"The administration’s $2 billion equity stake across nine quantum companies marks the moment Washington stopped treating quantum as a speculative bet and started treating it as critical national infrastructure," Rebecca Krauthamer said, framing the Commerce Department announcement as a watershed.
The $2.013 billion investment and minority equity stakes
On May 21, the Department of Commerce disclosed that the Trump Administration will invest $2.013 billion under the CHIPS and Science Act to support U.S. leadership and innovation in quantum computing. The Department will take minority, non-controlling equity stakes in nine companies. According to the administration’s plan, these are equity investments rather than grants—an important distinction underscored in the announcement.
GlobalFoundries and IBM: funded domestic quantum foundries
Two recipients are designated to establish or expand domestic quantum foundry capabilities:
- GlobalFoundries — Receiving $375 million to establish a domestic quantum foundry for architectures and modalities for use in large-scale quantum computers.
- IBM — Receiving $1 billion to establish a quantum foundry subsidiary for quantum‑grade wafers.
The Commerce Department’s choice to fund domestic foundry capacity signals an emphasis on manufacturing and supply-chain readiness for multiple quantum hardware approaches.
Atom Computing, Diraq, D‑Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum and Rigetti: solving engineering and scaling problems
Seven companies focused on quantum computing systems and engineering will receive funds aimed at resolving specific technical and manufacturing bottlenecks. The announced allocations and stated purposes are:
- Atom Computing — $100 million to address manufacturing and technical difficulties for neutral‑atom quantum computing.
- Diraq — $38 million to create and scale quantum logic units, accelerating critical manufacturing and integration abilities.
- D‑Wave — $100 million to support anneal and gate‑model quantum computing systems.
- Infleqtion — $100 million to develop engineering systems and integration needs for quantum computers and architectures.
- PsiQuantum — $100 million to address photonic quantum computing technical concerns.
- Quantinuum — $100 million to address bottlenecks in scaling for technology and manufacturing.
- Rigetti — $100 million to address technical concerns for developing and scaling the next generation of quantum computing technologies and architectures.
Taken together, these investments target a broad set of modalities—neutral‑atom, photonic, anneal, and gate‑model systems—and the tooling and manufacturing needed to scale them.
Rebecca Krauthamer on timelines, equity versus grants, and migration deadlines (2027–2035)
Rebecca Krauthamer, CEO and Co‑Founder of QuSecure, founder of Quantum Thought, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Quantum Computing, emphasized that equity stakes imply a compressed timeline. "Equity stakes are not grants. The federal government does not take ownership positions in technologies it considers speculative," she said. "This is Washington pricing in a quantum timeline that is years shorter than the previous conventional wisdom."
Krauthamer also highlighted the cybersecurity implications of accelerating offensive capability: "As quantum investment accelerates, so too does the quantum threat to cybersecurity."
She noted that the quantum threat is "largely a solved problem on paper" because standards exist and can run on current infrastructure, but warned the real danger is failure to migrate systems in parallel. Federal migration deadlines, she said, are currently phased from 2027 to 2035—creating a separation between the pace of quantum capability funding and the schedule for defensive migration.
What this means for technologists, policymakers, and affected enterprises
- Technologists and security teams: Expect investment to prioritize hardware scale and engineering solutions across multiple modalities. They will need to translate existing standards into operational migrations even as new quantum capabilities are deployed.
- Policymakers and regulators: The Commerce Department’s use of minority equity stakes signals an official assessment of near‑term utility; Krauthamer expects Washington to "compress" the existing migration timelines in subsequent actions.
- Affected enterprises and procurement leaders (banks, hospitals, power grids): Krauthamer warned that "Federal dollars build quantum computers. They do not migrate a bank, a hospital, or a power grid." Boards should be asking whether their organizations are moving on post‑quantum cryptography at the same speed the government is moving on quantum itself.
The Commerce Department’s $2.013 billion placement buys time, capacity and manufacturing heft for U.S. quantum capability—but it also crystallizes a policy gap. As Krauthamer put it, the announced funding "funds nine companies building quantum capability. It does not fund the migration required to defend against it." That second story—how and when defensive timelines and capital will be accelerated to match capability—remains the concrete next step to watch.
