IBM will build a pure-play quantum wafer foundry, a plant that makes quantum chips for others rather than for its own use, after landing a $1 billion federal CHIPS award matched by $1 billion of its own money.
The cash will equip a facility in upstate New York to produce superconducting qubit arrays, the delicate circuits that store and process quantum information, along with the components that send signals to the chips and read the results back, The Daily Upside reported.
The site has already passed significant milestones in a demonstration phase, IBM said, work it casts as the groundwork for a shift into commercial production.
The foundry play
IBM's ambition is to do for quantum what TSMC did for conventional chips.
The funding will let the plant pursue a foundry role, supplying third-party quantum firms and scaling from demonstration to commercial output.
That is a bet on an industry that barely has a supply chain yet, which is what the government money is meant to change.
"There's a real opportunity to commercialize this technology," Citi analyst Fatima Boolani told Barron's, a line the report used to show how state backing could lend credibility to an emerging market.
Policy and pressure
The award is the biggest single cheque in a wider federal push.
That programme also steered up to $100 million apiece to other quantum developers.
For IBM, the timing carries some urgency. Its shares suffered their worst day in July on doubts about its progress in AI, and quantum offers a field where it can still claim a lead.
