The Westchester County Office of Economic Development leads many types of programs, from supporting businesses and entrepreneurs to honing in on priority sectors that are important to growth and resilience.
One of those priority sectors is quantum computing, which uses the science of quantum mechanics to solve complex problems. Why quantum?
McKinsey & Company reports in its 2025 Quantum Technology Monitor report that “surging investment and faster-than-expected innovation could propel the quantum market to $100 billion in a decade.” Here in New York State, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in her 2026 State of the State that a key proposal to fuel innovation and create good-paying jobs will be through investments in quantum technology.
“Establishing New York’s leadership in this emerging field also opens the door to significant economic growth,” read her press release.
That progress is happening across the state. Long Island is home to the State’s Quantum Research & Innovation Hub at SUNY Stony Brook. Upstate New York is a hub for semiconductor and quantum microchip development. In between are places that have their own entrepreneurship in the industry, including here in Westchester County.
“We think that we’re perfectly positioned geographically as the bridge between upstate and downstate,” said Deborah Novick, director of entrepreneurship and innovation at Westchester County.
Westchester County is home to SEEQC, which stands for Scalable Energy-Efficient Quantum Computing, and IBM in Yorktown Heights, which has dedicated employees focused on quantum.
“We have IBM and SEEQC right here in our backyard,” said Novick. “We started to think about how do those two big players, or other important players, fit into the overall growth or birth of quantum technologies around the county and state?”
Employment Opportunities Are Coming
With quantum continuing to grow, Novick said it’s moving from the deep research and development phase into the commercialization phase. That means while right now most jobs related to quantum are for the PhD level, it won’t stay that way for too much longer.
“We’re going to need a lot of people who understand quantum technologies who don’t have PhDs,” she said. “We’re going to need people with different levels of education, different types of skills — hands-on skills, cognitive skills, programming skills, engineering skills, manufacturing skills.”
She wants to make sure that Westchester-based employers have the workforce they need when that time comes. For a big part of that, she is looking at the new partnership between the county and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). RPI is home to the first IBM quantum computer at a university. One of the courses that RPI offers for continuing professional development through its RPI at Work program is Introduction to Quantum Computing.
Another part of the puzzle that will come down the line is bringing in experts from a wide range of industries to see how quantum could help them in their fields, somewhat similar to how each field had to learn how artificial intelligence could support their work.
Quantum Work Already Happening in Westchester
While more people are learning about quantum, there are people locally who know it better than anyone else.
SEEQC is developing the first digital quantum computing platform for businesses and has a chip foundry. The company spun out of one that was already based in Westchester, and they remained here because they didn’t want to relocate their team.
Right in Elmsford, the brand builds, designs, and manufactures chips and conducts testing in its labs. The company is growing in Westchester, building a new facility in Hawthorne that will be four times the size of their existing facility. As they continue to grow, they are looking to attract younger people, which could possibly be done through working with the county.
“Most of our growth in our jobs is here,” said John Levy, co-founder and CEO at SEEQC. The company has nine other people at their facility in the UK. “We expect that we’ll be adding more people, both in doing testing in our facilities, testing our chips, as well as some manufacturing jobs.”
As of right now, 29 of their 38 people have PhDs. In line with what Novick is seeing, Levy estimated that they’ll bring in more people who have a master’s degree or even a bachelor’s of science degree.
SEEQC has also partnered with nearby IBM, which is working to deliver IBM Quantum Starling, a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, by 2029. This means they will bridge the gap between quantum potential and business reality. Their Westchester office serves as headquarters for IBM’s quantum research mission. What happens between now and 2029 is crucially important.
“We don’t want people to just wait until 2029,” said Bradley Holt, who leads workforce development partnerships for IBM Quantum. “We believe we have useful quantum computing today.”
IBM is delivering the tools to achieve near-term quantum advantage by the end of 2026. “Our vision is really CPUs (central processing units), GPUs (graphics processing units), and quantum processors combined together into a unified architecture,” he said.
Workforce development is central to IBM’s strategy. Holt leads efforts to connect universities, governments, and workforce professionals to IBM’s education ecosystem, including the software stack Qiskit, open-source tools, summer schools, campus hackathons, and innovation centers. IBM has trained over 400 students through its internship programs and supports institutions such as RPI.
Holt emphasized that quantum workforce development spans multiple domains: theory, hardware engineering, algorithms, software, networking, sensing, and technician roles. IBM’s goal is to help regions identify strengths and align training pipelines with industry demand.
“I work with workforce development professionals who are asking how they strategize building out their quantum computing workforce and how can we connect them to the many educational resources?” said Holt. “IBM has invested in it and created tools that are really helpful for building that future quantum workforce.”
For Westchester County, quantum is not a distant possibility. It is an emerging industry taking shape in real time, and local leaders are working now to ensure the region is ready to power its next phase of growth, including working with IBM and SEEQC.
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