Three of the quantum computing industry’s most prominent pure-play companies now count the U.S. federal government among their official backers.
Rigetti Computing (RGTI), D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), and Quantinuum (QNT) each finalized funding agreements with the U.S. Commerce Department, securing up to $100 million apiece under the CHIPS Act.
The funds are earmarked specifically for research and development and commercialization efforts within each company’s existing technical roadmap.
In exchange for the capital, the government will receive ownership stakes in all three firms, though these will not be controlling positions in any case.
The finer details of the arrangements, including the precise size of the government’s equity stake in each company, have not yet been publicly disclosed.
The three deals together represent $300 million in federal investment and form part of a broader $2 billion federal program that spans nine quantum computing companies in total.
IBM stands as the largest recipient within that broader program, receiving $1 billion toward a planned quantum foundry in Albany, New York.
Each company has outlined how it intends to deploy its share of the federal funding across distinct technical priorities aligned with its core approach to quantum computing.
Rigetti will direct its $100 million toward readout electronics, cryogenic capacity expansion, and improvements to qubit connectivity, all critical bottlenecks in scaling superconducting quantum processors.
D-Wave is targeting the development of 100,000-qubit annealing systems alongside 10,000-qubit gate-model systems capable of supporting 100 logical qubits and over one million operations.
Quantinuum will use its funding to advance trapped-ion manufacturing through partnerships with GlobalFoundries and Monarch Quantum, with the goal of improving its supply chain and scaling production capacity.
Some reports have indicated that Quantinuum did not have to relinquish an equity stake as part of its agreement, though the Commerce Department has not provided a detailed public breakdown of each deal’s terms.
The government’s involvement signals a clear federal commitment to ensuring American competitiveness in quantum computing, a sector increasingly viewed as strategically critical.
Despite the headline-grabbing nature of the investment, analysts and observers caution that the CHIPS Act money does not fundamentally alter the investment thesis for any of the three companies.
As the article’s author noted, the funding will help Rigetti, Quantinuum, and D-Wave continue their efforts to build broadly useful quantum computers, but the government’s stakes will not change much about the investment thesis for any of them.
