Compass · Lens Report

State of Post-Quantum Security

A measured view of how technology-press attention is distributed, moving and connected across 40 related topics — who holds attention, who is gaining or cooling, whether attention is concentrating or spreading out, which topics the press repeatedly connects, and what kind of coverage defines the conversation.

This is a Lens Report covering Post-Quantum Security — a measurement of how the technology press covered the 40 topics in this lens, between Jun 2025 and Sep 2026, across 3,369 articles. Measured as of 20 Sep 2026. Coverage draws on at least 72 distinct outlets; the busiest single outlet accounts for about 32.1% of the set's measured press items.

New here? How to read this report

Compass reads a curated panel of technology outlets — the same panel, read at the same steady pace, month after month — and counts and classifies what the press publishes about the topics in this lens: how much attention each drew, what kinds of stories ran, which way coverage is moving, and what was covered together. Every figure below is a measurement of that coverage — never advice — and each one opens to the dated articles behind it. Read it as a coverage-landscape briefing — a measured map of the press conversation, not a ranking of the companies or technologies underneath it. The pattern is the product; the conclusions stay yours.

The read in 60 seconds
  • Most-covered topicNIST — 12.5% of the lens's coverage
  • Fastest-gainingPasqal — +3.2 pp (0.6% → 3.8% of lens coverage)
  • Attention concentrationThe top 3 topics hold 26% of the coverage — broadly spread
  • Strongest pairingAmazon Braket + QuEra Computing — covered together in 9 articles · distinctiveness 0.67
What not to over-read: this measures press coverage — not adoption, revenue, or quality.
The measured read

Across the full history of Post-Quantum Security coverage, spanning June 2025 through September 2026, attention is broadly spread but organized by an NIST-linked cryptography thread and an Amazon Braket grouping, while recent gains rotate the edge toward post-quantum cryptography and a changing company roster.

Full history 40 topics 3,369 articles
  • NIST commands 12.5% of coverage, ahead of quantum computing at 8.5%, so the field has a clear institutional anchor without a dominant subject.
  • Post-quantum cryptography at 5% sits close to IonQ at 4.8%, so the upper tier mixes core-topic reporting with company coverage rather than separating them.
  • The press describes 70% of covered work as announcements, against 19% launches and 10% results, so reporting concentrates on stated progress more than reported outcomes.
  • Neutral framing accounts for 93% of coverage and promotional framing 7%, while critical and skeptical treatments are both under 1%, so subject choice supplies more variation than tone.
  • Benchmarks represent 8% of stories, while funding and regulation each account for 4%, so these formats remain secondary to news, launches and partnerships.
  • Princeton University, the University of Chicago and Caltech form a separate coverage cluster, so the field retains a third editorial neighborhood beyond the NIST- and Amazon Braket-centered threads.
What Compass measured

This report describes how the technology press covered the 40 topics in this lens over full history — which drew the most coverage, which are gaining or cooling, what's covered together, and how concentrated attention is. It measures coverage patterns, not the products themselves.

Coverage leaders

The 3,369 articles range across 40 subjects, so coverage breadth comes from a large editorial roster rather than a narrow contest. Attention in this lens is broadly spread — the three most-covered topics hold about 26% of the set’s coverage, spread across roughly 23 effective topics. News and updates account for 34%, launches 30%, and partnerships 16%, so that broad roster is reported mainly through developments, introductions and collaborations.

TopicTypeShare of coverageMovement
NIST organization 12.5%−3.5 pp
quantum computing technology 8.5%steady
post-quantum cryptography technology 5%+1.7 pp
IonQ company 4.8%+0.3 pp
ETH Zurich organization 4.5%+0.5 pp
Princeton University organization 3.8%steady
University of Chicago organization 3.7%−0.5 pp
Caltech organization 3.3%steady
Quantinuum company 3%+2 pp
IQM Quantum Computers company 2.7%steady
OpenSSL standard 2.6%+0.4 pp
National Security Agency organization 2.4%−0.4 pp
quantum computers technology 2.4%+0.7 pp
end-to-end encryption technology 2.3%−0.9 pp
quantum error correction technology 2.3%+0.6 pp
D-Wave Quantum Inc company 2.1%+0.3 pp

Topic share = that topic's measured articles divided by the sum of every lens topic's measured articles. An article covering several lens topics counts once for each of them, so shares measure attention to topics — not exclusive slices of unique articles. Lens entries are coverage topics, not mutually exclusive market participants — a company, its products and its models can each be topics, and their coverage overlaps. Movement is the share shift described under Momentum shifts below.

Momentum shifts

Recent attention is rotating rather than moving as one block: each subject’s coverage share in the last three months is compared with the prior three, with shifts below 0.2 percentage points treated as steady. Pasqal rose from 0.6% to 3.8%, while Quantinuum added 2 percentage points, so company attention is shifting toward a different roster. Post-quantum cryptography added 1.7 points as NIST fell 3.5 and Shor’s algorithm fell 2, which shifts recent emphasis from institutional and algorithmic references toward the core cryptography topic.

