Building a Regional Quantum Ecosystem with Corey Stambaugh

Corey Stambaugh is one of the few people in the quantum world who has worked at the bench, inside federal policy, and now as the operational lead of a major public-private ecosystem initiative. He came up as a precision measurement physicist at NIST, moved to the White House's National Quantum Coordination Office as a senior policy advisor, and now directs the Capital of Quantum — Maryland's statewide effort to translate decades of university research into a commercial quantum industry cluster anchored in the Discovery District at the University of Maryland.

This conversation was recorded at the close of the 2026 Quantum World Congress, a week in which Maryland opened the Microsoft Quantum Research Center, announced Riverlane's U.S. headquarters in the Discovery District, welcomed QuEra Computing into the building, and unveiled a new partnership with Paladin Capital Group. If you follow quantum economic development, workforce policy, or the question of which regions are actually building durable quantum infrastructure versus generating press releases, this episode gives you a rare inside view from someone threading all of it together.

What We Get Into

• How the Capital of Quantum actually came together — the decades of university research that preceded the January 2025 launch, and what it took to stand up a formal initiative on top of that foundation
• What "150,000 square feet and a fridge at 14 millikelvin" means in practice — the Discovery Center build-out, from Microsoft buying the building to pumping down their dilution refrigerator in under a year
• Why the tenant list spans almost every major hardware modality — IQM (superconducting), Quantum Motion (silicon CMOS), Microsoft (topological), IonQ (trapped ion), QuEra (neutral atom), and Riverlane (error correction software) are all in or adjacent to the same building, and whether that's strategy or circumstance
• The DARPA Capital Quantum Benchmarking Hub — Maryland is one of three states with a memorandum of agreement under DARPA's QBI program, and what that independent benchmarking infrastructure means for an ecosystem that also hosts the companies being evaluated
• Quantum sensing as the near-term economic story — why Stambaugh, a metrologist by training, sees sensing startups like Euclid (NV diamond magnetometers for semiconductor inspection) as having clearer market paths than computing or networking right now
• The Paladin Capital partnership and the DC venture gap — why the mid-Atlantic VC culture differs from the West Coast model and what the initiative is doing to change the capital formation picture
• Workforce development from Q12 to the makerspace — a classroom next to a working dilution refrigerator, high school students from across the street getting their first look at a cryostat, and the lineage from early NSF quantum education workshops to the UN International Year of Quantum
• How Stambaugh thinks about competing ecosystems — Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico — and why he frames them as complementary rather than adversarial, while still being clear about Maryland's competitive positioning

Resources & Links

Guest & Initiative

• Capital of Quantum — Official Site — Landing page with ecosystem overview, company roster, and initiative goals
• Capital of Quantum — About Page — Detailed breakdown of initiative assets including QLab, Quantum Startup Foundry, and DARPA Hub
• Corey Stambaugh — University of Maryland Innovation Gateway — Current institutional role and title
• Corey Stambaugh — Council on Competitiveness — Career arc from NIST physicist to OSTP policy advisor to Capital of Quantum Director

Key Announcements Referenced in This Episode

• Governor Moore — $1 Billion Capital of Quantum Initiative (May 2026) — Official press release on IonQ HQ expansion, state budget commitments, and initiative goals
• Governor Moore — Microsoft Discovery Center Ribbon-Cutting (Sept. 2026) — Announcement of the Microsoft Quantum Research Center opening and Riverlane U.S. HQ
• Nextgov/FCW — Maryland Governor Touts New Quantum Partnership with Paladin Capital (Sept. 2026) — Coverage of the Paladin Capital Group partnership announced during Quantum World Congress week
• DARPA — Capital Quantum Benchmarking Hub MOA (April 2025) — DARPA's official press release on the up-to-$100M matching agreement with Maryland under the QBI program
• Quantum Zeitgeist — QuEra Computing Expands to Maryland — Stambaugh quoted on QuEra's arrival and the neutral-atom platform joining the ecosystem
• Quantum Zeitgeist — Maryland Wins Riverlane's U.S. Headquarters (Sept. 2026) — Riverlane's decision to locate its U.S. HQ in the Discovery District
• Data Center Dynamics — IQM's U.S. Quantum Technology Center — IQM's April 2026 arrival in the Discovery District
• Capital of Quantum — Quantum Motion Welcome (June 2026) — U.K. silicon-qubit company establishing U.S. presence in the Discovery District

Background & Context

• Quantum Computing Report — The Geography of Quantum: What Maryland Is Actually Building — Timeline of Capital of Quantum milestones from January 2025 through September 2026; useful for understanding the pace of the initiative
• Maryland Today — Quantum Discovery Center Launch — UMD's own coverage of the 2026 Quantum World Congress and Discovery Center opening
• The Baltimore Banner — Is Maryland's Big Bet on Quantum Computing Paying Off? (Sept. 2026) — A more critical look at Maryland's quantum ambitions; useful counterpoint to the official narrative
• YouTube — Corey Stambaugh at Q2B25 Silicon Valley — Stambaugh's January 2026 talk on the Capital of Quantum Initiative; good primer before or after this episode

Key Quotes & Insights

"Tell me where a national lab is, I'll tell you where a physicist is, and I'll tell you where quantum is." — Stambaugh on why quantum clusters form where they do, and why the lineage from NIST, Sandia, and Argonne to today's startups is not accidental.

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