The U.S. Commerce Department announced on Thursday, May 21, 2026, that it will distribute up to $2 billion in CHIPS Act grants to nine quantum computing companies — and the federal government will receive a minority, non-controlling equity stake in each one in exchange. The deals, structured as letters of intent, mark the first time Washington has taken cap-table positions across an entire emerging deep-tech sector at once.
The headline number is $2.013 billion in CHIPS Act incentives spread across IBM, GlobalFoundries, D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Atom Computing, Quantinuum, and the Sydney-based startup Diraq. For founders building anywhere near the federal industrial-policy zone — semiconductors, AI infrastructure, biotech manufacturing, energy — this is the template they should expect next. Non-dilutive grant capital is no longer non-dilutive.
Last updated: May 2026
What did the U.S. government actually buy?
The Commerce Department signed nine letters of intent, not closed deals, with the awardees. Each LOI ties CHIPS Act funding to a minority, non-controlling federal equity position in the recipient company. The grants are released against milestones the companies still have to hit. The structure is the same one the Trump administration used earlier this year on Intel, USA Rare Earth, and MP Materials — the so-called “Intel model” of industrial policy, where federal capital flows in alongside a stock position rather than as a pure subsidy.
According to CNBC’s reporting on the announcement, the Commerce Department framed the deals as part of a broader push to build a domestic supply chain for quantum chips before the technology becomes commercially mature. Quantum computing is still pre-revenue at the application layer for most of the recipients. The federal government is, in effect, underwriting the buildout of an industry that does not yet have a product market.
Who got how much
The largest single check goes to IBM. Roughly $1 billion in CHIPS incentives will support the launch of Anderon, a new standalone IBM company headquartered in Albany, New York. Anderon is being built as a 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry — the first purpose-built quantum chip foundry in the United States. IBM is contributing $1 billion of its own cash, plus intellectual property, assets, and staff, bringing the combined initial commitment to $2 billion. Per IBM’s announcement, the foundry will initially focus on superconducting qubit wafers before expanding into other quantum technologies, and will serve multiple quantum hardware vendors rather than just IBM’s own program.
GlobalFoundries will receive $375 million to build a U.S. factory producing components for quantum machines. D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Infleqtion are each in line for up to $100 million — D-Wave and Rigetti for superconducting quantum research, Infleqtion for neutral-atom systems. The remaining recipients — PsiQuantum, Atom Computing, Quantinuum, and Diraq — round out the nine, with Diraq pegged at the floor of the range at $38 million, per Manufacturing Dive’s breakdown.
Each of the four publicly traded recipients — IBM, GlobalFoundries, D-Wave, and Rigetti, plus Infleqtion which recently went public — now has the U.S. government on its cap table as a minority shareholder.
How the market reacted
Quantum stocks ripped on Thursday and into Friday. D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) closed up roughly 33%, Infleqtion (INFQ) up about 31%, and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) up around 30%, according to Yahoo Finance’s market summary. IBM also moved sharply higher on the news despite already trading at a multi-hundred-billion-dollar market cap.
The reaction is a clear signal that public-market investors view federal equity stakes — even minority ones — as bullish rather than dilutive. That is a reversal from how most investors treated government involvement as recently as 2024. The shift tracks the performance of Intel: the administration’s roughly $8.9 billion position in Intel has appreciated to more than $50 billion in eight months, validating the playbook in the eyes of the market.
Why founders should pay attention even if they are not in quantum
The quantum deal is not a one-off. Over the past ten months the Trump administration has built equity positions in at least six publicly traded companies, including Intel, USA Rare Earth, MP Materials, NVIDIA, AMD, and U.S. Steel. The quantum announcement adds nine more all at once. The pattern is consistent: identify a strategic category, deploy federal capital in exchange for a minority stake, take credit for both the industrial outcome and the financial return.
For founders, the implication is concrete. Any deep-tech category with national security or supply-chain stakes — AI compute, advanced packaging, biomanufacturing, critical minerals, fusion, geothermal — is a candidate for the same treatment. Federal grant capital that founders have historically treated as “free money” now carries an implicit ownership cost. The terms are still likely better than venture capital, but the cap-table picture is no longer clean.
Two practical questions every founder pursuing federal capital should be ready to answer: what voting and information rights does the government get along with the equity, and what happens to that stake when a future acquirer shows up at the table? Neither question has been fully tested in this round. The LOIs published so far describe the stakes as “non-controlling,” but the operational details vary deal by deal.
The Anderon bet, decoded
IBM’s Anderon deserves a closer look because it is the structural centerpiece of the announcement. A 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry is not a research lab; it is a production facility built to manufacture quantum chips at industrial scale for any company that needs them. That positions Anderon as the quantum equivalent of TSMC or GlobalFoundries — a contract manufacturer whose customers include direct competitors of its parent.
IBM’s willingness to spin Anderon out as a standalone company, rather than keep it as an internal division, is a structural concession. It allows the foundry to credibly serve other quantum hardware vendors without giving IBM Quantum a permanent inside view of competitor designs. It also makes Anderon a separate investment target down the road, with the U.S. government already on the cap table.
For deep-tech founders watching the structure, the model is worth studying. Anderon is, in effect, a government-anchored joint venture that decouples manufacturing from IP. If federal capital continues flowing into deep-tech categories on these terms, expect more spin-out structures designed to absorb the equity dilution at a layer below the core operating company.
What this signals for the rest of 2026
The quantum deal lands in the middle of a broader shift in how federal capital reaches private companies. The CHIPS Act, originally passed in 2022 as a straightforward grant program, has been progressively restructured into an equity-investment vehicle. The Trump administration’s framing — that taxpayers should get an upside stake in companies they fund — has been politically durable, and the Intel returns have given the model a results-based defense.
Expect three things over the rest of the year. First, more announcements in the same shape — likely in AI infrastructure, advanced battery manufacturing, and biotech reshoring, where supply-chain arguments are easiest to make. Second, growing scrutiny of the governance terms attached to these stakes. Even minority positions can carry information rights, board observer seats, or restrictions on offshoring that materially change how a company operates. Third, a quiet rewrite of how founders evaluate non-dilutive grant programs at the federal level. The clean separation between “grant money” and “equity money” is largely gone for strategic categories.
For founders in deep tech, the takeaway is not that federal capital is a bad deal. The terms in the quantum LOIs look favorable on their face, especially compared to private market alternatives at this stage of the cycle. The takeaway is that the table stakes have changed. Federal capital comes with a stakeholder who is also a regulator, and that stakeholder now expects an upside.
