Origin Quantum Computing Technology, a company in Hefei, China, has opened its quantum computer operating system, Origin Pilot, for online download, the state-run Science and Technology Daily reported on February 25, 2026. A quantum computer operating system is software that schedules users’ programs on the machine and manages its qubits and other hardware.
The newspaper attributed the news to the Anhui Provincial Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center, directed by Guo Guoping, Origin Quantum’s chief scientist. The Global Times reported the release the same day, citing the same center. Xinhua followed on February 26, citing the Science and Technology Daily.
The Science and Technology Daily and the Global Times attributed the system’s compatibility with superconducting, trapped-ion, and neutral-atom processors to Origin Quantum or the research center. Xinhua repeated the claim in a report it sourced to the Science and Technology Daily. None of the three outlets reported a test of Origin Pilot on another company’s hardware. In those three hardware types, qubits are made from superconducting electrical circuits, from charged atoms trapped by electromagnetic fields, or from uncharged atoms held by laser beams.
What the outlets reported
Dou Menghan, who leads the Origin Pilot development team, told the Science and Technology Daily and the Global Times that users download the system from Origin Quantum’s official website. The company hosts the download on an Origin Pilot page of its cloud platform.
“Users can quickly integrate with quantum chips of multiple physical types and, using autonomous programming frameworks such as QPanda, execute quantum computing jobs across different physical quantum chips to support both research and commercialization needs,” Dou told the Global Times. QPanda is a toolkit that Origin Quantum develops for writing quantum programs.
The Global Times wrote that Origin Quantum describes the software as “an integrated quantum-classical-intelligent computing operating system compatible with major hardware approaches, including superconducting qubits, trapped ions and neutral atoms.” The company told the newspaper that it has deployed the system on its Origin Wukong series of superconducting quantum computers and made it available to external users.
The research center said the system supports parallel execution of quantum tasks and automatic qubit calibration, the Global Times reported. Calibration is the routine tuning of each qubit’s control signals as the hardware drifts.
The company first released the system in 2021, the Science and Technology Daily reported. Guo, Dou, and six co-authors described its design, with modules for task scheduling, resource management, program compilation, and automatic calibration, in a 2021 preprint.
First claims
Citing the center, the Science and Technology Daily described Origin Pilot as China’s first self-developed quantum computer operating system and as the world’s first open for download. The newspaper did not use the term open source in its Chinese-language report.
The center called Origin Pilot “the world’s first open-source quantum computer operating system available for public download,” according to the Global Times. It also told the newspaper that “globally, there is not yet a widely adopted quantum computer operating system available for local deployment or download.”
Developers who release software as open source publish its source code and license anyone to inspect, change, and redistribute it. None of the three outlets reported a version number, license terms, a price, or performance figures.
Policy context
Guo told the Global Times that making Origin Pilot available globally is a shift in China’s quantum computing industry from closed-door tech innovation toward open-source development. He used the phrase “soft heart” for the role of a quantum operating system in quantum computing.
Guo also said quantum technology had been explicitly identified as a key future-oriented industry sector to be prioritized in China’s development plan for the next five years. The Global Times reported that quantum technology is one of six such sectors highlighted in the Communist Party’s recommendations for the 15th Five-Year Plan, which covers 2026–2030.
Update, November 12, 2026: On March 30, Xinhua republished an Economic Daily report that said Origin Pilot had been updated to version 4.0.
