Webaroo is a venture operating firm that co-builds new AI-native companies and embeds operating teams to turn existing ones AI-native. Founded in 2018 by Connor Murphy and headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida.

How does Webaroo engage with companies?

Two ways. Co-Build: we co-found AI-native companies from zero — you bring the founding bet, we bring the team and the platform, and we sit on the cap table. Operate: we embed forward-deployed teams into existing companies — same standups, same backlog, same accountability line as your people.

What does Co-Build mean at Webaroo?

Co-Build means Webaroo co-founds new AI-native companies from zero. Webaroo holds a founders’ equity position with standard vesting; the spinout operates on its own cap table from day one. Webaroo isn’t a downstream investor — it’s on the cap table from the first wire.

What does Operate mean at Webaroo?

Operate means Webaroo embeds a forward-deployed team inside an existing company across whichever function is the bottleneck — technology, operations, business, or finance. The team sits in standups, opens tickets, and runs the rituals on the same accountability line as your people. The work product is the system in production, and a team trained to keep it running after we step out.

Roo OS is Webaroo’s internal operating platform. It coordinates how work moves from request to ticket to approval to deployment across our portfolio and Operate engagements. Public availability is targeted for Q2 2027.

Where is Webaroo based?

Webaroo is headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida, with a U.S.-led, globally distributed engineering model.

Webaroo was founded by Connor Murphy, who serves as Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

How is Webaroo different from a consultancy or a dev shop?

Most consultancies ship a deck and a roadmap. Most dev shops bill by the hour and disappear at handover. Webaroo ships the system in production, commits to the metric, and stays until your team can run it without us. Same standups, same backlog, same accountability — not a vendor relationship.

China's Five-Year Plan: Quantum as National Security

For most of the past decade, quantum computing has occupied a strange position in enterprise strategy: simultaneously "very important" and "not yet relevant." CTOs heard about it at conferences. Strategy teams put it on long-range roadmaps. Nobody actually had to do anything about it.

That posture is no longer sustainable, and the reason is geopolitical. Beijing's latest Five-Year Plan, released March 5, 2026, has elevated quantum technology to a national security priority on par with semiconductors and AI. This is not a research announcement. It is an industrial policy commitment that changes the timeline on which Western enterprises need to act.

Here is what the plan actually says, why it matters, and what mid-market and enterprise buyers should be doing in 2026 to stay ahead of the implications.

What the Five-Year Plan Actually Commits To

China's new Five-Year Plan mentions AI more than 50 times — but the quantum sections tell the real story. The plan explicitly calls for:

Expanded investment in scalable quantum computers
Construction of an integrated space-earth quantum communication network
"Hyper-scale" computing clusters to support quantum and AI infrastructure
Accelerated progress on "key core technologies" for industrial competitiveness

The space-earth quantum communication network deserves particular attention. China has already demonstrated satellite-based quantum key distribution (QKD) via the Micius satellite — the world's first quantum communications satellite, launched in 2016. The Five-Year Plan escalates this proof-of-concept into a full-scale infrastructure project linking orbital and ground-based systems.

This is not a research project. It is a buildout commitment with timeline, funding, and strategic intent attached.

Why This Matters for Western Enterprises

Quantum cryptography breaks existing encryption. Current RSA and ECC encryption — the backbone of every secure transaction, every VPN, every HTTPS connection — can be cracked by sufficiently powerful quantum computers running Shor's algorithm.

China isn't just building quantum computers for computation. They're building quantum-secure communication infrastructure that would be immune to their own quantum decryption capabilities, while potentially vulnerable Western systems remain on classical encryption.

This isn't theoretical paranoia. It's strategic positioning.

The Five-Year Plan also emphasizes reducing dependence on foreign technology. With US export controls limiting Chinese access to high-performance chips, Beijing is accelerating domestic quantum research and development. The message is clear: quantum computing is now a national security priority on par with semiconductors, AI, and space technology.

For Western enterprises, the implication is that the threat model is no longer "quantum becomes commercially viable in 10-15 years." The threat model is "an adversarial state has both quantum computing capability and quantum-secured communications, while my company is still running on classical encryption."

The "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" Problem

There is a specific risk that gets underweighted in most enterprise quantum conversations: data that is encrypted today and stolen today can be decrypted later, once a sufficiently capable quantum computer exists.

