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The US and Europe are pumping funds into quantum technologies in the next stage of commercialisation.

The US government is buying stakes in nine US companies, including a spinout of IBM as a dedicated quantum foundry, while the Chips Act 2.0 in Europe will see more support for the commercialisation of the technology.

The US Department of Commerce (DoC) is backing the research and development efforts of nine companies, taking an equity stake in each for the first time as part of the US CHIPS Act.

A key project is the spinout of a new IBM company called Anderon with $1bn, intended to be America’s first purpose-built, pure-play quantum foundry. This represents one of the most significant commitments by the US government to date in quantum R&D, positioning the United States to manufacture most of the world’s quantum wafers.

IBM is also contributing $1 billion of cash into Anderon as a 300mm wafer foundry in Albany, New York, along with significant intellectual property, assets, and a skilled workforce, as part of a $10bn quantum investment programme.

• Quantum supremacy moves to the foundry

Anderon will sit alongside GlobalFoundries and SkyWater Technology, now part of IonQ, as foundries for quantum technologies. IonQ is notable for not taking the US government investment.

“This will help the nation solidify its leadership at the centre of a thriving new quantum industry that is estimated to generate up to $850 billion in economic value by 2040 and spur American economic growth while also bolstering national security,” said IBM.

“IBM has pioneered quantum computing for decades. Our work in silicon wafer fabrication has been a key to IBM’s success and will be critical to enable a broader quantum technology landscape that will reshape global innovation and economic competitiveness,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM. “With the support of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Anderon will be well-positioned to fuel America’s fast-growing quantum technology industry.”

Anderon’s forthcoming leading-edge 300mm wafer processes are expected to offer some of the most advanced quantum wafer technologies, including superconducting wiring, through-silicon vias and bumps, and will be backed by established production capabilities such as dedicated process design kits and in-line wafer testing and characterisation.

Behind the scenes, IBM has deployed over 90 quantum systems, more than reported by all other industry players across the globe combined, and is aiming to deliver the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029 for commercial clients.

US backing

The eight other companies receiving US government backing include GF, which will receive $375 million in planned funding to establish a secure, domestic quantum foundry for superconducting, trapped-ion, photonic, topological and silicon-spin technologies used in large-scale quantum computers. The company already supplies the chips for the quantum computer being built by PsiQuantum in Chicago and Australia. PsiQuantum is also receiving $100m in exchange for shares to continue the development of its electro-optic materials, high-temperature single-photon detectors and ultra-low-loss photonic packaging.

• The quantum end game approaches

“The CHIPS R&D Office is taking a portfolio approach to strengthen and accelerate US leadership across multiple quantum modalities at once, while focusing each award on discrete technological problems of genuine consequence,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “We will be providing incentives to build domestic quantum capacity, solve the hardest engineering challenges, enable multi-year acceleration of technology roadmaps, and drive continued US quantum leadership.”

Atom Computing will receive $100 million in planned funding to address key technical and manufacturing challenges for neutral-atom quantum computing, including hardware development and systems integration needed to manipulate, control, and address tens of thousands of qubits, and validate their performance.

Diraq in Australia will receive up to $38 million in planned funding to develop and scale its quantum logic units and accelerate critical manufacturing and integration capabilities for its CMOS silicon spin quantum computing technologies, including novel designs for large-scale and reliable qubit arrays.

Established Canadian quantum computer maker D-Wave will receive $100 million in planned funding for critical advancements in annealing and gate-model superconducting quantum computing systems, including qubit counts, error rates, and coherence through advanced dielectric material optimization, interface control, and high-density advanced packaging.

Infleqtion will receive $100 million in planned funding to develop the underlying engineering systems and integration requirements for large-scale neutral-atom-based quantum computers and architectures, including high-powered optical systems, novel readout and error correction systems.

Rigetti will receive up to $100 million in planned funding to address key technical challenges and develop and scale next-generation superconducting quantum computing technologies and architectures, such as miniaturising and integrating novel readout electronics and next-generation cryostat architectures.

Honeywell spinout Quantinuum last week increased the size of its public offering, successfully raising $1.68bn to deploy its trapped ion systems and its fault-tolerant technology. It is also to receive $100 million in planned funding from the US government to address critical technology and manufacturing bottlenecks for scaling of fault-tolerant trapped-ion-based quantum computers, such as low-loss integrated photonics, and reliable optical components at trapped-ion critical wavelengths.

“Quantum computing has the potential to unlock new possibilities across science, industry, and national priorities for decades to come,” said Rajeeb Hazra, President and CEO of Quantinuum. “This collaboration with the Department of Commerce is designed to help Quantinuum’s path to large-scale, fault-tolerant trapped-ion systems while strengthening the U.S. innovation and manufacturing ecosystem.”  

