opening, roadmaps are rewriting, and quantum-security vendors are sprinting to the front. Over the next few pages, we’ll spotlight seven companies with live products, fresh capital, and momentum you can verify. Pull up a chair the quantum race is on.

How we picked the seven

Between September 2024 and August 2025, we tracked 27 quantum-security vendors through analyst databases, NIST rosters, and Crunchbase deal logs. Each one faced the same six-point test:

A six-point framework explains how 27 quantum-security vendors were filtered down to seven firms to watch in 2026.

1. Proof of life. Shipping code or hardware had to be in pilot or production, not a slide deck.
2. 2026 inflection. The business needs a make-or-break milestone next year: a flagship launch, backbone rollout, or fresh capital earmarked for scale.
3. Standards alignment. We gave extra credit to teams that contributed to FIPS 203, 204, or 205 as well as ETSI PQC drafts, the algorithms auditors will ask for (see the related NIST notice).
4. Market traction. Named customers, public-sector pilots, or semiconductor design wins proved life outside the demo lab.
5. Funding momentum. Seed-to-Series B rounds announced in 2024–2025 signaled investor confidence.

Coverage breadth. Collectively, the finalists had to cover software libraries, chip IP, QKD hardware, and blockchain tooling, the blend a CISO considers during a post-quantum migration.

Only seven companies cleared at least four of the six bars, and they’re up next.

1. Project 11: protecting crypto before Q-day hits

Elliptic-curve signatures guard every Bitcoin in existence, yet 6.51 million BTC now sit in addresses whose public keys are already exposed, making them soft targets for a future quantum thief. According to a Cointelegraph report, Project 11 Applied Quantum Computing is building an emergency exit.

Founded in 2024 and based in New York, the team’s flagship tool, Yellowpages, lets holders link a vulnerable address to a lattice-based backup key and record that link in a public registry. Nothing moves on-chain; owners simply get a verifiable escape route before quantum hardware arrives.

Investors noticed. On June 19, 2025, Variant Fund and Quantonation co-led a $6 million seed round that covered a third-party audit and a 1-BTC bounty for anyone who can quantum-break the demo wallet, as reported by Coindesk.

Project 11 keeps the focus on data, not fear. Project 11’s open-source Bitcoin RISQ List v2 runs automatically each week across the entire Bitcoin network and all address types, publishing a searchable database of every quantum-vulnerable address and its balance. The RISQ List documentation notes that each entry is labeled with the reason it is exposed, such as key reuse, legacy P2PK scripts, or partial spends, and that its metrics break down at-risk supply by vulnerability type over time so exchanges and treasuries can see where to prioritize migrations. Readers can drill into those metrics and FAQs via the Project 11 blog instead of guessing how big the risk really is.

What to watch in 2026  

• Wallet integrations: several self-custody apps are already adding Yellowpages hooks to their UI.  
• A proposed Bitcoin Improvement Proposal would store quantum-safe address links in Taproot-friendly metadata, turning Yellowpages from a clever add-on into the default safety net for the world’s largest crypto treasury.

2. PQShield: building quantum-safe DNA into chips and code

New NIST FIPS standards and an 18‑month countdown are accelerating the race to post‑quantum security in 2026 a backdrop that makes cryptography basics essential for understanding how these firms build quantum-safe systems

Where Project 11 zooms in on crypto wallets, PQShield covers the whole stack. Spun out of the University of Oxford and now based in London, the company adds post-quantum security from transistor to chat window.

Its cryptographers co-authored every algorithm that NIST turned into FIPS 203, 204, and 205, including Kyber for key exchange plus Dilithium and Falcon for signatures. The PQShield partner program notes that chip makers can license a co-processor today and clear tomorrow’s audits with the same silicon.

PQShield offers three product lanes:

• Hardware IP. Drop-in crypto blocks for Arm, RISC-V, and FPGA designs add lattice-based primitives with single-digit-percent area overhead. SiFive is integrating the cores into its Performance P470 CPU family, according to a joint release.  
• Software SDK. A TLS plug-in swaps RSA for Kyber in one API call, easing server migrations.  
• Secure messaging blueprints. Reference code lets Signal-style apps run quantum-safe handshakes without breaking current clients.

