The U.S. Department of Commerce is committing more than $2 billion to quantum computing research and development, a move that underscores growing concerns about the technology's potential to upend modern cryptography. The investment, announced Thursday, will flow to nine companies, with the largest single allocation—$1 billion—going to IBM for the construction of a dedicated quantum wafer foundry in Albany, New York.
IBM will match the government's contribution with an additional $1 billion in cash, intellectual property, manufacturing assets, and personnel. The facility, called Anderon, is designed to scale production of advanced superconducting quantum chips. These chips are built on ultra-thin silicon discs known as wafers, which hold the qubits and supporting electronics. Producing them requires extreme precision and very low error rates, making dedicated manufacturing facilities essential for advancing the technology.
Other recipients include GlobalFoundries, which is expected to receive $375 million, while Atom Computing, D-Wave, Infleqtion, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, and Rigetti are each slated for $100 million awards. Quantum startup Diraq will receive $38 million. In return, the U.S. government will take varying equity stakes in each company.
“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 Secretary of Commerce 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.”
Superconducting qubits, the basis for many current quantum computers, store information using tiny electrical circuits cooled to temperatures colder than outer space. Unlike traditional computer bits that can only be a 0 or a 1, qubits can exist in multiple states simultaneously, enabling quantum machines to solve certain classes of problems exponentially faster than classical computers.
One of the major hurdles in quantum computing has been manufacturing the chips at scale. IBM said Anderon will initially produce wafers for superconducting quantum chips and related electronics, with plans to expand into other types of quantum hardware. The company’s quantum roadmap, published in November, aims to deliver a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029.
The announcement comes amid mounting warnings about “Q-Day,” the term used to describe the moment when quantum computers become powerful enough to break the cryptographic systems that protect Bitcoin, Ethereum, encrypted communications, banking systems, and much of the modern internet. Traditional public-key cryptography—including the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) used by Bitcoin—relies on mathematical problems that are extremely hard for classical computers to solve but could be trivial for a sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor's algorithm.
Researchers at quantum security firm Project Eleven warned in a recent report that a quantum computer capable of breaking the elliptic curve cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum could arrive as early as 2030. That timeline has been reinforced by Google researchers, who separately suggested that future quantum systems may require fewer qubits than previously believed to crack modern encryption. If realized, such a development would fundamentally undermine the security of all blockchain networks that rely on ECDSA and similar signature schemes.
Bitcoin and other blockchains face a particular risk because transactions are public and irreversible. Once a user's public key is exposed on-chain—which happens whenever a transaction is made—a future quantum computer could theoretically derive the corresponding private key and steal the funds. Because blockchain transactions cannot be reversed, there is no fraud recovery mechanism to undo the theft after it occurs.
Earlier this week, analysts at Citigroup warned that Bitcoin may face greater long-term exposure than Ethereum due to Bitcoin’s more conservative governance structure, which makes major protocol upgrades slower and more politically difficult. The bank estimated that roughly 6.7 to 7 million Bitcoin—up to one-third of the total supply—already sits in wallets with publicly exposed keys, making those coins potentially vulnerable in a post-quantum world.
The crypto industry has been slow to adopt post-quantum cryptography, though some projects are beginning to explore alternatives. Ethereum has a more nimble upgrade process and could in theory transition to quantum-resistant signatures more easily than Bitcoin. However, the sheer size and inertia of the Bitcoin network makes such a transition daunting. Any change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules requires broad agreement among miners, node operators, and developers, and contentious upgrades have historically been difficult to implement.
Beyond cryptocurrencies, quantum computing poses a broader threat to all forms of digital security. Government communications, financial transactions, medical records, and critical infrastructure all rely on encryption that could be broken by a sufficiently advanced quantum computer. That is why governments worldwide, including the United States, China, and the European Union, are pouring billions into quantum research—not just to harness the technology’s potential for good, but also to understand and mitigate its risks.
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been working for years on a set of post-quantum cryptographic standards that could replace current algorithms. In 2024, NIST finalized several such standards, though widespread adoption will take time. The Commerce Department’s investment in quantum manufacturing is seen as a complementary effort: building the hardware while regulators and industry work on the software and protocol changes needed to stay ahead.
IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna emphasized the national security implications: “IBM has pioneered quantum computing for decades. Our work in silicon wafer fabrication has been a key to IBM's success and will be critical to enable a broader quantum technology landscape that will reshape global innovation and economic competitiveness. With the support of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Anderon will be well-positioned to fuel America's fast-growing quantum technology industry.”
The investment also signals a shift in U.S. industrial policy toward strategic technologies. The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in 2022, originally focused on semiconductor manufacturing, but the quantum investments fall under the same program. The Trump administration has expanded the scope to include quantum as a national priority. Observers note that China has made quantum computing a core part of its Made in China 2025 strategy, and the U.S. move is partly a response to fears of falling behind.
For Bitcoin holders, the $2 billion bet on quantum computing is both a warning and an opportunity. It highlights the urgency of transitioning to quantum-resistant cryptography, but also the reality that the timeline for Q-Day remains uncertain. Some experts believe it is still decades away; others think it could arrive much sooner if breakthroughs continue at the current pace. In any case, the U.S. government is betting that quantum computing will reshape the technological landscape, and it is placing its chips accordingly.
Source:Decrypt News