# US Government Plans $2 Billion in Quantum Computing Grants, Takes Equity Stakes in Nine Firms **Source:** https://glitchwire.com/news/us-government-plans-2-billion-in-quantum-computing-grants-takes-equity-stakes-in/ **Published:** 2026-05-21T11:22:56.273Z **Author:** Tech Desk ยท Glitchwire **Categories:** Tech, Policy ## Summary The Commerce Department is distributing grants to IBM, GlobalFoundries, D-Wave, Rigetti, and others in exchange for ownership positions, extending the Trump administration's approach of treating technology as national infrastructure. ## Article The Trump administration is awarding $2 billion in grants to nine quantum computing companies while simultaneously acquiring equity stakes in each firm, according to a [Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com) report confirmed by multiple outlets. The Commerce Department will distribute the largest single award, $1 billion, to IBM, with GlobalFoundries receiving $375 million. D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Infleqtion are each expected to receive approximately $100 million, while Australian startup Diraq may receive $38 million. ## A New Model for Technology Investment By taking ownership stakes in the nine firms, the federal government is acting as a strategic investor rather than a traditional grant-making body. In the case of GlobalFoundries, the Commerce Department will receive approximately 1% ownership in exchange for accelerating the build-out of the company's quantum manufacturing platforms. This approach mirrors the administration's recent moves in semiconductors and critical minerals. The Commerce Department acquired a 10% stake in Intel in August 2025, converting $5.7 billion in CHIPS Act grants into equity. The Pentagon struck a deal with MP Materials that includes $400 million in preferred stock and warrants that could make the Defense Department the company's largest shareholder at 15%. The quantum investments extend the administration's push to take equity stakes in companies considered critical to domestic supply chains and to counter China's dominance in strategic technology sectors. ## IBM Leads, But Smaller Players Matter IBM's billion-dollar award reflects its position as the most commercially advanced quantum hardware company in the United States. The company unveiled progress at its annual Quantum Developer Conference in November 2025, targeting quantum advantage by the end of 2026 and fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2029. Q-CTRL recently announced it achieved a 3,000-times speedup on a materials discovery problem using IBM's quantum platform, marking what the company calls evidence of practical quantum advantage. GlobalFoundries has launched a dedicated Quantum Technology Solutions business focused on manufacturing quantum hardware at scale, from quantum processing units to cryogenic control chips and superconducting interconnects. The company already partners with several quantum computing firms that need foundry capacity for specialized components. Diraq, the Sydney-based startup receiving the smallest allocation, has built a differentiated position by using silicon-based quantum dots that can be manufactured using existing semiconductor fabrication processes. The company is one of 11 firms that advanced to stage B of DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, a rigorous hardware evaluation program that could lead to large-scale defense procurement. ## The China Factor China's 15th Five-Year Plan, adopted in March 2026, names quantum technology first among seven future industries designated as new economic growth engines. The National Venture Guidance Fund has allocated approximately $17.5 billion across three regional quantum-focused investment vehicles. China's total estimated quantum computing investment reaches approximately $15 billion across government agencies, state enterprises, and private companies. Chinese quantum investment is accelerating. Total financing in the first three months of 2026 reached approximately $310 million, nearly matching the full-year total for 2025. SpinQ Technology completed a $145 million Series C, while QBoson closed a $145 million Series B within the same week. The $2 billion American package, while significant, is smaller than the resources Beijing is marshaling. The equity structure represents an attempt to align government and commercial interests in a way that traditional grants do not. ## What This Means for Quantum's Commercial Future Government ownership creates a stakeholder whose interests extend beyond financial returns. That could influence everything from which use cases get prioritized to how intellectual property is shared or restricted. For companies like D-Wave and Rigetti that have struggled with profitability, the firms burned between two and six times as much cash as they earned in revenue over the past year. Federal backing provides runway, but also introduces a new variable into corporate governance. For the broader technology investment landscape, the move signals that quantum computing has crossed from speculative research into strategic priority. When the government starts taking equity positions rather than just writing checks, it indicates something about how it views the technology's inevitability. The real question is whether $2 billion distributed across nine firms is enough to matter. [The AI boom has demonstrated](/news/nvidias-vera-cpu-marks-a-structural-shift-in-how-ai-thinks-about-hardware/) that infrastructure investment at scale can reshape entire industries. Quantum computing requires similar coordination across hardware, fabrication, error correction, and software. IBM expects to achieve large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2029, with a real-time error correction decoder prototyping in 2026. The administration frames this as a smart way to help American businesses while allowing for potential return on investment. If the Treasury could generate returns similar to top venture capitalists, it could eventually scale up to dent America's deficit. That outcome requires the technology to work. [Quantum computing remains far from the reliability](/news/the-boring-memory-upgrade-that-could-save-ai-data-centers-billions-on-electricit/) needed for broad commercial deployment, though 2026 may prove to be the year when that starts to change. The nine companies now have federal shareholders. What happens next depends on whether they can convert laboratory demonstrations into systems that solve problems classical computers cannot. --- **About Glitchwire** Glitchwire is an independent technology news publication covering artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, science, security, policy, finance, and the broader technology industry. 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