Quantinuum is working with GlobalFoundries for critical semiconductor components and Monarch Quantum for integrated photonics, to further optimize key engineering pathways for components within Quantinuum’s future commercial roadmap.

“We believe GF’s differentiated semiconductor platforms in cryo-CMOS, cryo-3D interconnect, and advanced packaging, combined with Quantinuum’s deep ion-trap expertise, will help Quantinuum accelerate their quantum system scale-up roadmap to utility-scale quantum computing,” said Tim Breen, CEO of GlobalFoundries.

“Monarch Quantum is proud to partner with Quantinuum to advance U.S. leadership in next-generation computing infrastructure,” said Timothy Day, Chairman & CEO of Monarch Quantum. “By delivering advanced integrated photonics through a resilient domestic supply chain, we are committed to supporting the secure, scalable manufacturing required for fault-tolerant quantum systems.”

Europe’s Chips Act 2.0

The Chips for Europe Initiative 2.0 (Chips Act) aims to support the development of quantum chips and associated technologies, including those based on semiconductor materials or integrated with photonics. This will include design libraries for quantum chips, pilot lines for building quantum chips, and facilities for testing and validating quantum chips produced by the pilot lines. It will also lead to a pan-European quantum design community centred on quantum chip design, simulation, and verification libraries and tools.

The Act will also support the first industrialisation efforts of the most mature developments.

There are currently six quantum chip pilot lines established, one for each of the leading technology platforms: superconducting, spin, photonic, diamond, neutral-atom and trapped-ion chips. The projects focus on setting up stable pilot-scale fabrication processes, integrating testing and experimentation facilities, developing early industrialisation roadmaps, and laying the groundwork for future scaling.

One key part of the commercialisation of quantum technology in Europe is the £260 million funding round for Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) in the UK. OQC has been at the forefront of superconducting qubit technology with error correction. It has four quantum computers deployed, including one in Japan. However, it initially struggled to raise its Series C round, taking over two years.

“As Europe’s first Quantum-Compute-as-a-Service provider and the only company integrating quantum computers directly into commercial data centres, we are bringing enterprise-grade quantum capability into the heart of global digital infrastructure,” said the company. “With a growing international footprint and a roadmap focused on scalable, fault-tolerant systems, we are accelerating the transition of quantum computing from experimentation to real-world deployment. By combining world-leading engineering with commercial infrastructure integration, we are enabling practical quantum applications across major customer sectors.”

In France Quobly has also raised €115m for its spin qubit technology based on standard CMOS manufacturing at STMicroelectronics. This Series A round aims to fund the deployment of its Alloy full stack architecture that combines hardware, control electronics and software.

Belgian research lab imec is also pushing the technology to produce quantum dot qubits on standard 300mm CMOS wafers using the latest lithography with high numerical aperture (NA) equipment.

The gap of just 6nm between the quantum dots produced by imec would enable millions of qubits on a single chip, allowing the technology to scale in the same way as silicon computers today.

“We can leverage decades of semiconductor innovation and reuse the entire ecosystem of silicon scaling, moving quantum devices beyond lab experiments to large-scale, manufacturable systems. This is where silicon-based qubits have a clear advantage”, said Sofie Beyne, project leader and quantum integration engineer at imec.

“High NA EUV enables the precise patterning of silicon quantum dot qubits. As the coupling strength between neighbouring quantum dots increases exponentially with the gap between them, we need to reliably pattern gaps of a few nanometres between the control electrodes of the quantum dots. This is a true engineering feat, thanks to our integration and patterning teams and ASML’s outstanding high NA EUV technology,” said Kristiaan De Greve, imec fellow and program director Quantum Computing.

In Switzerland, the Centre for Quantum Science and Engineering at EPFL has become the first Swiss academic institution to establish a virtual platform offering advanced quantum computing capabilities to its researchers. It is working with Quantinuum to provide cloud access to their hardware through EPFL’s SCITAS high-performance computing (HPC) platform.

“EPFL is pushing the boundaries on quantum algorithms, as evidenced by the fact that it is the first Swiss university to have a direct cloud platform for accessing an advanced quantum computer integrated within our own high-performance computing infrastructure,” explains Vincenzo Savona, professor in the School of Basic Sciences and academic director of the EPFL Centre for Quantum Science and Engineering (QSE).

“This gives us access to some of the very best quantum hardware currently available to the academic community, opening the door to experiments that go beyond purely theoretical or small-scale numerical studies,” adds Giuseppe Carleo, an associate professor in SB and head of the Computational Quantum Science Laboratory (CQSL).

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