This is the "harvest now, decrypt later" problem. Adversaries do not need to wait for quantum supremacy to act. They can — and according to public intelligence assessments, already do — collect encrypted data flows now, with the expectation of decrypting them in the future. Anything sensitive over a 10-year horizon (trade secrets, financial transactions, communications, regulatory filings) is potentially exposed.

This reframes the post-quantum cryptography migration timeline. The question is not "when will quantum computers break my encryption." The question is "what data am I generating today that will still need to be confidential in 2035, and is that data being collected by someone who will have a quantum computer by then."

For most regulated industries — finance, defense, healthcare, critical infrastructure — the answer is "a lot, and yes."

The Geopolitical Dimension

The US-China technology competition has entered a new phase. Washington restricts semiconductor exports. Beijing restricts rare earth materials. Both sides are racing to achieve "quantum advantage" — not just for commercial applications, but for cryptographic superiority.

For enterprises planning IT infrastructure over the next decade, this means:

Post-quantum cryptography migration is no longer optional — it's a compliance timeline. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finalized its first post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024. Federal contractors and regulated industries are increasingly being asked to demonstrate migration plans.
Quantum-secured communications will become a differentiator in sensitive industries (finance, defense, healthcare). The companies that are early on quantum-resistant infrastructure will earn trust premiums. The ones that are late will be perceived as compliance risks.
Supply chain exposure to quantum-vulnerable systems represents material risk. Any vendor in your stack still relying on RSA or ECC encryption inherits the quantum risk into your enterprise. Vendor risk assessments need to start including post-quantum cryptography readiness as a question.

If you haven't started migration planning, you're already behind.

What Enterprises Should Actually Do in 2026

The strategic conversation has moved past "should we care about quantum." The operational conversation now is: which of our systems are exposed, in what order should they be migrated, and who is accountable for the work?

1. Inventory your cryptographic dependencies. Most enterprises do not have a clear picture of where RSA and ECC are actually being used in their stack — they're embedded in libraries, vendor systems, hardware modules, network protocols, and certificates. The first work is mapping the surface area.

2. Identify long-lived secrets. Data with a long confidentiality horizon needs to be migrated first. Customer financial data, M&A documents, source code, intellectual property, and regulated communications are all candidates.

3. Adopt NIST post-quantum standards. CRYSTALS-Kyber for key encapsulation, CRYSTALS-Dilithium for digital signatures, SPHINCS+ for signature backup. These are now the official standards. Hybrid classical/PQC deployments are the standard transition path.

4. Assess vendor readiness. Every vendor in your stack with cryptographic functions needs a post-quantum migration plan. Ask. Document. Make it a procurement requirement for renewals.

5. Build the operating capability. This is where most enterprises stall. Post-quantum migration is not a one-time project. It is an ongoing operating discipline that needs an owner, a budget, and a multi-year timeline. Mid-market companies without internal cryptography expertise will need to bring in a partner — but the partner needs to be embedded long enough to actually finish the work, not a vendor who delivers a strategy deck and walks away.

What This Means for Operators

Post-quantum cryptography migration is one of the clearest examples we have of why the operator model produces different outcomes than the vendor model. The vendor sells you an assessment. The operator stays embedded long enough to execute the migration, monitor the rollout, and iterate as new NIST standards finalize.

For mid-market companies and PE-backed portcos navigating quantum risk without an internal cryptography org, the question isn't "which consultancy should we hire." The question is "who is going to operate the post-quantum migration capability inside our business over the next three to five years."

The companies that build this operating capability earliest — through internal hires or through forward-deployed partners — will have a structural advantage when the regulatory mandates start landing in 2027 and 2028. The ones that wait will be retrofitting under deadline pressure, which is always more expensive than getting ahead of it.

The Bottom Line

China's Five-Year Plan is a signal, not a surprise. The strategic implications have been visible for years: quantum is becoming national infrastructure, classical encryption is becoming a national security liability, and post-quantum cryptography is becoming a compliance timeline rather than a research curiosity.

The companies that read the signal correctly are the ones that will be ready in 2028 and 2029, when the regulatory and competitive pressure becomes acute. The companies that keep treating quantum as a 2035 problem will find that 2035 arrives faster than expected, and that the migration work cannot be compressed into a single fiscal year.

Beijing has decided. NIST has finalized the standards. The remaining variable is whether enterprises build the operating capability to actually use them.

Webaroo is a venture operating firm. We build, operate, and invest in AI-native companies. The trusted operator behind AI-native companies. webaroo.us