IBM, Commerce Department to Back $1B Quantum Chip Foundry

The United States could soon have a dedicated quantum chip foundry, backed by the largest award in a $2 billion federal quantum investment package spanning multiple companies. IBM and the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) today announced a letter of intent for $1 billion in CHIPS Incentives funding to support Anderon, a new IBM company that would operate as a U.S. quantum chip foundry.

The funding is part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which allocated $39 billion in subsidies for chip manufacturing on U.S. soil. The law also provides award recipients with a 25% investment tax credit for the cost of manufacturing equipment.

IBM also plans to contribute $1 billion into the new project, along with IP, assets and workforce support. IBM claims Anderon, which will operate as a standalone company in Albany, New York, would be the first American pure-play quantum foundry, meaning a manufacturing facility specifically built for quantum hardware rather than a traditional chip foundry focused on classical semiconductors.

IBM has spent the past decade working to move quantum computing beyond the research lab, deploying more than 90 quantum systems along the way. In an Open Source Summit keynote this week, Sean Dague, chief services architect at IBM Quantum, said IBM put its first 5-qubit quantum processor on the cloud 10 years ago this month, later building that effort into Qiskit, its open source quantum software development kit, which Dague said has been used in more than 5,000 research papers. On the hardware side, IBM crossed the 100-qubit threshold in 2021 with its 127-qubit Eagle processor. With Anderon, IBM will be extending this work into manufacturing, creating a 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry intended to serve IBM and other quantum hardware vendors.

Executives say the deal will be an economic and strategic investment in U.S. quantum leadership. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the funding will strengthen domestic industry and create high-paying jobs. Bill Frauenhofer, DoC executive director of semiconductor investment and innovation, emphasized quantum’s potential for applications in national defense, materials science, biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said Anderon could help support the growth of the U.S. quantum technology sector by building on IBM’s quantum computing and wafer fabrication expertise.

The $1 billion IBM award is part of a larger $2 billion federal quantum package spanning nine companies. Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries also announced a letter of intent with the DoC for $375 million to build out its new Quantum Technology Solutions business, which will focus on manufacturing quantum hardware components, including QPUs, cryogenic CMOS, advanced packaging and superconducting interconnects. Other award recipients include D-Wave, Rigetti Computing, Infleqtion and Diraq, according to Reuters.

The investments reflect a more active federal role in technology markets. Reuters reported that the government is taking equity stakes in several quantum companies as part of the investment package. GlobalFoundries said its agreement includes a strategic equity investment that would give the DoC about 1% ownership in the company. Though the awards remain subject to final agreements, they could mark a significant step toward establishing domestic manufacturing capacity for quantum technologies.