How many quantum computers are installed on-premise and who buys them?

TL;DR (status as of October 18, 2026): As of October 18, 2026, no neutral registry counts on-premise quantum computers, so the honest answer is a floor, not a total: the largest disclosed fleet belongs to IQM — 26 full-stack systems sold since 2018, 17 delivered to customers (company H1 2026 report, August 2026) — and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking alone has procured six quantum computers and co-funded two more, with four open to users since August 1, 2026. In the dated record Rosetta Quantum compiled below, nine named buyers appear: six are governments, national labs or public HPC programs, and three are private companies — Davidson Technologies, Aramco and TOYO Corporation, the last with delivery due by the end of 2026. Public evidence of quantum advantage produced by any of these installations: zero. On-premise quantum computers are preparation purchases, not advantage purchases.

How many on-premise quantum computers are there?

Nobody keeps a neutral count — that is the first finding. Vendors disclose deliveries selectively, buyers rarely publish inventories, and no public registry tracks installed quantum computers the way TOP500 tracks supercomputers. What can be counted, with a source per number, is a set of floors. The largest disclosed fleet: IQM reported 26 full-stack quantum computers sold since its founding in 2018 and 17 delivered to customers worldwide in its first earnings report as a public company (H1 2026, backlog above €102.1 million as of August 3, 2026 — thequantuminsider.com), and its own materials claim «the largest number of disclosed on-premises systems in the quantum industry» (quantumcomputingreport.com, June 16, 2026). The largest single public buyer: the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking has «procured six quantum computers and co-funded two more» across Europe, with four — Euro-Q-Exa, Lucy, Piast-Q and VLQ — open to users at a first cut-off of August 1, 2026, and two more planned for the Netherlands and Luxembourg (eurohpc-ju.europa.eu, June 25, 2026). Below those floors, Rosetta Quantum compiled the dated record of publicly documented purchases and installations: ten dated events across six vendors. The curation rule is declared: public record only, one primary or dated secondary source per row, vendor-owned cloud datacenters excluded, educational desktop machines excluded. The total is therefore a floor — and the gap between any headline total and this floor is unverified.

Who buys them?

Overwhelmingly, states. Of the nine named buyers in the dated record below, six are governments, national laboratories or public HPC programs, and three are private companies. The pattern holds on every continent in the record: in Germany, Forschungszentrum Jülich became «the first high-performance computing (HPC) center in the world to own a D-Wave Advantage annealing quantum computing system» (D-Wave release via nasdaq.com, February 13, 2025), on top of hosting Pasqal’s 100-qubit neutral-atom machine under the EuroHPC-co-funded HPCQS project (thequantuminsider.com); in Japan, AIST installed QuEra’s gate-based neutral-atom system in Tsukuba alongside the ABCI-Q supercomputer — QuEra’s «first quantum computer outside of its own labs» (QuEra release via hpcwire.com, May 28, 2025) — and RIKEN unveiled the first IBM Quantum System Two outside the United States in Kobe (thequantuminsider.com, June 24, 2025); in Spain, the Basque Government inaugurated Europe’s first System Two in Donostia-San Sebastián, running IBM’s 156-qubit Heron processor family (quantumcomputingreport.com, October 14, 2025); in the United States, Oak Ridge National Laboratory took delivery of a 20-qubit IQM Radiance — «ORNL’s first-ever commercially procured quantum computer» (quantumcomputingreport.com, June 16, 2026).

The three private-company rows are the exceptions that map the frontier. Davidson Technologies, a defense contractor, completed physical assembly of a D-Wave Advantage2 at its Huntsville, Alabama headquarters — «the first of its kind hosted on-premises in the state» (D-Wave release via tipranks.com, April 28, 2025). Aramco deployed a 200-qubit Pasqal neutral-atom machine at its Dhahran data center — Saudi Arabia’s first quantum computer and, per the release, «the region’s first quantum computer dedicated to industrial applications» (thequantuminsider.com, November 24, 2025). And TOYO Corporation, a Japanese measurement-instruments company, announced the purchase of a 20-qubit IQM Radiance that «will be delivered by the end of 2026» — «marking the first enterprise quantum system deployment in Japan» (IQM release via hpcwire.com, April 27, 2026). Note what TOYO plans to do with it: operate it to support other Japanese enterprises and researchers — a buyer that is partly a channel.

The full dated record, one row per event:

What is the buyer actually buying?

Not measured advantage. In the claims register Rosetta maintains, none of these installations appears as the origin of a verified quantum-advantage claim — the counter our use map publishes stands at zero, and the one applied advantage claim still standing (71,313 certified random bits, our deep-dive) ran over cloud access to a Quantinuum machine, not on a customer-owned install. What the purchase orders themselves say they are buying is threefold. Integration: ORNL installed its IQM «directly within the facility’s high-performance computing (HPC) ecosystem» (quantumcomputingreport.com, June 16, 2026), Jülich bought its D-Wave planning «the world’s first coupling of an annealing quantum computer with an exascale supercomputer» — future tense, JUPITER (nasdaq.com, February 13, 2025), and AIST sits QuEra’s machine next to ABCI-Q (hpcwire.com, May 28, 2025). Sovereignty: Saudi Arabia’s first, Japan’s first enterprise system, Alabama’s first — the «first in X» framing that recurs in seven of the ten rows is itself the product, and IQM’s CEO names the target market plainly: «sovereign and enterprise compute infrastructure» (thequantuminsider.com, August 2026). Workforce: Aramco’s partnership includes training programs for Saudi engineers (thequantuminsider.com, November 24, 2025), and TOYO will operate its system to build quantum capability for Japanese industry (hpcwire.com, April 27, 2026). Japan’s Prime Minister put the frame on it at the AIST facility: 2025 as «the first year of quantum industrialization» (hpcwire.com, May 28, 2025).

