IBM Shares Soar on US Funding for $2 Billion Quantum Push
The Trump administration has agreed to award International Business Machines Corp. $1 billion to build a foundry to produce quantum computing chips, part of a broad strategy to strengthen U.S. leadership in an emerging industry.
In the statement made on Thursday, the company stated that IBM will also invest $1 billion in a new company called Anderon, which will produce processors.
The news sent shares of IBM up as much as 11% in New York on Thursday, marking their biggest intraday gain in more than a year.
Other award-winning companies also made a splash. Semiconductor firm GlobalFoundries Inc., which develops specialized chips for quantum computing, rose as much as 14%. D-Wave Quantum Inc. 29%, Rigetti Computing Inc. 28% and Infleqtion Inc. increased by 44%.
Governments are preparing funding for quantum computing, a new technology that researchers believe could enable a range of new capabilities in everything from drug discovery to computing encryption standards. Although the machines are used primarily for research purposes for now, their promised capabilities could pose a threat to national security and disrupt systems that protect banks and government data.
The U.S. government has funded more than half a dozen other companies in addition to IBM. The company said in a statement that GlobalFoundries received $375 million. D-Wave, Rigetti, Infleqtion and PsiQuantum said in their separate statements that they signed letters of intent with the US Department of Commerce for up to $100 million each. Other recipients of the $100 million prize include Atom Computing Inc. and Quantinuum, while startup Diraq will also receive $38 million.
The deals, which have not yet been finalized, are part of a broader $2 billion support package for quantum computing using resources from the Commerce Department’s Chips and Science Act of 2022. The U.S. government is set to acquire minority and non-controlling shares from each company in exchange for awards, Commerce said Thursday.
Specifically, the funds will come from a research and development office that received $11 billion under the Chips Act, a broader $52 billion initiative signed by then-President Joe Biden to revitalize the U.S. semiconductor industry.
Last year, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick vacated $7.4 billion of the $11 billion given to a nonprofit for research and redirected some of that money to investments that would generate returns for the government. Expanding the scope to support quantum companies is also part of the reorganization of the Chip and Science Act of 2022.
Microsoft Corp. A mix of startups and major firms, including Alphabet Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, are trying to apply quantum physics to make computers exponentially more powerful than today’s machines.
These companies claim that the emerging field of using the rules of subatomic particles to process and transmit information is moving closer to real-world progress in areas such as drug discovery and finance.
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