THE US Department of Commerce said it plans to provide $2.013 billion in incentives to nine companies developing quantum computing technologies under the CHIPS and Science Act, aiming to strengthen domestic manufacturing and accelerate the development of utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Announced on May 21, the proposed incentives will support two domestic quantum foundries and seven quantum computing companies working across multiple technology approaches, including superconducting, trapped-ion, photonic, silicon-spin and neutral-atom systems.
The Commerce Department said the funding is intended to strengthen US leadership in a technology with potential applications in national defense, advanced materials, biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.
"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," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a statement. "These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities."
Under the proposal, IBM would receive $1 billion to establish a quantum foundry subsidiary for superconducting quantum wafers, while GlobalFoundries would receive $375 million to establish a domestic quantum foundry supporting multiple quantum computing architectures.
Other proposed awards include up to $100 million each for Atom Computing, D-Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum and Rigetti, while Diraq would receive up to $38 million. The projects are intended to address engineering challenges such as error correction, cryogenic systems integration, control hardware, photonic packaging and scalable qubit manufacturing.
The government initiative comes as semiconductor companies position themselves to support emerging quantum computing systems through conventional computing technologies.
In a company blog, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) said quantum computing is expected to develop alongside classical computing rather than replace it, with future systems relying on hybrid architectures that combine quantum processors with high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.
"Quantum computers are not faster versions of classical computers," AMD said. "They are a fundamentally different computing model designed to use the properties of quantum mechanics to explore certain problems that classical systems struggle to solve efficiently."
According to AMD, current quantum systems still depend heavily on conventional computing for control, calibration, simulation, data preparation, orchestration, post-processing and error correction. The company said these requirements are expected to grow as quantum processors become more capable.
AMD said its EPYC processors, Instinct graphics accelerators, field-programmable gate arrays, adaptive system-on-chip technologies, networking products and software are intended to support hybrid quantum computing environments. The company added that it is collaborating with IBM, JPMorganChase and Oak Ridge National Laboratory on research involving quantum computing, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.
The Commerce Department said its investment strategy is intended to accelerate domestic quantum manufacturing, address key engineering challenges and strengthen the United States' long-term competitiveness in quantum computing.