US Pledges $2B to Quantum Foundries as Q‑Day Looms

The U.S. Department of Commerce will invest more than $2 billion across nine quantum startups and foundries, with $1 billion in CHIPS incentives earmarked for IBM’s proposed Anderon wafer foundry in Albany, New York. IBM plans to contribute about $1 billion in cash, intellectual property, manufacturing assets and personnel to the project.

GlobalFoundries is expected to receive $375 million. Atom Computing, D-Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum and Rigetti are each slated to receive roughly $100 million, and Diraq will receive $38 million. The government will take varying equity stakes in the companies under the agreements.

Officials say the awards are intended to scale production of 300-millimeter superconducting quantum wafers and related hardware. Superconducting qubits sit on ultra-thin silicon wafers that hold the qubits and supporting electronics. Producing those wafers requires extremely precise fabrication and very low error rates. Anderon is planned to focus first on superconducting wafers before adding other quantum technologies.

A technical report from a quantum security firm estimates a “cryptographically relevant quantum computer” capable of breaking current public-key schemes could appear as early as 2030. IBM’s internal roadmap targets a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029. Some researchers say future systems may need fewer qubits than earlier estimates to run algorithms that can break common public-key cryptography.

Public blockchains expose transaction data and public keys. If a quantum computer can derive a private key from a public key, funds in addresses with exposed keys could be moved without any on-chain reversal mechanism. Analysts at Citi estimate roughly 6.7 million to 7 million bitcoin are held in wallets with publicly exposed keys.

Arvind Krishna, IBM’s CEO and chairman, wrote that “IBM has pioneered quantum computing for decades. Our work in silicon wafer fabrication has been a key to IBM’s success and will be critical to enable a broader quantum technology landscape that will reshape global innovation and economic competitiveness.” In a statement, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick praised the awards, saying, “With today’s CHIPS research and development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation.”

Officials and company representatives say the investments aim to strengthen domestic supply chains, expand manufacturing capacity and support development of error-corrected, fault-tolerant quantum systems. Scaling to the volumes needed for such systems will require specialized facilities, extreme cooling systems and tightly controlled fabrication environments.