Argentina's Quantum Leap

Argentina can lead Latin America into the quantum age, if it has the courage to invest.

While most eyes are on AI, another revolution is quietly unfolding: quantum computing. And Argentina, if it is bold enough to act, could lead Latin America towards this next frontier.

Why now

Argentina has a unique opportunity to invest in its future. It has a thriving tech scene with a dozen unicorns. These companies have the infrastructure and talent pipelines that could transition into quantum applications. It is therefore ideally placed to benefit from emerging technologies, such as quantum computing. Quantum computing is 5–10 years away from when it is ready for mass adoption in key industries such as chemistry, pharmaceuticals, finance, transportation and logistics, and energy. This creates a crucial window of opportunity to prepare the next generation who can take advantage of quantum computers. Such an investment can also pay off in the medium term by nurturing domestic innovation and lifting people out of poverty through better economic opportunities from more than 5,000 new jobs over the next ten years.

While Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, China, and Israel ramp up investments in quantum infrastructure, Latin America remains largely on the sidelines. For Argentina to be bold and invest now is a clear regional strategic advantage.

Why

The global economic impact is estimated to be at least $1 trillion and may be as high as $2 trillion by 2035 across chemicals, life sciences, finance, and mobility alone. That amounts to $100 billion for Latin America if it has the courage to invest. A more conservative estimate for the economic impact is $850 billion by 2040, which could still lead to $42.5 billion for the entire region.

Right now, investment in quantum computing in Latin America is nearly zero. At universities, only half of Latin American researchers have funding for their quantum computing projects. Without investment in quantum computing today, Argentina and the rest of Latin America will be left out of the benefits tomorrow.

Unfortunately, interest in quantum technologies has fizzed out. While the Quantum Latino event will be back later this year after a brief hiatus, Quantum Hispano, which intended to popularize quantum computing in Spanish-speaking countries, appears to have been a one-off. More worrisome is that in 2022, 80% of Latin American companies expressed interest in investing in quantum computing over the next two years. 2024 came and went, yet nothing happened.

While there are a few research labs across Latin America, quantum computing companies with ties to the region are few and far between: Quantum-South (Uruguay), /q99 (Argentina, with HQ in Palo Alto), SpinQ (Mexico, with HQ in China), and Venturus (Brazil). Within the quantum technology space but outside of quantum computing is also Sequre Quantum (Chile). For comparison, there are more than a few hundred quantum companies in the world.

Most academic publications on quantum computing are from Brazil and Mexico. As of mid-April, Argentina’s global share of publications on quantum computing is only 0.24% (62 out of 105,393). The reason is that Argentina does not invest nearly enough in R&D to become technologically competitive. There have been calls for a coordinated effort in the region, but without any immediate results. With investment in quantum computing, Argentina stands to add $12 billion to its economy in only a decade; without any investment, that figure is guaranteed to be zero. Given Argentina’s economic troubles, one might ask: Where is the money supposed to come from?

How

Both the public and private sectors must step up to provide incentives in the short- and medium-term:

	Private sector	Public sector
Short term (5 years)	Implement post-quantum cryptography to secure communications Train the existing workforce through educational programmes	Fund relevant academic research Incentivize academia/industry partnerships Incentivize the development of university curricula with a focus on applications Provide quantum literacy courses to science teachers Draft a national quantum strategy
Medium term (10 years)	Partner with academia Invest in local startups	Execute on the national quantum strategy Introduce quantum literacy education in schools Draft a regional quantum strategy

The short-term investments are crucial to ensure Argentina remains globally competitive—even if quantum advantage arrives sooner than expected. That leaves sufficient time, but if and only if the investments happen now. If, however, the technology needs a few more years to mature, the current generation of quantum-literate workers is boosted by the next generation who have been trained in high schools and universities.

This is achieved through the medium-term investments, which are aimed at enabling sustained benefits from quantum computing, including a workforce that is quantum native. Quantum native means not just PhDs, but high schoolers who understand the logic of quantum algorithms and industry engineers who can spot opportunities for quantum advantage. A long-term strategy may or may not include the development of a local quantum hardware and software stack, though the main value from quantum computing for industry lies in its application, for which cloud-based access (QCaaS) is sufficient. The reason I have split a national and regional quantum strategy is that it may be a long process for a regional strategy to materialize, especially with Javier Milei’s opposition to Mercosur. For both regional academic excellence and national security, a national stack may be preferable. Currently, the only regional quantum computers are in Brazil and Colombia at a research lab. Neither has been developed in the region: the former is operated by Atos, a French company, and the latter by SpinQ, a Chinese organization.

Many of these programmes need not be expensive. In fact, plenty of courses are available for free or within the range of what companies invest in employee learning and development. They merely need to ensure the right people have access and to the right materials.

Incentives from the government need not be prohibitively expensive either: the Argentine government already provides 30-year tax breaks for foreign investments and plans to reduce taxes in line with cuts in government expenditure. If foreign corporations already benefit from generous tax breaks to access the nation’s natural yet limited resources, then the government can and must provide substantial investments to local companies and universities to boost the country’s only unlimited resource: its people’s ingenuity.

A quantum-native workforce is what every country will need from 2035 onwards, including Argentina. To achieve that, it must act boldly by investing in education, research, and strategic partnerships, so that by the time quantum computing becomes mainstream, it will have not just caught up, but led the region into a new technological era.

So, if you are an educator, policymaker, entrepreneur, tech enthusiast, or student in Argentina, now is the time to push for quantum literacy. Join the upcoming Quantum Latino event. Learn the basics. Write to your university. Demand change for your representatives in government. Look at what others are already doing. Build something. Or simply spread the word. The quantum future is built by those who start today.