CHIPS Act: Two Foundries. Seven Computing Companies. Six Different Qubit Modalities. One Overriding Goal: A Utility-Scale Quantum Computer Before China Builds One First.
According to the US Department of Commerce and NIST, the Department announced on May 21, 2026 the signing of 9 letters of intent to provide $2.013 billion in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act.
These funds under the CHIPS and Science Act will support a portfolio of quantum companies, including two domestic quantum foundry companies and 7 quantum computing companies to accelerate solving the most critical technology challenges in the race to develop utility scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers.
To understand why this announcement represents a structural shift rather than a routine research grant programme, you need to understand what a fault-tolerant quantum computer actually is and why the manufacturing chain required to build one does not currently exist in the United States at scale.
Quantum computing operates on the principle of quantum superposition and entanglement, allowing quantum bits; qubits to represent multiple states simultaneously, enabling calculations that classical computers cannot efficiently perform. The theoretical power of a quantum computer grows exponentially with the number of logical qubits it can sustain.
But qubits are extraordinarily fragile. They lose their quantum state; a process called decoherence when they interact with heat, vibration, electromagnetic interference or even each other in uncontrolled ways. The current generation of quantum computers are error-prone and require constant correction.
A fault-tolerant quantum computer is one in which the error correction overhead has been solved well enough that the machine can run sustained, reliable calculations at a scale that delivers real-world computational advantage.
No one has built one yet. The race is for who builds it first.
IBM will receive $1 billion in planned funding under the CHIPS Act to establish a new quantum foundry subsidiary for quantum-grade superconducting wafers, building on its US leadership in superconducting quantum wafer fabrication technology.
The scale of IBM’s award; half of the total $2.013 billion commitment reflects both the centrality of superconducting wafer fabrication to the entire quantum computing ecosystem and IBM’s established position as the furthest-advanced company in that specific technology stack.
A quantum foundry for superconducting wafers is not simply a chip plant. It is a facility that must operate at temperatures approaching absolute zero, with material purity requirements that exceed those of conventional semiconductor fabrication, and with quality control processes that do not yet exist in standardised form anywhere in the world.
GlobalFoundries will receive $375 million under the CHIPS Act in planned funding to establish a secure, domestic quantum foundry for leading architectures and multiple modalities; superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, topological, and silicon spin used in large-scale quantum computers.
The GlobalFoundries mandate is broader than IBM’s and strategically different. Where IBM is deepening a specific technology, GlobalFoundries is building a multi-modality platform; a foundry that can serve the full ecosystem of quantum hardware approaches rather than committing to a single architecture.
That distinction matters because no single qubit modality has yet proven definitively superior for all applications. The six modalities being supported across these nine companies reflect that scientific reality.
The remaining seven companies; Atom Computing, Diraq, D-Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, and Rigetti will use Commerce’s funding under the CHIPS Act to improve their proprietary quantum computing technologies and modalities.
Quantinuum will receive $100 million in planned funding 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.
Rigetti will receive up to $100 million in planned funding under the CHIPS Act to address key technical challenges to develop and scale next generation superconducting quantum computing technologies and architectures, such as miniaturizing and integrating novel readout electronics and next generation cryostat architectures.
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.
Diraq will receive up to $38 million in planned funding to develop and scale quantum logic units and accelerate critical manufacturing and integration capabilities for silicon spin quantum computing technologies.
The diversity of modalities being simultaneously funded is deliberate and important. The Department of Commerce is not picking a winner. It is hedging across the most promising approaches simultaneously; an explicit acknowledgement that the scientific community has not yet converged on which physical implementation of the qubit will prove most scalable and practical for the full range of quantum computing applications.
Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling, and energy systems. Each of those application domains carries a national security dimension.
In cryptography, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break RSA encryption; the mathematical foundation of most current internet security in a timeframe that renders current private communications retrospectively vulnerable.
The US government’s transition to post-quantum cryptographic standards, which NIST has been leading since 2016, is itself driven by the assumption that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer will be built within the current decade. The question is whether it will be built in the United States first.
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said: “With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation. These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”
The framing of these letters of intent as CHIPS Act investments rather than traditional research grants carries policy weight of its own. The CHIPS and Science Act was passed in 2022 specifically to rebuild domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity after decades of offshoring.
Extending CHIPS incentives to quantum computing signals that the US government has formally concluded that quantum hardware manufacturing; not just quantum software and algorithms; is a strategic industrial capability that must be retained on American soil, funded by American taxpayers, and developed by American companies.
The letters of intent are not final contracts. They are commitments to negotiate final agreements. But at $2.013 billion, they represent the largest single federal quantum computing investment in US history, and the first to explicitly fund the manufacturing infrastructure; the foundries rather than only the research.
To check out our previous coverage on AI, technology and quantum computing, read our articles here.
