Zhongqi Wuliang, a spinout from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, unveiled Qinghe No. 1 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 18, 2026. The pitch: a second-generation neutral-atom quantum computer engineered to fit inside a standard data-center server rack, removing the bulky cryogenic refrigeration that normally keeps a quantum system physically separate from ordinary compute infrastructure.
What got packaged
Neutral-atom systems already run at room temperature for the qubits themselves, unlike superconducting platforms that need dilution refrigerators. The engineering problem Zhongqi Wuliang describes solving is packaging: fitting the vacuum chamber, control optics, and laser delivery systems, the parts that normally take up a lab bench, into a single rack-mounted chassis alongside classical servers. Founded by Lu Xudong, the company frames this as the step that lets a cloud provider deploy quantum hardware the same way it deploys any other rack unit, rather than as a separate specialized room.
A different route to a goal this site already covers
SAXON Q's room-temperature diamond NV-center quantum computers, covered here earlier, chase the same "no cryostat" goal through an entirely different qubit modality. Where SAXON Q eliminates cryogenics by using diamond defects that work at room temperature natively, Zhongqi Wuliang keeps the neutral-atom approach and instead solves the packaging and integration problem around it. Both are legitimate answers to the same practical deployment question, from opposite ends: change the physics, or repackage the hardware around the physics you already have.
What wasn't disclosed
The announcement, as reported, doesn't include a qubit count, gate fidelity, or coherence time for Qinghe No. 1, the numbers that would let anyone judge whether the system does useful work rather than only fitting in a rack. Packaging is a real engineering achievement worth tracking, especially from a CAS-affiliated team with direct optics and photonics expertise, but it answers a different question than "how good is this quantum computer." Our hardware overview tracks how neutral-atom entrants compare once real performance numbers land.