Source-led vs. emergent news in quantum tech

Including 22 news stories that went beyond company-led announcements in 2025

I was catching up on the quantum news over the break and at some stage noticed “this is mostly all press releases and research papers”.

I found that curious because it was in contrast with the more general news I read, which reports on stuff that was observed to have happened in the world, not announced in a press releases.

So then I tried to remember if we’d had any of that kind of reporting in quantum tech and could only come up with a couple of examples of stories from the last year.

I posted about it on LinkedIn to see if anyone had any more stories to add. No one added any, but Hilary Kaye helped me refine the distinction I was trying to make (which went beyond press-releases). She phrased it as:

. . .the difference between news that comes from a company (regardless of how it reached the journalist) and news that happens on its own, i.e., either an enterprising journalist pursues a story on their own or something that is intrinsically newsworthy and generates coverage without a company suggesting it.

I’ll refer to these two kinds of news as source-led vs. emergent news:

• source-led news: coverage whose initial push comes from a company or organization, e.g., via press releases, blog posts, or direct pitching to journalists

• emergent news: coverage initiated through independent journalistic judgement, either by an enterprising journalist pursuing a story on their own or by events that are intrinsically newsworthy and generate attention

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with source-led news. It’s an important way to get news to the media (although, things can get iffy when that kind of push leads to too much hype). But emergent news is important too. And the presence or lack of it should in itself tell us something.

Now, we do have quite a few quantum-focused publications in the ecosystem: Quantum Pirates, Deep Policy, The Quantum Foundry, Quantum’s Business, The Quantum Stack, The Quantum Dragon, Sutor Group, The Quantum Leap. But these mostly focus on thought leadership, analysis, expert commentary, etc. Also very important, but not what I’m getting at here.

In professional news outlets, on the other hand, we’ve seen an increase in general quantum computing coverage over the last couple of years, but these are often context-setting pieces like this one (aka: quantum computing exists and this is why you should care about it), rather than event-driven news.

So is there really no emergent, event-driven news coverage in quantum tech?

To answer that question, I decided to do a bit of digging, and found these 22 pieces.

22 emergent, event-driven news stories in quantum tech from 2025

1. Quantum computing stocks take a hit as Nvidia CEO predicts long road ahead, Reuters (Jan 8, 2025)

2. Outbound Investment Screening Rule Goes into Effect (includes quantum tech), Holland & Knight (Jan 10, 2025)

3. A quantum computing milestone is immediately challenged by a supercomputer, ScienceNews (Mar 12, 2025)

4. Quantum leap: scientists skeptical of Microsoft’s invention of a new state of matter, The Week (Mar 24, 2025)

5. D-Wave CEO Responds To Criticisms About Quantum Supremacy Claim, The Quantum Insider (Mar 14, 2025)

6. Class Action Filed Against Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT), PR Newswire (Mar 18, 2025)

7. Nvidia CEO says quantum computing is reaching an ‘inflection point’, CNBC (Jun 11, 2025)

8. U.S. Lawmakers Urge Action On Cybersecurity In Face Of Quantum Threat, The Quantum Insider (Jun 26, 2025)

9. Quantum alternative to GPS navigation will be tested on US military spaceplane, The Conversation (Aug 14, 2025)

10. Controversial Quantum-Computing Paper Gets a Hefty Correction, Scientific American (Aug 21, 2025)

11. SEC Documents Confirm Larger Quantinuum Funding Round, The Quantum Insider (Aug 26, 2025)

12. Experts pour cold water on HSBC quantum computing ‘breakthrough’, GT Global Trading (Sep 30, 2025)

13. Physics Nobel awarded to three scientists for work on quantum computing, BBC (Oct 7, 2025)

14. BlackRock to U-turn on quantum computing ETFs, ETF Stream (Oct 15, 2025)

15. IonQ, Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum, and Quantum Computing, Inc. Have Served Up an $875 Million Warning to Wall Street, The Motley Fool (Oct 17, 2025)

16. Google’s Quantum Echoes Algorithm Sparks Controversy Over Claims, Quantum Zeitgeist (Oct 22, 2025)

17. Trump Administration in Talks to Take Equity Stakes in Quantum-Computing Firms, Wall Street Journal (Oct 23, 2025)

18. Quantum computing firms jump after report of US government stake talks, Reuters (Oct 23, 2025)

19. Quantum stocks stayed higher after Trump administration’s denial of equity talks. Here’s why, CNBC (Oct 23, 2025)

20. IBM joins the outage club after quantum cloud service unexpectedly went down, sdxcentral (Oct 31, 2025)

21. The Pentagon Can’t Trust GPS Anymore. Is Quantum Physics the Answer?, Wall Street Journal (Nov 19, 2025)

22. XPRIZE Quantum Applications Names Seven Finalists in $5 Million Global Competition, Quantum Computing Report (Dec 10, 2025)

23. Study Finds Security Flaw in World’s First Quantum Satellite, The Quantum Insider (Dec 15, 2025)

(I think I did a pretty thorough search, but I probably missed some. If you know of any other stories that fit my criteria, let me know and I’ll add them in.)

Is there any reason to favour emergent news over source-led news? I don’t think so. But one thing I’m finding is that the volume of source-led news out there is overwhelming. There’s gotta be like 1000 press releases per year now (does someone want to check?¹). It’s hard to keep up with it all. So I like having different filters that reduce the volume in different ways that help me make sense of things. Picking out emergent news turns out to be one of those filters.

So what can we say about this list?

The first thing I found interesting was that this list is very short. Just 22 articles compared with hundreds of source-led pieces.

The second thing I found interesting was that four of these articles were written by the same person: Matt Swayne from the Quantum Insider. So, nice job, Matt!

What about content? Two were about prizes (feel-good). Three were about stuff breaking (morbid curiosity). Five were about stocks (money). Five were related to high-profile personalities (celebrity). Six were about controversy and skepticism surrounding big results announced by the big players (drama).

Almost all of these stories would be interesting to quantum outsiders, unlike most of the source-led stories. Does that mean that emergent news is for quantum outsiders and press releases are for quantum insiders?

For, now, maybe. But what would emergent news reporting, that was interesting only for insiders, look like? And why don’t we have any?

The nature of the ecosystem right now is that it’s mostly in everyone’s interest to be nice to each other. A rising tide lifts all boats, after all! And it’s still a very small and interconnected ecosystem. But maybe those dynamics will change over time and different kinds of behaviours will be incentivized, for better or for worse. And then maybe one day we’ll get BlueSky flame wars between quantum CEOs! 😅

Ok, but seriously, this isn’t about wanting spicier quantum news. In fact, I think most of us want less spice in our news these days (looks around). But ecosystems evolve, and I think this could be an interesting lens to try to see the quantum ecosystem through. I’m curious how the 2026 list will look.

What about you?

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Quantum Salon Insights is an independent reader-supported research project focused on making sense of the quantum tech ecosystem.

Here we explore the ideas, patterns, narratives, and structural misalignments that show up across quantum tech and adjacent deep-tech fields.

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1. https://quantumcomputingreport.com/news-archive-2025/