That is a coherent purchase — our use map classifies exactly this demand as preparation, not advantage — but it has running costs a decision-maker should price: a dilution refrigerator fleet draws on the order of 26 kW measured for one superconducting system (our energy post), and the cloud alternative rents by the minute at list prices with no cryogenics on your payroll. The honest comparison for most organizations is not on-prem versus nothing; it is on-prem versus the same machine’s cloud queue.

How do you read an installation announcement?

Four checks, all answerable from the release itself. First, sold is not delivered and delivered is not operational: IQM’s own numbers run 26 sold against 17 delivered (thequantuminsider.com, August 2026), TOYO’s machine is a purchase announcement with delivery due by the end of 2026 (hpcwire.com, April 27, 2026), and Davidson’s milestone was assembly, with «final calibration and testing ahead of operational deployment» still ahead (tipranks.com, April 28, 2025). Second, who owns versus who hosts: Jülich’s release says the center owns its D-Wave (nasdaq.com, February 13, 2025); Davidson’s says the system was developed in partnership and sits at Davidson’s HQ — ownership unstated (tipranks.com, April 28, 2025). Third, an offer is not a buyer: Helios has been «available to customers through Quantinuum’s cloud service and on-premise offering» since November 5, 2025, and the launch release names early users — Amgen, BMW Group, JPMorganChase, SoftBank Corp. — but zero on-premises purchasers (quantinuum.com); our Helios spec sheet keeps that machine’s measured and promised columns separate. Fourth, watch the shrinking X in «first in X»: first in the world, first outside the US, first in Europe, first in Saudi Arabia, first enterprise in Japan, first in Alabama — each is true and each is a smaller X. The count of firsts grows much faster than the count of machines. For the machines themselves, our vendor map and the neutral-atoms ledger entry hold the spec-level detail.

What we don’t know

• The true total. No neutral registry exists, vendors disclose selectively, and our record only admits rows we could source and date in this run. Installations announced in sources we could not verify — including machines deployed in China — are absent, so our floor is biased toward vendors that publish in English.
• Prices. Not one of the ten rows in our table carries a disclosed purchase price. IQM’s H1 2026 revenue of €8.9 million against 17 systems delivered since 2018 (thequantuminsider.com, August 2026) hints at order of magnitude, but per-system terms are not public.
• Whether all 17 IQM deliveries sit on customer premises. The company describes a «strict on-premises deployment model» (quantumcomputingreport.com, June 16, 2026) and its CFO cites «accelerating on-premise system deliveries» (thequantuminsider.com, August 2026), but the H1 report does not break the 17 down by site.
• Hardware detail in Donostia. Coverage of the Basque System Two conflicts internally on the Heron chip count (quantumcomputingreport.com, October 14, 2025); we print the processor family and leave the count out.
• Utilization. No buyer in the table publishes queue or utilization data for its machine, so whether these systems are busy is unmeasured in the public record.

Sources

• The Quantum Insider — «IQM Confirms 2026 Outlook After Public Listing, Citing More Than €102 Million in Orders»: 26 sold / 17 delivered (August 2026) — thequantuminsider.com
• Quantum Computing Report — «IQM Deploys Its First U.S. Quantum Computer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory» (2026-06-16) — quantumcomputingreport.com
• Quantum Computing Report — «Basque Government and IBM Inaugurate Europe’s First IBM Quantum System Two in Donostia-San Sebastián» (2025-10-14) — quantumcomputingreport.com
• The Quantum Insider — «IBM, RIKEN Unveil First IBM Quantum System Two Outside of the U.S.» (2025-06-24) — thequantuminsider.com
• D-Wave press release via Nasdaq — «Forschungszentrum Jülich Purchases D-Wave Quantum Computer, Becoming First HPC Center to Own One» (2025-02-13) — www.nasdaq.com
• D-Wave release via TipRanks newswire — Davidson Technologies installation milestone, Huntsville, Alabama (2025-04-28) — www.tipranks.com
• QuEra press release via HPCwire — «QuEra Installs 1st Offsite Quantum Computer in Japan» at AIST, Tsukuba (2025-05-28) — www.hpcwire.com
• The Quantum Insider — «Saudi Arabia Deploys Its First Quantum Computer with Aramco–Pasqal Partnership»: 200 qubits, Dhahran (2025-11-24) — thequantuminsider.com
• Quantinuum — Helios commercial launch press release: «cloud service and on-premise offering» (2025-11-05) — www.quantinuum.com
• IQM press release via HPCwire — «IQM Quantum Computers Delivers 20-Qubit System to TOYO in 1st Enterprise Deployment in Japan» (2026-04-27) — www.hpcwire.com
• EuroHPC Joint Undertaking — «EuroHPC JU opens access to its quantum computers»: six procured, two co-funded, four open (2026-06-25) — www.eurohpc-ju.europa.eu
• The Quantum Insider — «Jülich Celebrates Arrival of Pasqal’s 100-Qubit Quantum Computer» (HPCQS, EuroHPC co-funded) — thequantuminsider.com
• Rosetta Quantum — related ledger entries: #70 what quantum computing is used for today · #50 the 2026 vendor map · #71 what a minute costs · #82 Helios, measured vs promised · #56 energy use, measured · #74 the one surviving advantage claim · #35 neutral atoms

Rosetta Quantum publishes verdicts with raw, reproducible data. This is educational content, not a product claim. Quantum, independently measured.