US is taking equity stakes in IBM and other quantum computing companies
One of those companies is linked to Donald Trump Jr. and another to a top Pentagon official.
The US government has taken $2 billion worth of equity stakes in nine quantum computing companies, including one linked to the Trump family and another taken public by a current Pentagon official. IBM was the biggest beneficiary, along with firms including D-Wave Quantum, Atom Computing and PsiQuantum, according to The Financial Times and press releases from D-Wave and PsiQuantum. The deals reportedly aren't final and the White House is still soliciting proposals from other tech firms.
"With today's CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation," said US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick in a statement. "These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities."
PsiQuantum, which received $100 million, is connected to Donald Trump Jr.'s firm 1789 Capital. Another, D-Wave Quantum, was taken public in 2022 by a current top Pentagon official, Michael Emil. The latter's stock went up sharply following the deal.
The Trump administration has made investments in key market areas like chips and critical minerals, including a $10 billion investment in Intel last year. Senator Elizabeth Warren and other US representatives have previously pressed the Department of Defense about contracts given out to companies associated with Donald Trump Jr., including Cerebras Systems, PsiQuantum and Firehawk Aerospace, among others. Intel is also facing a lawsuit from shareholders over its US government deal.
Quantum computing is a developing field with theoretical potential but few concrete achievements. Such computers using "qubits" instead of regular bits that can represent multiple states at once rather than binary ones and zeros. It's believed they could perform some calculations faster than classical computers, like breaking encryption schemes and performing physics simulations. Last October, IBM showed that it could run an out-of-time-ordered correlator algorithm (an exotic quantum system measurement) faster than a regular computer.