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 &amp; Links Guest &amp; 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 <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2026/09/maryland-governor-touts-new-quantum-partnership-venture-capital-firm