Dr. Kris Naudts is the Founding & Managing partner of Firgun Ventures, a global quantum-first VC firm investing in Series A/B scale-ups.
More than $4 billion in quantum real estate projects are planned or under way globally, according to JLL. Quantum is already shaping property assets, and over a longer horizon, it promises tools for the professionals who run them. The footprint is arriving before the commercial breakthrough, a sequence familiar from the fiber-optic build-out of the late 1990s.
The Qubit Technology Determines The Building
No standard quantum building exists, because the footprint depends on qubit technology more than company size.
Trapped-ion and neutral atom platforms often fit compact optical laboratories, whereas superconducting systems demand dilution refrigerators chilling processors to near absolute zero, under strict vibration and electromagnetic control.
Photonic approaches, which leverage light, can lean on semiconductor foundries, although PsiQuantum, a U.S. photonic quantum computing company, still needs vast component volumes and a central cryogenic plant, so the spectrum ranges up to PsiQuantum’s 300,000 square foot operations center in Chicago.
A building optimized around one hardware type can become unsuitable when the tenant changes architecture, so landlords should weigh a fit-out’s alternative scientific use, not the covenant alone.
The clearest divide separates architectures that make the building part of the computer from those packing complexity into racks and chips. Superconducting and utility-scale photonic systems lean toward the first, while silicon-spin and integrated trapped-ion systems pursue the second and already slot into conventional facilities.
An adaptive reuse story is emerging, because several flagship sites occupy land with an earlier industrial life. Chicago’s park is rising on the former U.S. Steel South Works plant. PsiQuantum’s Australian machine will occupy the former Petrie Paper Mill site near Brisbane with A$940 million ($620 million) of public backing, and D-Wave is taking Florida’s Boca Raton Innovation Campus, a former IBM site. Quantum firms want industrial-grade power and floor loading without hyperscale land, making brownfields a natural fit and politically attractive regeneration anchor.
Quantum As A Tool For The Property Industry
The relatively longer-horizon story is what quantum can do for property professionals themselves, where sensing is furthest advanced. In 2022, researchers reported the first demonstration of submeter-resolution mapping with quantum gravity sensors, locating a tunnel about a meter underground. A buried void or old mine shaft contains less mass, so gravity above it is fractionally weaker, and reading that difference promises surveys roughly 10 times faster and cheaper. The technique targets hazards that sink deals and construction projects, and the Birmingham spinout Delta.g is commercializing this for subsurface mapping and navigation.
Building energy is the other active thread, a fiendishly complex juggling act across weather, occupancy, storage and tariffs. One study used quantum computing to model predictive control of a building’s HVAC system, matching conventional methods while cutting solve times, and a 2025 Cornell University study cut net energy use with campus data. This is research rather than product, but it maps squarely onto property management.
Analytics and market prediction, by contrast, remain largely whitespace. A 2023 study from Naples applied quantum methods to housing data, and a 2024 TerraQuantum preprint applied a quantum machine learning methods to California housing data. Classical machine learning still dominates price prediction, and claims of quantum advantage in analytics warrant corresponding scrutiny.
The Opportunity For Industry Leaders
My view is that industry leaders should understand how different quantum architectures could shape property requirements without making their strategy depend on a single outcome.
The practical priority is to preserve optionality through adaptable facilities, modular infrastructure and durable access to scientific talent. Organizations that engage early can also develop the relationships and operational knowledge needed to distinguish lasting requirements from temporary engineering constraints. Waiting for definitive quantum advantage may therefore mean overlooking the physical ecosystem already forming around the technology.
Quantum real estate is a talent-anchored, government-heavy niche whose defining uncertainty is architectural rather than financial, namely whether the building remains part of the computer or the computer shrinks into the building. The question for real estate investors is no longer when quantum will need buildings, because it already does, but which of those buildings will still make sense once the machines inside them change.
Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
