US Government Gets Something Back for $300M in Quantum Grants

Quantum computing just pulled in a major cash infusion from Washington. D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Quantinuum have each locked in $100 million in CHIPS and Science Act funding, with the Commerce Department taking a small, non-controlling equity stake in each company in return, reports Quartz. The $300 million package, structured as R&D grants, sent all three stocks higher in premarket trading on Tuesday.

D-Wave plans to build a 100,000-qubit annealing system and a 10,000-qubit gate-model machine. Rigetti will focus on squeezing readout electronics into smaller hardware, boosting cryogenic capacity, and advancing chip fabrication. Quantinuum, meanwhile, will invest in US-based quantum semiconductor manufacturing, partnering with GlobalFoundries and Monarch Quantum. The Wall Street Journal reports that GlobalFoundries recently inked its own $375 million, five-year deal with the federal government to help grow quantum manufacturing capabilities at home.

The awards reported by Quartz are part of a broader $2 billion CHIPS push across nine quantum firms, including a $1 billion quantum chip foundry for IBM in Albany, New York. "The administration has made clear that US quantum leadership will require not only breakthrough research, but also the ability to scale, commercialize, and manufacture these technologies," D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz says in a statement, per Investopedia. "This award will help fulfill that mission by expanding domestic quantum capabilities, strengthening the underlying supply chain, and bringing increasingly powerful quantum systems to market."