Quantum’s Next Wave Takes Off as Federal Backing and Market Interest Accelerate
Wall Street may have found its next mind-bender. The Commerce Department rolled out $2B to back nine quantum technology companies, taking ownership stakes in each as part of the deal and handing the sector a major vote of confidence. Investors piled in, sending quantum stocks soaring Thursday.
Funding the quantum ambitions: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick framed the initiative as leading “the world into a new era of American innovation,” though the deals still need formal completion. Smaller players led the rally, with D-Wave QuantumQBTS and Rigetti ComputingRGTI surging more than 20%, while IBMIBM gained about 7%. IBM also landed the biggest award at $1B and matched it with another $1B of its own to launch Anderon, a quantum foundry venture in Albany, New York, targeting a market the company says could create $450B to $850B in economic value by 2040.
- GlobalFoundriesGFS secured $375M and gave Washington roughly a 1% equity stake while launching a new quantum-focused business unit.
- D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and InfleqtionINFQ each landed $100M, with D-Wave taking the full award as an equity investment.
The Race to Quantum Advantage
Cantor Fitzgerald’s Troy Jensen has gone from skeptic to believer after spending the past year and a half tracking the sector’s technical progress. The analyst now sees commercialization arriving within one to two years as quantum systems begin solving problems beyond today’s computing limits. Jensen said national security was a key driver of his conviction, warning that machines capable of cracking encryption could threaten everything from classified data to banking systems and the electrical grid.
- Quantum companies are betting on different architectures to get ahead of the competition in the race to build commercially useful machines.
- Jensen expects multiple winners rather than a winner-take-all outcome, with scale and commercial viability likely deciding who comes out ahead.
Timing the breakthrough: Infleqtion CEO Matt Kinsella is betting on quantum’s national security potential, recently securing a $2M contract to develop software for hybrid quantum computing networks. That urgency is growing as China pushes to make quantum computers widely available by 2030, adding pressure to Washington’s race toward the next phase of quantum computing. Call it a quantum leap… in the battle for supremacy.