The U.S. Commerce Department has finalized five CHIPS and Science Act research and development awards worth up to a combined $775 million for GlobalFoundries, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, D-Wave and Rigetti.
GlobalFoundries can receive up to $375 million over five years, with payments tied to specific milestones. PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, D-Wave and Rigetti can each receive up to $100 million.
All five awards were first announced in letters of intent in May. They are part of a broader $2 billion package of planned incentives under the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act of 2022.
The funding is aimed at solving technical and manufacturing problems that have made it difficult to build larger, more reliable, and commercially useful quantum computers.
The Commerce Department said in May that it would receive a minority, non-controlling stake in each of the seven quantum computing companies covered by the broader program. Those are Atom Computing, Diraq, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, D-Wave and Rigetti.
D-Wave and Rigetti confirmed the equity condition in their final announcements Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal reported that the government will also receive a minority stake in Quantinuum. PsiQuantum's announcement did not provide details on its final equity terms.
How the companies will use the funding
GlobalFoundries, which is eligible for the largest of the five awards, said it will use the funding to expand its Quantum Technology Solutions business. The unit helps quantum companies move from research and prototypes to larger-scale manufacturing.
"The agreement advances the goal of establishing a secure, U.S.-based ecosystem for the development and manufacturing of quantum chips," GlobalFoundries said Tuesday.
Separately, GlobalFoundries signed a $300 million letter of intent with the Commerce Department's CHIPS Research and Development Office in July for silicon photonics research. Silicon photonics uses light instead of electricity to move and process data on chips.
PsiQuantum, which is developing quantum computers that use light, said it will use the funding to improve U.S. manufacturing and key components, including optical switches, photon detectors that need less cooling, and advanced packaging.
"PsiQuantum’s silicon photonics platform will create consequential opportunities across advanced computing infrastructure even as we build and deploy fault-tolerant quantum computers," said Rob Soderbery, an executive vice president at PsiQuantum.
PsiQuantum also announced an expanded $125 million agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in July. The agreement supports testing under DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which is assessing different approaches to building useful, large-scale quantum computers.
Quantinuum will use its award to help scale its trapped-ion quantum computers. These systems use electric fields to hold charged atoms, or ions, in place and lasers to control them. The ions act as qubits, the basic units of quantum information.
D-Wave said it will use its award to develop quantum annealing and gate-model technology. Quantum annealing is mainly used to solve complex optimization problems, while gate-model systems can handle a wider range of tasks.
D-Wave is developing a 100,000-qubit annealing system for areas including optimization, materials simulation, blockchain and AI. It is also working on a 10,000-qubit gate-model system with 100 error-corrected logical qubits.
Rigetti said it will use its award for three projects involving its superconducting quantum computers. It plans to make its readout electronics smaller, improve chip manufacturing, and increase its cooling capacity.
Shares of all four publicly traded recipients rose Tuesday. PsiQuantum is privately held.