The U.S. Department of Commerce will allocate a total of $2.013 billion to IBM, GlobalFoundries, and seven other technology companies to support quantum computing-related projects.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that the U.S. government will provide the funding in the form of equity investment. GlobalFoundries will issue shares to the government, representing approximately 1% of the company's shares; the government's shareholding percentages for the other eight participating companies have not yet been disclosed.
Following this news, shares of both IBM and GlobalFoundries surged by over 12%.
Fund Allocation and Core Projects
Nearly half of the funding (approximately $1 billion) will go to IBM, which will match the investment. The funds will be used to establish a new quantum chip manufacturing business, Anderon, and build a dedicated wafer fab capable of producing 300mm quantum wafers.
Anderson initially focused on the production of superconducting quantum computer wafers: these computers use superconducting transistors to construct qubits. The transistors need to be cooled to near absolute zero to achieve the "Cooper pair" quantum effect—electrons travel in pairs within the circuit, unlike the single-electron transport mode of traditional processors.
In the long term, Anderson will expand its business scope to cover other mainstream circuit architectures in the field of quantum computing; other funded companies will also simultaneously develop different technological routes.
Technological Routes and Funding Amounts for Each Company
Atom Computing and Infleqtion: Developing neutral atom quantum computers (using uncharged atoms as qubits and laser-encoded data), each received $100 million in funding.
PsiQuantum: Developing photonic quantum computers (using light particles as qubits), received $100 million in funding.
Quantinuum: Developing ion trap quantum processors (using charged ions as qubits), received corresponding funding.
GlobalFoundries: Received $375 million in funding (second only to IBM) to launch its quantum chip manufacturing business, covering multiple technology routes including superconductivity, ion traps, and photonics, while also supporting the development of other quantum architectures.
GlobalFoundries is already a core supplier of low-temperature complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chips (used for qubit data encoding, computational coordination, and result retrieval in quantum computers), and also provides photonic components for PUSCI Quantum's photonic quantum processor.
GlobalFoundries Chief Technology Officer Greg Bartlett stated, "Quantum hardware is moving from the laboratory to industrialization, and this transformation must be achieved through advanced semiconductor manufacturing environments."