The US is underwriting a domestic quantum supply chain the way it did for chips: 2 billion dollars in Commerce incentives plus IBM's 10 billion dollar commitment bet fault tolerance arrives this decade
The US is underwriting a domestic quantum supply chain the way it did for chips. Commerce signed letters of intent for about 2 billion dollars in incentives, with IBM $IBM slated for 1 billion toward a quantum foundry. IBM separately committed over 10 billion across five years. S
Washington is treating quantum computing the way it treated semiconductors, as strategic infrastructure worth subsidizing before the market fully exists. The Department of Commerce has signed letters of intent to provide about 2 billion dollars in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act. The largest share, 1 billion dollars, is earmarked for an IBM $IBM subsidiary to build a foundry for quantum grade superconducting wafers. GlobalFoundries $GF is slated for 375 million dollars for a secure domestic quantum foundry, and D-Wave $QBTS, Rigetti $RGTI and Infleqtion are each set to receive 100 million dollars. Separately, IBM has committed more than 10 billion dollars to quantum computing over the next five years, spanning research, manufacturing scale up and partnerships. The logic is the same one that drove the chips push. A technology that could reshape cryptography, materials science and logistics should not depend on a supply chain built elsewhere. The bet embedded in the spending is that fault tolerant, useful quantum machines arrive within this decade rather than the next. Sources: NIST, IBM.