Movement is each topic's share of the lens's coverage in the last 3 months versus the 3 months before that, in percentage points (pp). Topics shifting less than 0.2 pp are steady.

Gaining coverage
  • Pasqal+3.2 pp (0.6% → 3.8% of lens coverage)
  • Quantinuum+2 pp (3% → 5% of lens coverage)
  • post-quantum cryptography+1.7 pp (5.2% → 6.9% of lens coverage)
  • Xanadu+0.8 pp (0.9% → 1.7% of lens coverage)
  • PsiQuantum+0.8 pp (1.4% → 2.2% of lens coverage)
  • quantum computers+0.7 pp (1.5% → 2.2% of lens coverage)
  • quantum error correction+0.6 pp (2.4% → 3% of lens coverage)
  • PQC+0.6 pp (2.1% → 2.7% of lens coverage)
Cooling
  • NIST−3.5 pp (14.6% → 11.1% of lens coverage)
  • Shor’s algorithm−2 pp (2.8% → 0.8% of lens coverage)
  • QuEra Computing−1.6 pp (2.4% → 0.8% of lens coverage)
  • Amazon Braket−1.1 pp (1.3% → 0.2% of lens coverage)
  • Google Quantum AI−1 pp (1.3% → 0.3% of lens coverage)
  • Q-CTRL−1 pp (1.3% → 0.3% of lens coverage)
  • end-to-end encryption−0.9 pp (2.3% → 1.4% of lens coverage)
  • University of Chicago−0.5 pp (3.3% → 2.8% of lens coverage)
Coverage mix over time

How the lens's coverage is divided among its topics, month by month — and how concentrated attention is across the set.

② Share of coverage over time
Each topic's share of this set's topic mentions, period by period (monthly). Absolute counts rise for everyone in a hot category, so share is what reveals whose grip is tightening or loosening. Each column sums to 100%, with the rest of the set folded into Others. One article can name several members of a set — a product family and one of its models, say — so it counts once toward each: read the bands one at a time rather than adding them together.
25%50%75%Jun 25Sep 25Dec 25Mar 26Jun 26Sep 26
NIST 12.5% quantum computing 8.5% post-quantum cryptography 5% IonQ 4.8% ETH Zurich 4.5% Princeton University 3.8% University of Chicago 3.7% Caltech 3.3%Others 53.8%
Top-3 concentration latest month 23.4%

Steady — across the last three measured months the top three have held 26.5% of this set's coverage, within 3 points of the 29.1% they held at the start of the window. Neither consolidating nor broadening.

Every value here is a dated measurement of coverage within this set, drawn from the Enginerds corpus — the same panel of sources, read at the same steady pace, month after month. It reflects how much the press writes about each topic, not revenue, adoption, or market share. The conclusion stays yours.

What the coverage is made of

Pooled across the whole lens: the kinds of stories the press runs, how far the reported work has progressed (as the press itself describes it), and the press framing.

By story type
News & updates34%
Launch30%
Partnership16%
Benchmark8%
Funding4%
Regulation4%
Everything else4%
By claim stage (as reported)
Announcement70%
Launch19%
Results10%
Speculation1%
By press framing
Neutral93%
Promotional7%
Criticalunder 1%
Skepticalunder 1%

Story type is a share of the 2,504 classified coverage items classified on that axis; claim stage of the same number; press framing of the 2,310 whose framing could be read — vendor and primary-source items carry none.

Covered together

The most strongly connected pairing is Amazon Braket with QuEra Computing, covered together in 9 articles across the full record, including launch and partnership coverage, so the Amazon Braket grouping has a clear editorial core. In that full record, NIST appears with ML-KEM in 25 articles and ML-DSA in 21, which is why the cryptography grouping has an institutional spine as well as the overall coverage leader. A separate grouping around Princeton University shows that coverage fragments into distinct editorial neighborhoods rather than collapsing into one NIST-led narrative.

Pairings are ranked by connection strength: distinctiveness weighted by how many confirmed events link the pair and how far apart the two topics sit in the field, with a company's own product-family pairs set aside. So a pair can rank above another that shows a higher raw distinctiveness score or more shared articles — each card carries both numbers. Distinctiveness is normalized co-occurrence (NPMI, −1 to 1): how much more often the pair shares stories than the two topics' separate coverage volumes alone would predict. Big topics co-occur often by volume alone; a high score means the pairing itself is the pattern. Each pairing also shows how many outlets its cited stories span: a pairing cited almost entirely by one specialist outlet is that outlet's editorial pattern, not necessarily a field-wide one. "Covered together" is a measurement of shared coverage across Compass's full measured record — not only this report's window — and not a partnership, endorsement, or equivalence.