Traction is visible. Bosch became the first OEM customer in 2024, embedding PQShield IP in an automotive gateway prototype, according to Penningtons Manches Cooper. Arm alumni now advise the firm, and a June 2024 $37 million Series B gives PQShield room to open a U.S. support hub for federal buyers, per a company press statement.

Why watch 2026? Final FIPS publication will lock chip specifications, and PQShield’s test silicon is already taped-out. If even one tier-one semiconductor vendor moves from pilot to production with PQShield cores, the company could shift from academic standout to embedded default in a single design cycle.

3. QuSecure: flipping the quantum-safe switch for whole networks

Most organizations don’t panic about algorithms; they panic about migrations highlighting why network security fundamentals are critical when deploying quantum-safe cryptographic solutions. Swapping RSA across thousands of live apps is slow, risky, and expensive. QuSecure’s QuProtect turns that slog into a simple policy change.

QuSecure’s QuProtect platform discovers cryptographic usage and enforces hybrid classical and Kyber tunnels across federal and banking networks.

The platform first inventories every cryptographic call across endpoints and servers, then inserts post-quantum ciphers on the fly while keeping a live ledger of keys and certificates. Think SCCM for crypto, not desktops. A traffic-steering layer can run hybrid tunnels, wrapping packets in both classical and Kyber-based protection so legacy peers stay online until the board approves a full cut-over.

Proof points are piling up. In July 2022 QuSecure orchestrated the first post-quantum encrypted link on a U.S. federal network at an Air Force and Space Force site, according to a company release. Follow-on SBIR Phase II contracts from the Army ($1.7 million in 2023) and the Air Force (2024) fund hardening and deployment to tactical networks, as listed on the SBIR database. In January 2025 Accenture Ventures took a strategic stake, bundling QuProtect into quantum-readiness projects for banks such as Banco Sabadell, per an Accenture announcement.

What’s next?  

• SaaS edition (Q1 2026). A cloud-hosted console aimed at mid-market teams without PKI specialists.  
• Zero-trust integrations. Roadmap items show connectors for ZTNA leaders so CISOs can add quantum-safe tunnels to existing architectures instead of installing another agent.

If PQC adoption is a marathon, QuSecure is laying down a moving walkway that cuts the distance for every runner.

4. Qrypt: streaming quantum randomness straight into your keys

Most quantum-security firms chase tougher algorithms; Qrypt chases flawless entropy. The New York startup pipes quantum-generated randomness through the cloud, letting developers mint one-time-pad–strength keys without installing a photon detector.

How it works: multiple data-center appliances harvest raw entropy from distinct quantum sources. Each stream is sliced, sent over separate routes, then recombined on the customer side, so no full key ever crosses the wire. Eavesdroppers hear only noise.

That design solves two chronic headaches. It sidesteps the 100 km fiber limits that slow classic QKD boxes, and it scales like any other REST call just drop getQuantumKey() next to your JWT request.

Traction so far:  

• In January 2023 Qrypt and Megaport moved files across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud regions with Qrypt keys, the first global quantum-secure data-plane demo on a Network-as-a-Service backbone, according to a Nasdaq release.  
• Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Labs co-developed Qrypt’s latest QRNG hardware, now live in its U.S. entropy cloud, as noted by Business Wire.  
• The Air Force awarded an AFWERX SBIR in July 2024 to quantum-harden Mattermost chat, boosting federal credibility, per a Qrypt announcement.

Next stop: global coverage. New entropy hubs in Frankfurt and Singapore, planned for mid-2026, will cut latency below 20 ms for EU and APAC customers. An upcoming SDK aimed at Ledger-class hardware wallets promises quantum-grade randomness for millions of retail devices.

For teams that need to safeguard secrets for decades, keys born from true quantum chaos beat any algorithm alone.

5. Crypto Quantique: taming IoT’s weakest link with quantum roots of trust

Factory-flashed keys make billions of IoT boards immutable, and in a post-quantum era they become dangerously brittle. Crypto Quantique fixes that flaw by letting every chip mint an unclonable identity the moment it powers on. Quantum-tunnelling variations inside the silicon form a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF); no lab can copy it, and no attacker can read it back.

From that root of trust, the company’s QuarkLink platform issues certificates, provisions cloud credentials, and rolls firmware updates for the device’s whole life while the heavyweight cryptography runs off-chip. Even 8-bit microcontrollers can join the quantum-safe party without burning extra cycles.

