IBM wins biggest slice of $2bn US gov investment in domestic quantum firms

The US Department of Commerce is handing out just over $2 billion to US quantum firms, with half going to IBM.

The aim, said the department, is to strengthen the US's position, with the sector crucial to national security, technological resilience, and long-term strategic leadership.

"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," said secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick.

"These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities."

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The Department of Commerce will receive a minority, non-controlling equity stake in each company.

Much of the funding will go to two quantum foundries. IBM gets the biggest slice, $1 billion, to establish a new quantum foundry subsidiary for quantum-grade superconducting wafers.

GlobalFoundries, meanwhile, will receive $375 million to establish a secure, domestic quantum foundry for leading architectures and multiple modalities – superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, topological, and silicon spin – used in large-scale quantum computers.

"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," said Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM.

Another seven quantum computing companies are also in for funding, aimed at solving currently unresolved engineering problems in multiple quantum modalities.

"The CHIPS R&D Office is taking a portfolio approach to strengthen and accelerate US leadership across multiple quantum modalities at once, while focusing each award on discrete technological problems of genuine consequence," said Bill Frauenhofer, executive director of semiconductor investment and innovation.

"We will be providing 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."

Atom Computing, Diraq, D-Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, and Rigetti will receive funding of between $38 million and $100 million.

"The award would accelerate D-Wave's ability to scale quantum innovation domestically, expedite key fabrication processes, and deliver real-world quantum applications to our global customers today," said Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. "We see this as a transformative moment for not just D-Wave, but also for quantum computing and the United States."

Quantum computing is being seen as a crucial technology for national defense, advanced materials, biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling, and energy systems.

And this US move follows an even larger investment in quantum technologies by the British government, which recently announced £2 billion in funding for the sector.

Between them, quantum computing, quantum communication, and quantum sensing are expected to generate up to $97 billion in revenue worldwide by 2035, according to research from McKinsey. Quantum computing will represent the biggest slice, growing from $4 billion in revenue in 2024 to as much as $72 billion in 2035.

The Department of Commerce is also now looking for proposals for research, prototyping, and commercial solutions that advance microelectronics technology in the US; applications can be made under announcement 2025-NIST-CHIPS-CRDO-01 at www.grants.gov.