Coverage clusters

Groups of topics the press tends to cover together — the shape of the domain's coverage neighborhoods.

ML-DSA cluster
ML-DSANISTML-KEMShor’s algorithmSEALSQ Corppost-quantum cryptographyAWS KMS
NIST (21)post-quantum cryptography (13)Shor’s algorithm (5)SEALSQ Corp (3)ML-DSA

Line weight = articles covering the pair together (full measured record).

Amazon Braket cluster
Amazon BraketQuEra ComputingRigetti ComputingCUDA-QIQM Quantum ComputersIonQ
QuEra Computing (9)IonQ (9)Rigetti Computing (8)CUDA-Q (8)IQM Quantum Computers (8)Amazon Braket

Line weight = articles covering the pair together (full measured record).

Princeton University cluster
Princeton UniversityUniversity of ChicagoCaltech
University of Chicago (5)Caltech (5)Princeton University

Line weight = articles covering the pair together (full measured record).

What to watch

Xanadu and PsiQuantum each added 0.8 percentage points, while quantum computers added 0.7, so gains beyond the largest movers are distributed across company and topic coverage. QuEra Computing fell 1.6 points, Amazon Braket 1.1, and Google Quantum AI 1, so cooling is likewise spread across several named subjects. The edge pattern is simultaneous roster rotation and grouped coverage, because Amazon Braket-linked subjects can cool individually while still appearing in the field’s strongest full-record pairings.

Topics in this lens · 40

The full set this report measures, ranked by share of the lens's coverage. Topic share = that topic's measured articles divided by the sum of every lens topic's measured articles. An article covering several lens topics counts once for each of them, so shares measure attention to topics — not exclusive slices of unique articles. Lens entries are coverage topics, not mutually exclusive market participants — a company, its products and its models can each be topics, and their coverage overlaps. Share is never market share, adoption, or importance.

NIST organization
quantum computing technology
post-quantum cryptography technology
IonQ company
ETH Zurich organization
Princeton University organization
University of Chicago organization
Caltech organization
Quantinuum company
IQM Quantum Computers company
OpenSSL standard
National Security Agency organization
Show all 40 topics
quantum computers technology
end-to-end encryption technology
quantum error correction technology
D-Wave Quantum Inc company
Oak Ridge National Laboratory organization
Infleqtion company
IBM Research organization
QuEra Computing company
PQC technology
CODA product
Rigetti Computing company
Shor’s algorithm technology
AWS KMS product
Willow product
Xanadu company
PsiQuantum company
Pasqal company
Sandia National Laboratories organization
Amazon Braket product
CUDA-Q product
ML-KEM technology
University of Waterloo organization
ML-DSA technology
RIKEN organization
SEALSQ Corp company
Google Quantum AI organization
Classiq company
Q-CTRL company
Representative cited sources
Show all 34 cited sources
Briefing

Post-Quantum Security coverage is broadly spread, but NIST-linked cryptography and the Amazon Braket grouping supply structure while recent gains rotate toward post-quantum cryptography and a changing company roster.

Methodology

Every figure is drawn from the Enginerds corpus — a curated panel of technology outlets, each read at the same steady pace over time — and is a measurement of coverage within this lens: article counts, each topic's share of the set's coverage over time, the direction of that coverage, and which topics are covered together. Titles are shown as published; inclusion is not endorsement.

Topic share = that topic's measured articles divided by the sum of every lens topic's measured articles. An article covering several lens topics counts once for each of them, so shares measure attention to topics — not exclusive slices of unique articles. Lens entries are coverage topics, not mutually exclusive market participants — a company, its products and its models can each be topics, and their coverage overlaps.

Movement is each topic's share of the lens's coverage in the last 3 months versus the 3 months before that, in percentage points (pp). Topics shifting less than 0.2 pp are steady.

Pairings are ranked by connection strength: distinctiveness weighted by how many confirmed events link the pair and how far apart the two topics sit in the field, with a company's own product-family pairs set aside. So a pair can rank above another that shows a higher raw distinctiveness score or more shared articles — each card carries both numbers. Distinctiveness is normalized co-occurrence (NPMI, −1 to 1): how much more often the pair shares stories than the two topics' separate coverage volumes alone would predict. Big topics co-occur often by volume alone; a high score means the pairing itself is the pattern.

What this report does not claim. Compass measures coverage patterns in the technology press. It does not predict outcomes, rank technologies by merit or importance, or recommend what to buy, build, or invest in. Coverage is not the same as real-world significance.

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Built on a curated technology press corpus

Compass measures a dated, source-linked corpus of technology coverage — a curated panel of 140+ outlets, specialist publications, and primary sources, each read at the same steady pace, month after month. Every measurement opens back to the cited articles behind it.

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