Hardware makers are already shipping demos. Renesas added QuarkLink to its RA MCU ecosystem in 2021, letting “thousands of devices be automatically onboarded within seconds,” according to Renesas. STMicroelectronics followed the same year, folding the platform into STM32 and STSAFE lines to cut IoT time-to-market, as noted in an ST integration brief. Microchip is assessing the IP for automotive over-the-air updates, based on industry briefings.

2026 looks pivotal. ETSI’s Quantum-Safe Cryptography agenda now highlights IoT profiles that include lattice-based schemes, and semiconductor vendors like standards they can stamp on a datasheet. A recent ETSI release underscores that shift. Crypto Quantique plans to certify its hardware under FIPS 140-3 and launch a self-serve SaaS tier so startups can protect entire fleets ten thousand devices at a time without calling sales.

When attackers move from data centers to edge nodes, having quantum-grade keys baked into silicon will feel less like a luxury and more like seatbelts.

6. Sandbox AQ: the quantum Swiss Army knife for Fortune 500s

Most firms on this list fix a single slice of the puzzle. Sandbox AQ, spun out of Alphabet in 2022, offers a full toolkit that covers cryptographic inventory, migration orchestration, policy automation, and even quantum-powered simulation under one roof.

The Security Suite begins with discovery. Machine-learning models crawl source code, binaries, and network captures to surface every legacy cipher in an estate. That map feeds a policy engine that shows the lowest-risk order to replace each algorithm with a NIST-approved successor. Vodafone used the platform in 2025 to launch one of the telco world’s first quantum-safe VPN pilots without a noticeable latency hit, according to a Vodafone case study.

Scale sets Sandbox AQ apart. The company has raised $950 million so far, including a $450 million Series E in April 2025 that pushed its valuation to $5.75 billion, as reported by Reuters. Its first acquisition, France-based Cryptosense in 2022, added mature scanning engines for crypto analysis, per a Sandbox AQ release. Those assets helped win successive U.S. Air Force SBIR contracts in 2022 and 2024 to harden satellite-ground links and develop GPS-free navigation, according to PR Newswire.

Looking to 2026, Sandbox AQ plans to convert its federal lessons into a managed crypto-agility service that rotates keys and algorithms as smoothly as cloud patches. Industry talk also points to a strategic alliance with a top hardware-security-module vendor, which could place Sandbox AQ’s policy engine closer to the silicon root.

If regulators publish fresh quantum-safety mandates, expect Sandbox AQ to appear in the footnotes. For CISOs, following each release is a simple way to stay one regulatory step ahead.

7. QNu Labs: exporting India’s home-grown quantum shield

When people list quantum-security hot spots they mention Geneva, Boston, or Cambridge. Bengaluru rarely makes the podium, yet QNu Labs just lit one of the world’s longest operational QKD links across India, a 509 km stretch of standard carrier fiber connecting defense and banking nodes, according to India Today.

Why it matters:

1. Indigenous hardware. Every photon source and detector is designed and built in India, easing supply-chain anxiety for nations worried about imported photonics.
2. Commodity fiber. The network rides the same cables Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio use, proving satellites or exotic glass aren’t required to span megacity distances.

New Delhi’s ₹60 billion ($720 million) National Quantum Mission lists QNu as a core vendor for communications pilots, notes the Times of India. Program funding powers the firm’s stack: Trinity (QKD transceiver), Tropos (quantum RNG), and Armos (VPN layer).

Commercial traction is following the government lead. An undisclosed Indian bank ran a 2025 pilot securing SWIFT traffic between Mumbai and Bengaluru and reported 60 percent lower latency than classic IPSec thanks to QNu’s trusted-node design. Telecom operators are testing premium “quantum-secure circuits” that could finally offer differentiation beyond raw bandwidth.

Looking ahead to 2026, QNu plans to extend its backbone past 1,500 km with in-house quantum repeaters. If successful, the move could refute the idea that only Western incumbents can scale QKD and spark export deals across the Gulf and Southeast Asia, where data-sovereignty rules echo India’s.

Quantum security is no longer a trans-Atlantic contest; QNu’s leap shows the field is firmly multipolar.

Conclusion

Quantum-safe standards have gone from draft to decree, and the vendors profiled here are racing to meet the moment. Whether you’re migrating code, designing silicon, or building national backbones, these seven companies offer a snapshot of where innovation and investment are headed in 2026.