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Linde

Helium supply and helium-3 isotope

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Where it fits in a quantum computer

Calls itself the world’s leading supplier of helium, with a sourcing mix spanning the globe and one of the world’s largest helium processing plants in Ulysses, Kansas. Its specialty-gas isotopes portfolio also offers helium-3, the rare isotope used in dilution mixtures.

What the evidence establishes

Upstream enabler

Disclosed: Linde’s helium and isotopes pages describe its helium supply and its helium-3 offer.

Materials, isotopes, gases, substrates, equipment or foundry capacity behind quantum-computer components. This is not a component supplier role or an established quantum revenue stream.

Component roleHelium supply and helium-3 isotope
EvidenceDisclosed: Linde’s helium and isotopes pages describe its helium supply and its helium-3 offer.
How we knowDisclosed The company’s own filing, release, annual report, product page or investor record describes the quantum-computing role. Where customers are unnamed, the listing says so.
Primary sourceLinde — supporting disclosure
Company or official disclosure; vendor claims are attributed to their source.
Checked. This is the research review date, not the source publication or quote time.

Keep in perspective

Neither page mentions quantum computers or dilution refrigerators, and Linde gives no helium or helium-3 volumes or cryostat customers.

Diversified business exposure. This describes the breadth or role of the business; it is not an investment rating. A quantum-computing product, design-in or partnership does not by itself establish material quantum revenue, market share, or future returns.

Connections to the assembly

These links explain the technology relationship. The model is illustrative and does not represent an actual manufacturer’s bill of materials.

Helium-4 gas

Industrial helium-4, the working gas of the compressor and cold head and most of the dilution mixture. It is recovered from natural gas and delivered in high-pressure cylinders.

Scope of the company links: Helium-4 is the cryocooler’s working gas and most of the dilution mixture; a dry system does not boil off liquid helium but still needs pure gas to charge and top up. Mapped upstream: ExxonMobil (LaBarge, 20% of world supply per its 2022 page), Linde, Air Products and Air Liquide (global suppliers), Iwatani (about 50% of Japan’s market) and Nippon Sanso (which raised Japanese helium prices by 30% or more from July 2026). None names a quantum-computer customer for helium-4, and Chart Industries, now part of Baker Hughes, is not mapped.

Helium-3 mixture

The helium-3/helium-4 mixture that the dilution unit runs on, and the tank that stores it when the refrigerator is warm. Helium-3 is a rare isotope made mainly by tritium decay.

Scope of the company links: Helium-3 comes almost entirely from decaying tritium. The U.S. DOE Isotope Program sells helium-3 separated during tritium processing at the Savannah River Site, Ontario Power Generation’s Laurentis Energy Partners has extracted it from tritium stored at the Darlington CANDU station since 2021, and Russian government stocks were historically the other main source. Air Liquide distributes Laurentis’s helium-3 under a long-term agreement and sells it at over 99.9% isotopic purity for dilution refrigerators, Linde offers helium-3 among its isotopes, and Merck KGaA’s Sigma-Aldrich lists it in its catalog. Private Interlune has signed agreements to supply Bluefors, Maybell and the DOE from 2028 with helium-3 it plans to recover from the Moon and, with its Cold Capture process, from terrestrial helium. Cambridge Isotope Laboratories (Otsuka) lists no helium-3, and BWXT’s Kinectrics built an extraction skid but does not sell the gas.

Related research

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