Originals · Analysis · AI & Tech
India is third in quantum papers and fastest in patents. The catch: who builds the products?
MIT's Quantum Index Report 2026 ranks India third in quantum research volume and fastest in patent growth, but its citation scores, thin private funding and early stage startups show how far the science still is from products.
A ranking that sounds like a victory
When the MIT Quantum Index Report 2026 was published on 23 October, one line travelled fast in India. Between 2021 and 2025, India produced 6.1% of the world's research papers on quantum computing, the third largest share after China at 21.8% and the United States at 20.7%. In quantum communications, the field that uses single particles of light to share secret keys, India was third again with 5.6% of papers.
The patent numbers were sharper still. Quantum technology patent filings from India rose from 226 in 2023 to 449 in 2024 and 883 in 2025, which the report calls the fastest growth of any country it tracks. China files on a different scale, with 9,790 in 2025. The report, from the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy with Accenture, also warns that patent data lags by about 18 months, so the latest years may still change.
AIM Network's Front Page video on 13 November framed this as the National Quantum Mission paying off, and then named a catch: "if Indian industry does not translate these research gains into deployable products, foreign tech monopolies will simply license the breakthroughs and dominate the market." That is AIM's view. The rest of the MIT data, and a government assessment published in September, show why the worry deserves a hearing.
Volume is not the same as influence
The same MIT tables that put India third by volume rank it lower on impact. India holds 3.5% of the most cited 10% of quantum computing papers, fifth in the world and just ahead of Japan at 3.1%. On the h-index, a score of how many of a country's papers keep getting cited by others, India scores 30, tied with Australia at the bottom of the top ten.
In quantum communications the gap is wider. India falls to ninth by share of highly cited papers, at 2.3%, and to tenth by h-index, at 15. The report calls this a "high-volume, low-impact pattern" and says it is more pronounced in communications than in computing. NoCaps, reading the same report, put it plainly: patent filings "are not equivalent to commercial breakthroughs."
Who actually holds the patents?
The MIT report finds that in India, as in China and South Korea, academic and research institutions sit among the top three quantum patent holders, which it reads as activity driven more by universities than by companies. IBM is the third largest holder in India.
The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser's paper, State of Progress in India's Quantum STI Ecosystem, adds that about 40.7% of quantum patents filed in India are of foreign origin, most of them after 2018. Over ten years Microsoft filed 55 at the Indian patent office, IBM 38, Google 17 and Samsung 16. The paper counts 648 filings by Indian applicants over 2014 to 2024. It and the MIT report use different methods, so their totals should not be compared directly.
The money problem
Research becomes a product only when someone pays for it. The PSA paper counts around 120 quantum startups in India, against more than 2,000 worldwide, and says most are still at the idea stage, followed by the validation stage. Only about 8% hold or have filed a patent, and three firms, QNu Labs, QpiAI and Quanfluence, account for most of those filings.
Private money is thin. Funding rounds with only private investors rose from about $7 million in 2022 to $11 million in 2025, while private quantum financing worldwide climbed from about $1.8 billion to $12.2 billion over the same years, the paper says, citing McKinsey. Rounds where public and private investors came in together reached $51.5 million across three rounds in 2025, concentrated in two companies, QpiAI and QNu Labs. For scale, MIT counts $10.9 billion of global quantum funding in 2025, nearly four times the 2024 total.
What the government is betting on
The National Quantum Mission, approved in 2023 with Rs 6,003.65 crore to spend until 2030-31, is trying to bridge the gap with public money and demonstrations. In April the Department of Science and Technology said a 1,000 km quantum communication network built on QNu Labs technology had been demonstrated, half of the mission's 2,000 km target. QpiAI's 64-qubit Kaveri processor, which the PSA paper lists among the mission's outcomes, reported a hardware decoder for quantum error correction in March, according to Quantum Computing Report.
At the PRAGATI Q-Foundry meet on 30 September, mission support grew from 17 to 26 startups, and Principal Scientific Adviser Ajay Kumar Sood said about 52 technologies at various readiness levels had come out of the mission's four hubs. On 16 October the Technology Development Board signed up to put Rs 150 crore, as optionally convertible debt, into a Rs 300 crore QNu Labs programme meant to take quantum security and sensing technology to TRL 9, the stage of a proven system in real use.
The government's own account of Q-Foundry points to the same catch AIM raised. According to PIB, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh stressed that quantum startups need sustained engagement from industry and investors, including capital, co-development, procurement and market access, and called on States to evaluate indigenous technology and explore buying it.
What to watch next
The first test is whether quantum key distribution becomes something customers can buy. The PSA paper says turning network demonstrations into a commercially available service at scale is the crucial next step. The second is a deadline that creates paying customers at home: under DST's quantum safe roadmap, critical sectors such as government, defence, power, telecom and banking are to lay quantum safe foundations by 2027 and complete the move to post-quantum cryptography by 2029.
The third is the next MIT index. If India's share of highly cited papers rises along with its volume, and more of its patents come from Indian companies rather than labs and foreign firms, the ranking will mean what the headlines already say it means. If not, AIM's question about who captures the value of Indian quantum research will stay open.
