PsiQuantum's Brisbane Facility: Inside Australia's Biggest Quantum Bet

Adjacent to Brisbane Airport, construction is underway on what may become the world's first utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer. PsiQuantum, backed by AU$940 million from the Australian and Queensland governments plus $1 billion in Series E funding, is building a facility that represents Australia's largest-ever bet on a single quantum technology approach.

For educators and students watching the quantum landscape, this project matters. It's happening locally, it's creating jobs, and if it succeeds, it will demonstrate that photonic quantum computing can scale to commercial utility—validating the room-temperature, accessible quantum future many of us are working toward.

What's Being Built

The Brisbane facility is designed as a full-scale quantum computing campus, comprising three main structures:

The entire campus will span approximately 540,000 square feet (50,000 m²). Site selection was driven by reliable industrial infrastructure, high-capacity power supply, and proximity to Brisbane Airport and the Port of Brisbane for specialised component logistics.

The Technology: Why Photonics?

PsiQuantum's approach uses photons (particles of light) as qubits, encoded in silicon photonic chips manufactured using standard semiconductor processes. Key advantages:

• Semiconductor manufacturing: Partnership with GlobalFoundries allows chip production at scale using existing fabs
• Warmer operation: 4K is cold but far easier to achieve than the ~15mK required by superconducting systems
• Fiber networking: Photons travel naturally through fiber optics, enabling modular, networked architectures
• Barium Titanate (BTO): PsiQuantum manufactures this electro-optical material for ultra-high-performance optical switches—key to scalable quantum operations

The trade-off? Photons are harder to make interact with each other than atoms or electrons. PsiQuantum addresses this through measurement-based quantum computing, where large entangled photon networks are pre-generated and then "measured" to perform computations.

Timeline: What's Happening When

The Australian Connection

This isn't just American technology arriving in Australia. Two of PsiQuantum's co-founders—Professors Jeremy O'Brien and Terry Rudolph—are Australian. O'Brien developed foundational photonic quantum computing research at the University of Queensland before moving to the UK and then Silicon Valley.

"Queensland has been home to the world's brightest in quantum technologies—we developed a foundation which has underpinned many world-leading quantum efforts. This project brings that technology and talent back to Queensland to scale-up." — Professor Geoff Pryde, PsiQuantum Australia Chief Technical Director

The project explicitly includes commitments to:

• Establish partnerships with local quantum industry for advanced manufacturing clusters
• Develop an innovation precinct adjacent to the quantum computing site
• Invest in university collaborations, including PhD positions, mentoring, and internship opportunities

Jobs and Career Implications

PsiQuantum expects to create up to 400 highly skilled local jobs. Critically, these aren't all PhD physicist positions:

This aligns with broader industry trends: the quantum workforce needs more than researchers—it needs engineers, technicians, and professionals who can build, maintain, and apply quantum systems.

Why This Matters for Education

The Brisbane facility creates several immediate implications for Australian quantum education:

• Local career pathways: Students can now plan quantum careers without assuming they'll need to move overseas
• University partnerships: The Griffith University Test Lab provides a template for research-industry collaboration
• Workforce demand: 400 jobs means demand for trained graduates across multiple disciplines
• Industry validation: $940M government investment signals that quantum careers are legitimate targets for education planning

The CSIRO estimates Australia's quantum sector could be worth $2.2 billion by 2030, growing to nearly $6 billion by 2045. According to Boston Consulting Group projections cited by the government, investing in the world's first commercial-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer could bring up to $48 billion in GDP and 240,000 new jobs to Australia by 2040.

What Could Go Wrong?

Honest analysis requires acknowledging risks:

• Technical uncertainty: Photonic quantum computing hasn't yet demonstrated the error rates achieved by trapped-ion or superconducting systems at scale
• Timeline pressure: 2027 is ambitious; quantum computing timelines have historically slipped
• Competitive landscape: Google, IBM, Quantinuum, and others are pursuing different approaches with strong funding
• Commercial viability: Even if technical milestones are met, the path to commercial applications remains uncertain

However, even skeptics acknowledge value in the investment. As one physicist noted, even if the computer itself doesn't advance as planned, the investment in "the ecosystem of people making the wires and the lasers and the fab" will pay off because "you've trained people in a good industry that's moving forward."

The Bigger Picture

PsiQuantum's Brisbane facility is one piece of a larger Australian quantum strategy that includes:

• Quantum Brilliance Melbourne: Diamond NV center quantum computers, also room-temperature focused
• Diraq and Silicon Quantum Computing: UNSW spinouts advancing in DARPA QBI Stage B
• Queensland Strategy: $89.7M supporting the broader quantum ecosystem
• Q-CTRL: Sydney-based quantum software company with largest funding round for quantum software globally

Australia consistently ranks in the world's top five countries for high-impact quantum research and quantum computing patents. The PsiQuantum investment is designed to translate that research leadership into commercial capability.

For those of us focused on accessible quantum education, the Brisbane facility represents a concrete endpoint: if photonic quantum computing can scale to utility-scale fault tolerance, the same technology principles should eventually enable smaller, educational quantum systems that operate without exotic cooling requirements.