DARPA funds advancements in quantum networking

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is exploring how to scale the reliable transmission of quantum data and pave the way for a viable quantum internet by giving networking networking company Qunnect an award to further deploy networks designed to handle qubit traffic. 

Pursuant to the contract, Qunnect is granted new funding to further deploy its Carina quantum networking solution, the company announced on Thursday. 

Qubits are naturally more fragile than classical bits, and transmitting them from one node to another has been a persistent problem in scaling a viable quantum network. Carina addresses several outstanding problems in safely transmitting quantum data by operating at room temperature, stabilizing environmental noise, maintaining entanglement during transmission and other engineering challenges. 

Qunnect will specifically focus on refining Carina’s polarization compensation nodule, its internal system that helps reduce distortions in data transmission. 

“Quantum networking has mostly stayed in the lab for decades because entanglement can be lost as a result of environmental factors like heat, wind and other everyday fiber movement,” Noel Goddard, CEO of Qunnect, told Nextgov/FCW. “Carina is the only commercial product built to cancel that noise out in real time, like noise-cancelling headphones for both buried and aerial fiber. This is one of the keys to Carina distributing entanglement over existing infrastructure instead of requiring purpose-built fiber or being limited to pristine lab environments.”

DARPA declined to comment on the award. Qunnect declined to disclose the exact amount of funding in the contract. 

“We made an early commitment to designing instruments that operate on the same infrastructure the world already uses,” Goddard said. “For the past five years, we focused on making quantum networking practical, and we’ve validated it through deployments in cities, and through partnerships with private industry and growing support from government agencies. We know that reliability is what will separate proof-of-concept demonstrations from useful networks that enable tomorrow’s applications.”

Quantum networking has received more attention at the federal level recently as the quantum computing industry looks to reach new levels of maturity and successfully share data between fault-tolerant machines. In 2025, DARPA unveiled its QuANET initiative, which aims to marry components of classical and quantum systems together in a functioning hybrid network. 

Goddard said that Qunnect’s award is a standalone Small Business Innovation Research award. 

President Donald Trump released an executive order earlier this year focused on advancing quantum information sciences and technology research that specifically focuses on spurring the development of a distributed quantum computing network, tasking agencies including the Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, the National Science Foundation and NASAn to craft and submit five-year roadmaps documenting their efforts to expand quantum networking.