U.S. quantum awards pair funding for D-Wave, Rigetti and Quantinuum with equity stakes

D-Wave, Rigetti and Quantinuum have finalised U.S. quantum-computing funding agreements worth up to $300 million combined, advancing a CHIPS programme that requires minority government equity stakes. All three companies announced their agreements on 8 September.

The new step is the move to final awards. The Commerce Department’s 21 May announcement set out the proposed funding and a minority, non-controlling ownership condition. September’s announcements from D-Wave and Rigetti explicitly reiterate that condition; Quantinuum confirms its final award under the programme.

Three awards, different engineering priorities

D-Wave says the award will support both of its computing approaches. Its development targets include a 100,000-qubit annealing machine and a 10,000-qubit gate-model system designed to support 100 logical qubits. Those are research objectives. The company also identifies project milestones and other disbursement conditions as factors affecting receipt of the funding.

Rigetti’s agreement funds three projects: integrating smaller readout electronics, developing a cryostat architecture with greater cooling capacity, and improving fabrication for chips with more connections. These are the supporting systems needed to build and operate larger superconducting processors.

Quantinuum’s manufacturing partners

Quantinuum places its award around trapped-ion hardware and the domestic supply chain. GlobalFoundries will join its foundry partners, with work on next-generation ion traps and electronics using 300mm wafers. Monarch Quantum plans to develop and manufacture lasers and optical components for the systems.

The company’s stated goals include simpler systems, more reliable components and manufacturing that produces consistent results. The award therefore connects quantum research to repeatable semiconductor and photonics production.

Public funding with an ownership interest

Commerce’s published condition links the awards to an equity interest intended to give taxpayers a financial return. D-Wave and Rigetti describe the planned stakes as minority and non-controlling. Award finalisation and the subsequent funding and share-issuance steps belong to the agreements’ implementation.

The three awards sit within the broader portfolio announced in May, which also covered other quantum architectures and foundry capacity. For these companies, the practical work now centres on better cooling, control electronics, chip production and optical components: the machinery needed to scale quantum computing.