Originally published on LinkedIn
Grand opening of the Microsoft Quantum research center in Maryland
Sep 25, 2026 | Charles Tahan
This is an archived copy of a LinkedIn post. The original is at the link above.
A year ago at Quantum World Congress I announced Microsoft’s plans to build a new quantum research center in collaboration with the State of Maryland, the Capital of Quantum Initiative, and the University of Maryland. I had the pleasure of joining Microsoft Executive Vice President Jason Zander on stage this year to announce our grand opening. It’s amazing the progress you can make when you have the right partners.
I spoke about Maryland as a model for bringing the best talent, infrastructure, and technology together around a shared ambition to be the crucible for quantum innovation.
Our new research center in the Discovery District will include dedicated spaces for industry innovation, partner integration, academic research, and public engagement, as well as a hands-on quantum hardware maker space.
We are super excited to enable this new kind of makerspace for gaining hands-on quantum hardware experience, and are extremely thankful to our first partners: @AMD, @Bluefors, @Intel, @IQM, @Fermilab, @Riverlane, and @Quantum Motion, for helping make it happen. More to come.
We are also kicking off an annual workshop series (called MeasureFest!) and funding postdoctoral positions at UMD to collaboratively invest in Maryland’s brightest minds.
We’ve also built a dedicated lab space for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where we will deliver a topological qubit system built on our Majorana 2 quantum chip for independent testing and evaluation in the final stage of the agency’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.
This is just the beginning of the exciting cross-sector partnerships and innovation we hope that Microsoft Quantum, Discovery District, will enable. I’m grateful for Gov. Wes Moore’s leadership, and for the close partnership of University of Maryland President Darryll Pines, VP of Quantum Gretchen Campbell, Capital of Quantum Director Corey Stambaugh, and the broader UMD community in bringing this vision to life. I of course want to thank everyone across Microsoft and our partners who helped make this happen. You can read more about our work in my blog: https://quantum.microsoft.com/en-us/insights/blogs/microsoft-quantum-research-center-maryland (copy on this site)
#CapitalOfQuantum #MicrosoftQuantum #QWC26.