US awards $2B to nine quantum firms, takes equity
Key insights
- IBM receives $1 billion, the largest single award, from the $2 billion CHIPS Act quantum allocation across nine firms.
- The US government takes equity stakes in all nine recipients, giving taxpayers direct financial upside tied to commercial success.
- Awards span competing qubit modalities including superconducting, annealing, photonic, and trapped-ion approaches.
Why this matters
The equity-for-funding model represents a meaningful shift in how the federal government structures deep-tech investment, creating a sovereign stake in the outcome rather than simply subsidizing R&D with no return mechanism. For founders and technical leaders, this signals that future government capital in strategic hardware sectors may come with dilutive strings attached, changing how companies should weigh federal funding against private alternatives. The breadth of recipients across nine companies and multiple qubit modalities also confirms that no single quantum architecture has achieved the credibility needed for the government to concentrate its bet.
Summary
The US Commerce Department is deploying $2 billion from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act directly into quantum computing companies, and unlike traditional grants, taxpayers are getting equity stakes in return.
IBM lands the largest single award at $1 billion, with GlobalFoundries receiving $375 million. The remaining $625 million is split across seven firms: D-Wave, Rigetti, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, Infleqtion, Diraq, and Atom Computing, spanning gate-based, annealing, and photonic qubit approaches.
Essentially: (IBM, GlobalFoundries, PsiQuantum, Rigetti) and five others are now partially government-backed ventures, not just grant recipients.
- The equity model is a structural departure from how the US has funded deep-tech research historically, giving the federal government direct financial upside tied to commercial outcomes.
- Nine companies across competing qubit modalities received awards, signaling the government is hedging across technologies rather than picking a single winner.
- Quantum stocks moved sharply higher on the announcement, reflecting market confidence that government backing de-risks near-term runway concerns.
If the equity model proves out, it could become the template for how the US funds other strategically sensitive hardware sectors beyond quantum.
Potential risks and opportunities
Risks
- Publicly traded recipients Rigetti and D-Wave face potential shareholder scrutiny over dilution and governance implications of the government equity stakes.
- If multiple recipients fail to hit commercial viability within a 5-7 year window, the equity model could produce write-downs that invite congressional backlash against future deep-tech investment structures.
- Concentrating awards among nine firms with overlapping modalities could crowd out unfunded quantum startups from follow-on private capital, as investors defer to the government-backed cohort.
Opportunities
- Quantum hardware suppliers (cryogenic systems vendors like Bluefors, Oxford Instruments) are positioned to see accelerated procurement from all nine funded firms simultaneously.
- Cloud providers AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud can use the funding news to accelerate enterprise quantum-access deals, pointing to government validation as a credibility signal for hesitant customers.
- Defense and national-security-focused investors (In-Q-Tel, Shield Capital) gain cleaner co-investment opportunities alongside government equity in the smaller recipients like Infleqtion and Atom Computing.
What we don't know yet
- Equity stake percentages and governance rights for each recipient have not been disclosed in public reporting as of May 21, 2026.
- Whether PsiQuantum and Diraq, both early-stage relative to IBM, must hit specific technical milestones before tranches are released.
- How the equity terms interact with existing private investors in recipients like Rigetti (publicly traded) and Quantinuum (majority-owned by Honeywell).
Originally reported by reuters.com
Read the original article →Original headline: US to Award $2 Billion to Quantum Computing Firms and Take Equity Stakes, WSJ Reports