Commerce Awards $2B to U.S. Quantum Firms, IBM Gets $1B

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced just over $2 billion in awards to American quantum technology companies through the CHIPS research and development program. IBM will receive $1 billion to establish a new subsidiary foundry for quantum-grade superconducting wafers. GlobalFoundries was awarded $375 million to create a secure domestic foundry that supports multiple quantum hardware approaches.

The department said the funding aims to strengthen U.S. capabilities in quantum technologies that affect national security, industrial competitiveness and long-term scientific leadership. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said the investments will “build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”

IBM’s award is intended to scale wafer production at the quality and volume needed for superconducting quantum processors. Arvind Krishna, IBM’s chairman and CEO, noted that IBM’s experience in silicon wafer fabrication has been central to its quantum work and will be important for expanding the broader quantum technology landscape.

GlobalFoundries’ award is designed to support several quantum modalities, including superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, topological and silicon spin approaches. The department described the two foundries as elements of domestic supply chain resilience for quantum hardware.

Seven additional U.S. companies received awards ranging from about $38 million to $100 million to tackle unresolved engineering challenges across different hardware platforms. Recipients include Atom Computing, Diraq, D-Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum and Rigetti. The CHIPS R&D Office said it is funding a variety of platforms while targeting specific technical barriers for each award.

Bill Frauenhofer, executive director of semiconductor investment and innovation at the department, said the awards are meant to “provide incentives to build domestic quantum capacity, solve the hardest engineering challenges, enable multi-year acceleration of technology roadmaps, and drive continued U.S. quantum leadership.” He framed the program as a portfolio approach to advance multiple technologies at once.

The Department of Commerce will take a minority, non-controlling equity stake in each company that receives funds. Officials characterized the investments as support for domestic manufacturing and as a way to speed private-sector development of quantum systems that could be used in defense, materials science, drug discovery, finance and energy.

Alan Baratz, chief executive of D-Wave, described the award as accelerating the company’s ability to scale fabrication processes and deliver practical quantum applications to customers. He said the funding represents a “transformative moment” for D-Wave and U.S. quantum computing.

The department cited research projecting that combined markets for quantum computing, communication and sensing could reach as much as $97 billion globally by 2035, with quantum computing revenue growing from roughly $4 billion in 2024 to as much as $72 billion in 2035. The Commerce announcement follows a recent commitment by the British government of £2 billion for quantum technologies.

The Commerce Department is also soliciting proposals for research, prototyping and commercial projects that advance microelectronics technology in the United States. Applications may be submitted under announcement 2025-NIST-CHIPS-CRDO-01 at grants.gov.